six full days left

Well its almost here, our long awaited and anticipated exodus to the wonderful land of Thai!! Words can't express how much we are looking forward to our exodus on the 16th of January. We have six full days of instruction left, one exam week, a few exams to mark, final grades to submit, water, gas and power to turn off, a suitcase to pack and then we are gone... and we'll be gone in a flash. We're going to take the bullet train to Beijing, 300+ km/h (or faster) of steel and tracks shooting us straight to Beijing in a mere 50 odd minutes! There we'll spend the evening and the following morning before heading off to the airport, where the friendly customer service representatives at Thai Air will greet us and the warmer offerings of Thailand await!

We had a great christmas. Different to say the least, but great. We talked with family, had a christmas steak and a christmas lasagna, enjoyed a wonderful brunch, slept, read, talked with more family and then went back to work, odd but never-the-less true.

For new year's we're going to go to Tianjin, stay in a nice hotel, with a nice pool, nice amenities and ring in the new year before taking a quick trip to Chengdu to visit some friends, get a quick reprieve and gain more frequent flier miles!!

Unfortunately the lack of blogging has been representative of our non-exciting past few weeks. This morning in the elevator on the way down to our bikes, I mentioned to Christina that I feel as if all we do is work, get ready for work, are at work, or think about work. She agreed, chuckled to herself and stated that: "Back in Canada it didn't really feel like this." We shrugged our shoulders, thought of the financial gain our Asian endeavor is providing, and rode back to the school for another day in the office.

Here's to hoping that the New Year provides us with some more tales with which we can regale the blogosphere.

The Flood

So, Ben and I are right in the midst of December chaos. Kids going crazy because of the below zero classroom temperatures, mid-term reports for semester 1 term 2, special work packages for the massive amounts of students who have so much to catch up on and every excuse in the book why they are behind, including telling us they are smart and that is why they have not finished their work.....huh?!?! Nothing makes sense. So we went out to dinner tonight to have some pizza, pick up a few things, before traveling back to our humble abode.....only to walk into the slooshing of an an inch of water on our cream colored floor. Yes, we opened our own pool in TEDA, no public visitors yet, just private usage so far. Yuck, it was quite a task to clean it all up, and the two floors below us have visited a number of times tonight telling us there is still water coming down on them even though we have finally cleared it all up. Our landlord paid us a quick visit and chuckled as he came in. He smiled as we told him how we thought the pipes might have burst and let the waters open on his lovely home, continuing to grin he only let us know that the same thing happened to him and its an honest mistake, it will be fixed soon, not to worry. Quite a lovely man, he has a beautiful smile, full of brown rotten teeth, and eyes that cheer along with his grin. He truly has been lovely to have as a landlord. It seems so far in our married life we have had quite the blessing with landlords. Though our Victoria landlords are far away and a great memory from last year, our new landlord hasn't left us with a sour taste in our hearts over renting space. As for the flood, ah, it'll get fixed, until then we are showering from metal mixing bowls scattered around our shower floor, quite the adventure:)

Rockin' around the ........

Well its December and the Christmas music has been playing like crazy in our flat. Christina was scouring the internet to find as much Christmas music as she could, and find it did she ever... I must say that I even caught myself toe tapping to some of the songs the other day as we worked with the music playing in the background. With Christmas fast approaching we have seen reminders of this as we've been out and about. The local mall set up a 'Santa's workshop-esque' type display, with another large office building stringing lights in a large Santa pattern that would make Chevy Chase drool with envy!! We have yet to see anyone dressed up in a Santa suit, but I promise if we see it, no matter what the cost, we'll have to get our picture taken with Asian Santa!!

Lately we have been keeping busy with; school, bike rides, purchasing items for Christina's home economics class, marking and EATING!! Last night we treated ourselves to some BBQ'd lamb kabobs with some green beans and cabbage, all smothered in the most delicious hot bbq sauce (a XinJiang speciality) to go along with our fried noodles. It was MAGNIFIQUE!! Earlier this weekend, Saturday, we headed off to a Korean Style BBQ and enjoyed a night of feasting on some of the most tender beef with delicious sauces, BBQ'd vegetables and of course the staple KIM-CHEE (spicy fermented cabbage!!) Tonight we have plans to head to our favorite Sichuan restaurant (the one we've spoken so highly about before) to really expand the palate and sample different three different food types for the past three days!

In the coming days we'll attempt to find some sort of Tree that we can decorate and have standing proud in the flat so that when the song comes on we will have something to 'Rock' around apart from our bamboo (it doesn't hold ornaments at all!!)

On a more disappointing note, I have not been able to find any of those chocolate advent calendars here in China. Now I know the chocolate is stale and tastes terrible, but there is something to be said about the joys of opening up the little doors each of the 24 days before christmas, with the anticipation building each and everyday... For those of you that have them... ENJOY