Sleepy taxi

I'm in a taxi on my way from a little airport, headed to the Shekou district of Shenzhen, China, which is just a ferry ride away from Hong Kong, geographically speaking, for those of you who are concerned.

The air is sticky and heavy. Apparently sleep-inducing. For a while, the taxi driver was struggling to keep his eyelids from dropping. So I offered him a Lara Bar, simultaneously tracking our route on my gps. Thank God for smart phones and data plans.

More to report later... If I survive this jaunt in the taxi of impending sleep...

Upcoming PD

Just an FYI, for my faithful followers, I'll be taking the opportunity for a long weekend during this upcoming week... to go to a Professional Development conference (yay, PD funds built into my contract will reimburse me for costs of this trip!)

I'm excited to network, hear a bit from keynote speakers, participate in group sessions, and interact with fellow international school teachers! It's primarily a conference for ELL/ESL/EAL/TESOL (you fill in the blank with any other combination of acronyms that describe English-language teaching). I'll be traveling there on Friday, unfortunately missing out on AIAN's "e-ART-h Day" activities that have been planned as a fusion event, combining Art Day and Earth Day (science, nature care). And I'll be taking Monday off to travel back. It's just a two-hour flight south (a ferry ride away from Hong Kong, and in a region of China where I vacationed last December over my winter break holiday. I also visited nearby Guangzhou, so I'm looking forward to entering warmer, more humid weather in the coming weekend. I'll update more along the way. I'm sure the conference will be interesting; it has a lot to do with technology as valuable resources in the ELL classroom, but also other teaching resources and strategies within the ELL context.

Throwback Thursday

(composed on Flashback Friday...)

Yesterday I had a few experiences that jogged some memories of the good ole days...

1. As I was subbing for elementary grades this week, I remembered all those things about elementary school, and how much I miss teaching the younger ones... or rather, how much I really dislike teaching adolescents, by comparison. I led one class in playing the game "Heads Up, Seven Up," which is an absolute throwback to my own elementary school years. They loved it.
• Side note #1: I was subbing for 3rd and 4th grades at various times Tuesday-Thursday this week, during all my planning periods; because we have no substitute system in place, teachers within the school have to compromise their planning time to cover for other teachers. It's ridiculous, I'm well aware.
• Side note #1: the teachers were absent because their families to move during the middle of the week, in all the commotion of that ridiculous housing situation that our school board absolutely cannot get their act together for! That's a whole other issue I don't want to delve into right now though.
2. Tetherball: Also a throwback to elementary school. While supervising recesses this week, duty around the foursquare and tetherball courts brought some awesome memories. We learned the rules to tetherball inside and out, and had playground tourneys for years. At home at the old Riverview Drive house, Dad even cemented in a pole and tethered up a ball for us. Our "new puppy dog" at the time, Midas, even learned how to "play," nipping at the ball when we served it into that side of the round court.
3. Thursday evening's dance aerobics class brought the sounds of my elementary years in the late 1990s flooding back to me. As fifth graders, my friends as I would sing the lyrics to "Wannabe" countless times, not even thoroughly understanding the depth of their meaning at that point in our lives, of course. I still know all those words by heart. I even sang along as we did some awesome cardio moves.

Tomb-Sweeping Festival

Early on (in January) when Kari and I were beginning to plan what to do over the 11-day break, we were conferring with a Chinese friend about some plausible travel options to do all together. In working on the scheduling of travel, our friend said she had to be back to her hometown before April 4, reasoning, "I need to get home to sweep!" At first we thought she had typoed in her email message, mis-communicating. I thought maybe she meant "sleep"? Then we questioned why cleaning was so important that it called for the urgency of being home before April 4, which would cut possible travels short. Couldn't she wait to sweep until later? It turns out she really meant TOMB SWEEPING, which is a very traditional and important Chinese cultural custom. 

The Qingming Festival (清明节), also translated as the "Pure Brightness Festival" or "Clear Bright Festival" is popularly celebrated in China as Ancestors Day or Tomb Sweeping Day. It is celebrated on the 104th day after the winter solstice (or the 15th day from the Spring Equinox, or the first day of the fifth solar term...). Anyway, it's usually around April 5 on the Gregorian calendar. Citing Wikipedia, "its name denotes a time for people to go outside and enjoy the greenery of springtime." People tend to the graves of departed ones, sweeping, painting, and planting new shrubbery and decorations around family plots.

So, most Chinese businesses honored the holiday on Thursday, April 4, and some on Friday the 5th as well. This is mostly the reason why our Spring Break is set to be during this week. Our school, AIAN, additionally tacked on the Thursday and Friday of last week (March 28-29), making for a short school week and a long first weekend of the break (which was nice, because it afforded many teachers the long weekend to attend a Professional Development conference in Shanghai). 

Kari went to Xi'an with our Chinese friend, Fan, and I settled in to nap and play with Jett, workout, explore more of Beilun via bike (with the pupperz trotting along side), file paperwork and get some medical issues sorted out, as well as get some planning done for the end of June when Dad is coming to visit!!! Yes, I spent much time searching for good flight itineraries and booking tours and working on the details of planning Dad's visit, slated for June 21-July 2. We'll be visiting some Chinese historic and must-see sights, and then he'll be assisting in my 8th international move. I'm super stoked not to have to do the international travels alone, again, and to be able to share this culture with him, as China is very different from any other country I have lived/traveled in.

Well, that's the news for now. One day left of break after today. Out into the wind and firecracker smoke (no, strong winds are not a deterrent for Chinese celebrations). 

That time of the year

Sorry for the silence of late, but, as it is said, when you haven't anything nice to say, it's better not to say anything at all. In the couple of weeks approaching spring break, I'd been experiencing the frustrations of what our middle school math teacher calls the "dog days of school"... 

• not feeling like an effective teacher when choice ELL students opt not to do homework, care not for their failing grades, and put no effort into showing interest in learning English, and perform poorly on projects, presentations, and exams,
• feeling inept in my inability to get through to certain students, 
• lacking energy and feeling run down by my allergy and general health issues,
• having more than enough heaped on my to do list (between regular classes, teacher observations, language skills benchmark testing, grading, grades and narratives to submit with the aggravating inconveniently-scheduled upcoming end to the Quarter 3 term, teaching the SAT Prep ASA course, and more),
• being vexed at the plight/predicament that faces us and all our fellow teachers in being forced to move apartments mid-school year, with only a quarter left, uprooting our community and causing us unnecessary logistical strife in moving and resettling,
• and what's more, feeling frustrated with my predicament of being basically powerless to affect change in the foundational inadequacies of our school, primarily due to the AIAN's School Board. Grrr. A good friend recently shared a quote with me, 

"In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards."

- Mark Twain

I'm at the point where things are continually happening and busy (it's not that I'm bored or have a lack of things to write about)... it's just that I don't feel motivated to write about the daily happenings in life, even though I realize many of you are curious as to what daily life in China is like. I always want to post about the little things that happen on a daily basis, making note of the "TIC" moments, especially now that my time in China seems to be fading into that transitionary period of the "before I leave..." mindset. Sometimes I'll post a photo and status to Facebook about moments like the typical "Can I have a photo with the token laowai?" incidents when I'm grocery shopping, or when people roll down their windows to stare at me biking with my dog. But most of the time, I just share an eye roll, a face palm to the forehead, or a deep sigh with a fellow foreigner when I relay the happenings. Commiseration. (But REALLY, how do the Chinese expect to be received when THEY travel/move to a foreign country? Oh look! Chinese person! Nihao! Can I have a photo with you? *flash the peace sign at them, while imposing an impromptu photo op, repeated about 5-6 times with ALL the friends in the group* Sorry. Excuse my rant. This is the sort of stuff I'm talking about having happen, but not wanting to blog about it, because it just comes off as negative and perhaps culturally insensitive...)

I'm thinking that for the last quarter of school and as my departure from China approaches (July 2nd I'll be Stateside again, friendlies!), I want to start an Instagram hashtag line, or whatever those are called... I didn't understand the connection until just recently as to why people are throwing out hashtags all over Fb these days. (I'm new to Instagram, so I'm still figuring out what I can do with it.) Search the hashtag "#TIC_LarasLens" and I'll try to post pics with anecdotes whenever I snapshot something that is a part of daily life (or at least MY life) in China. (I'll postulate that these photos will also be shared on the Facebook too, for those of you who, like myself, have been slow to jump on the Instagram bandwagon.))

Speaking of photos, I've just uploaded more recent photos of the last month or so to my Facebook album of China 2013. Check it out.

So I'm about a fourth of the way through my spring break right now, and I've opted not to travel this break (the first break in a while that I haven't). Instead, I'm laying low with the pupperz, enjoying some alone time while Kari has been in Xi'an with our friend Fan (originally, I had planned on going as well, inviting Fan initially, but then backed out for a number of reasons). Really, it's a good thing, and I've been quite productive and successful in getting some R&R to rejuvenate from my school woes, because I have had few breaks in my life during which I've actually opted just to take a rest and veg (to quote a fave Julia Roberts movie, "Be still like vegetables. Lay like broccoli." And I have, btw, been eating my fair share of broccoli these days). So far, I've thoroughly enjoyed the long 4-day weekend that has been a prelude into the coming week off that lays ahead. My list of productivity includes: planning/purchasing

Taking a bone break in a plaza,
around the Beilun port area of town.
The halfway point during our leisurely
12km Saturday-morning bike ride.

airfare for when school gets out (Dad is coming to visit!!!!!), taking bike rides to enjoy the rare sunny patches, exploring more of Beilun with my boba-Jett by my side, working out (to old Zumba and dance aerobics DVDs, thank you very much, as well as playing around on the Chinese workout/exercise machine contraption equipment in nearby parks, on Wellness Walkways and such).

Riddle me this: How are these contraptions to be properly used??

Huginn and Munnin "kick boxing" in their bouncy chairs

I should probably mention at this time my Easter Sunday activities, for those who would be interested... I went to my Beilun-home church, surrounded by a gathering of multi-national, racial, lingual, (fill in the blank with diversity-related words). I left the service feeling refreshed and energized, having met more Spanish-speakers, gotten to fellowship in an atmosphere of positivity, uplifted by a Common Belief that pulls such a beautiful mix of people together. I was also instantly invited to teach at a school in Mexico, after introducing myself in Spanish to a surprised newcomer. She was so stunned and pleased that I spoke "español tan bueno" (such good Spanish). Then I took my whole-grain, honey cornbread muffins and some fruit with me to have brunch with my Beilun family (Matt, Julie, their babies, and another friend, Adolfo). I got to play with, feed, and hold the ever-growing twins, Huginn and Munnin! Always a pick-me-up! Then I took a long stroll with Jetterz in the evening colored-haze of fireworks (Tomb-Sweeping Festival is this week in China), with the addition of closing my evening watching rad, colored water fountains in the park, 28 stories below my kitchen window.

Yup, this week ahead is gonna be grand. I have a couple books to read, good music to enjoy, and friends! Now to get this issues of a recurring rash/hives and acid-reflux checked out by a professional... that's on my to do list for tomorrow! (TMI? I'm sorry...)

These roads are dangerous...

Just a couple weeks after my first driving experience in China (during our move; it was very uneventful and a fairly straightforward stretch of driving to and from the old and new apartments), on that same stretch of road, we had quite an eventful morning.

And what a way to start the morning it was! After narrowly escaping two head-on collisions with e-bike/motorbike riders:

1) a policeman riding on the WRONG side of the street who didn't make an effort to move to one side or the other for the TWO of us bicyclists on the correct side of the road to carry on, and

2) an oblivious man who was smoking AND texting at the same time and furthermore didn't even look up when I rang my bell, even as I was shouting HELLOOO!? NIHAOOOOOOO! directly in his oncoming face, and ultimately had to nearly hit a parked car in swerving to avoid HIM!

... and then...

Kari was actually HIT by a car whose driver failed to yield to her, as she was making the final left turn into Li Ren, the gated neighborhood where our school is located. The unyielding driver failed to stop and check for traffic (ahem, including bicyclists! of which there are many in China!) before making his lefthand turn into oncoming traffic, thus smashing into Kari's left side as she was already well into her turn. Most importantly, Kari is safe and unhurt. (She pulled her left leg up just in time, and popped up immediately after being toppled over!) Her coffee didn't even spill a drop in the fall, until the shaking, nervous Chinese man tried to pick it up to hand it to her, all the while saying, "Sorry, sorry!" From what we can survey, the bike suffered hopefully only repairable damages. But really!? I was soooo ticked off. Later, Kari realized that the case of her laptop had been damaged in the fall.   :(

...and the best part was that the collision happened RIGHT IN FRONT of the neighborhood's guard station, with at least half a dozen men on duty... and not a single one of them came out to help. As I was in front and didn't see the collision happen, when I heard the crash and Kari's little scream (not the first scream of the morning, due to narrowly avoiding the previous two collisions), as I was getting my bike out of the way and turning around to come to Kari's aid, I glanced up at the guards, who were stone-faced and looking on, showing not the slightest inkling to get their fannies outside and help with the matter in the least! Grrrr!

What is up with Chinese male drivers this morning!?! This is China, people, TIC.

As an additional visual tidbit, here are a couple images I snapped on my phone yesterday as I was biking home from school. About five minutes of the bike ride is on a street that borders much construction (primarily new buildings in business and residential sectors). Safe, right? 

Oh, and happy Pi Day from this side of the world (March 14=3.14)!

Changes

Spring is budding in warp-speed at school,
due to high temps in the last week.

I received a few flowers on Friday,
in honor of International Women's Day.

Sorry for the silence on this end. It has been a while. Things have been hectic, to say the least. In the last couple of weeks, Kari and I have had a lot on our plates, with classes to plan for and teach, and ASAs (after-school activities) in full swing as of the week we returned from Chinese New Year break vacay in Cambodia and Thailand (Feb. 18/19). My new ASA (after having finished with my Eco-Team ASA during Quarter 2) is teaching an SAT-Prep Course. Yay for the unpredictable, unreliable services that the mediocrity of the entity known as the College Board provides (...or fails to...). Excuse my tangental rants. I might be in over my head with work and a bit stressed with all the activity of late. My hair is actually falling out.

"Grrrr," just about says it all.

We dog-moms all dressed up as
"Who teachers" for Dr. Seuss' birthday.
It was a big deal at our school last week.

This is the obligatory Chinese-laowai "foreign friends foto"
that was snapped when we went to Yangsha Mountain beach yesterday.
(We're always asked by Chinese to take photos with them, wherever we go. 
We were the only foreigners on the beach that day.)
And no, that is not a condom in the foreground;
it's a plastic cup from a jello-yogurt snack that's very popular around here.
It is representative of just 1/1,000,000th of a fraction 
of the trash that litters, well, EVERYWHERE around these parts. 
Shame to not be able to walk barefoot in the sand. TIC.

We're also in the midst of Teacher Observations, prepping and catching up on lesson planning and grading, and during this first week of March, spring seemed to send us a hopeful tease of tantalizing 70-85ºF weather... so out came the skirts, biking shorts, and spring fever (working inside is hard to do when the out of doors calls, Vitamin D levels need a boost (thus optimistically boosting the energy and moods), and white skin longs for the sun's kisses!). Tennis, hiking, biking, even a day at a nearby beach have all been good, temporary stress relievers and an opportunity to get some fresh(er) air out of the city's filth, construction soot, and according pollution.

So to fill ya'll in...

For more reasons than I want to fully go into at this point in time, we had to move apartments because the leases were up mid-school year on the apartments that the school had for us. So, with less than four months left in the school year (and our contracts), in addition to our daily school duties, we also proactively and diligently prepped for our impending change of apartments during the upcoming weekend of March 2-3 (being proactive is very, very uncharacteristic around here). There were many details to be secured before that point in time, which entailed much (attempted and only occasionally successful) communication, struggle, and rationalizing with ungracious powers that be.

Packing and moving out of the Li Ren apartment,
to the newer ShiMao apartment complex.

Kari packs in her room

I'm trying to jam bedding into a
dust-protector case for the move.

At least needing to pack up everything and move
meant that we finally packed up our Christmas decor!

To make a long story short, with much time and energy sacrificed (and still being sacrificed), Kari and I moved, with our dear pupperz Jett, to a 20-25 minute walk (10 minute bike ride) down the road from the Li Ren Garden apartment complex and where AIAN school is located. Thanks to help from gracious friends, the move was made easier. Though not all is resolved (fires still burn on the school front regarding many, many other issues), and we continue being "squeaky wheels" and incendiaries,  not letting injustice pass us by without a struggle, at least we are more or less settled in the new apartment, and adjusting to the new location and lifestyle that this move brings us.

Driving in China!
A Chinese friend lent us the use of her car on moving day,
to do the little errands driving back and forth
between apartment complexes and such.
I miss driving!

This is the view from the playground in our new apartment complex.
Our building is a total of 31 stories high.
Our apartment is on the 28th floor.
You can see our windows towards the upper-right side.

28 floors down, and looking to the apartment below us.
We hear construction sounds every day.
Those windows in their laundry room were just installed yesterday
and some workmen knocked on my door just as I was writing this,
delivering window screens that I assumed to be for the apt below
(of which we have none, so I should've just accepted them!)

Looking down, all 28 stories,
to the center of the ShiMao apartment complex.
There's the tennis court (only half the lights worked
when we asked to turn them on for an evening match)
and the playground is the other little green patch.
Off further to the right there are ponds with fountains and an indoor gym,
as well as some weird little statues and a peace pond with stepping stones.
A river borders the far edge of the complex.

See that blue inset lighting above the dining room?

Yeah, that's just a taste of the mood lighting

perks we have all around the apartment.

Super flashy and all for show.

Too bad they went all out on the lights

and not the practical things,

such as, say, hot water and 

a functional washing machine, showers, flooring,

or just doing anything in a QUALITY manner...

Enjoy the pictorial tour of some parts of the apartment, and I'll try to upload a video tour of it soonish, once we finish completely decorating (which means sticky-tacking and Command-Stripping pictures and art to the walls, since you can't put nails in the walls on rentals here, or the "damages" are paid out of pocket). In all reality, we have more space than is necessary (the third bedroom is our "suitcase room," and has a hole in the wall where another aircon unit should have been installed). Good thing our Ayi (housecleaning, dog walking "auntie") will return this week (we hope!) to help us clean all the dirty messes that were left from construction and not cleaned by the landlords before tenants moved in. We are going to have to have a disco, electro-techno, Margaritaville, granny-doily and fake-flower arrangement housewarming party. We (facetiously) loved what our landlords did with the decor in the spacious place... I mean, there are LED lights that sparkle above our bathroom mirrors, just for funsies, and iridescent neon blue and green mood lighting insets in the dining and family rooms. 

Take a look at Kari's post about the new apartment for more details as to the status... to her credit and applauding her optimism, Kari's list of grievances concerning our new apartment isn't even the full list of complaints we have regarding the whole situation.

Our kitchen...

...where the best part are the Margaritaville-esque tropical shades,
which were the landlords' idea of "quick fix" for the fact that the wind
blows through the ill-fitted sliding windows. The room is quite breezy,
the cheap shades flapping in the "breeze."

The view of Beilun from the kitchen window.
Construction and development and industry galore.
A metropolis on the horizon...
:(    resulting in pollution (air and water quality sacrificed)
and a host of other negative repercussions. Growth is not always the best solution!

Can someone please tell me what we're supposed
to do with this built-in sliding drawer-rack?
We're confused by the strange spaces and bars...
(We made due by haphazardly cramming our
dishes and tupperware into the racks)

Kari's bathroom,
where the shower leaks
into the other sections of the bathroom

Laundry room

This is the washing machine side of the laundry room.
Glad that, after a week living here,
some issues were finally resolved with basic physics,
and the machine is now functional!
(Check Kari's blog for some insight on that story)

My bathroom shower, before the shades were installed.
Hello, world! Here's my naked body!
It still leaks, and the door's runner comes off,
but hey, TIC.

Only about a gazillion unnecessary light switches,
when the hot water tank won't even last for a full 5-minute shower!
Let's get our priorities straight in the bathroom now!
(First-world problems/TIC)

A view of my bedroom (Kari and I switched, and I get the Master now!),
from the doorway. The bathroom and a walk-through closet way
are accessible, via sliding doors, to the right.

That's all for now. As I said, more photos and videos are forthcoming (check the Facebook album for updated photos within the week). I'm trying to catch up on day-to-day life here (my to do list is from here to Timbuktu!), and I'm gradually able to start fitting in catch up Skype date convos here and there. Spring break (Chinese Tomb-Sweeping Festival) is coming up too (March 28-April 7), so hopefully that will be a chance for relaxation and catching up... say, filing my taxes and exploring the new area in which I live?

Thoughts and prayers are appreciated during these days! Much love to you, friends and family!