Picture this...

...you are enjoying a lovely jaunt on your gym treadmill, stationary cycle, or elliptical. Listening to music, burning the calories, contemplating life, pushing hard, and sweating fiercely. You're decked out in your old sneaks, a well worn in pair of gym shorts, a raggedy tank, and your hair is all tousled and sweaty, but who cares? You're working out! But, then you question your attire, in fact you question your actual physical location, did you get the wrong venue? You're on a treadmill, right? There are weights and mats and water dispensers? Towels? Sterilizing wipes? What brings about this questioning? The man who walks in, dainty little gym bag in hand (quite a typical accoutrement here in China), donning his best tan leather loafers, porting his freshly ironed chinos, flaunting his crisp white collared dress shirt, he casually saunters around the room, puffing his chest out, eyeing each person's machine and their chosen level of resistance. After a slow once about, he meanders to the nearest, techiest looking machine and hops on, clicking the dials to be at least one higher level than the nearest user. For the next 5 minutes he "works out". Its at these times (and they are numerous) that I lose all focus on the calorie burning and MUST chuckle at the hilarity of it all, as well as pause in perplexity and wonder. Usually the man finishes his "cardio" and picks up a couple free weights, mostly to do something completely ridiculous, while grunting unnecessarily, perhaps what he has seen in some testosterone induced movie, which looks kinda good, maybe impressive from the right vantage point, but has no actual purpose or value. Then, casually, puffed out and proud chested, he picks up his baby blue gym purse and leaves satisfied and slightly smug. This is a regular occurrence (and not usually ever the same offender!) and completely shocking each and every time but it rivals the very recent, fantastically tight, all white, transparent gid-up a regular local has been sporting lately as he lunges and leans and grunts and growls. Honestly, its a wonder we get anything productive done at all at the gym, we are fully and entirely amused by the very diverse habits of some of the colorful locals.

And counting....

8 days and counting. We sit here, report cards finished, classrooms cleaned, offices becoming quite bare, and there are still 8 days until we depart for Canada. What are we doing? Watching paint dry....or something quite similar: invigilating exams. Yes, teachers become "big brother" during exams, "we are watching you". And yes, we are there to help, supervise, answer questions and hand out exams, but for the most part its boring and tedious and pretty much like watching paint dry. Ben and I are only invigilating 3 exams each, so that means a whole lot of hours of twiddling our thumbs....and perhaps getting ready for next year. Which, by the way, will be a whole new bag of tricks for us, since we are both switching up schools. It was originally just I who would be skipping off to the other side of the street, but fortunately for holidays and such, Ben was able to nail down a placement at the same school. We are quite excited about the new positions, and we are hopeful for the school community. Nothing is perfect, we realize that, and no grass is ever truly greener, BUT we are optimistic that the new school seems to suit our needs and aims a bit better than where we have been working this year. So adieu to Maple Leaf, thank you for the year, the learning, the struggles, the growth, the challenge, the humbling moments, and the paycheck. Now, hello to new challenges!

baby steps...

just a quick little shout out to the good samaritans who made a point to help out Thursday morning with all the carnage left around Vancouver. Too bad the major media outlets prefer to spread the doom gloom and fumes instead of the feel good stories...

here's to hoping more stories like Thursday's can wash away some of the black marks left by Wednesday evening...

A comment to the Vancouver out there...

This is not really a post about China, its more about how our excitement, in knowing we will be back in the lovely Vancouver in such a short time, has been a bit tainted as we have wandered through the Vancouver Sun. Now, excitement seems to be dwindled by a bit of hometown shame. We have not been exempt from the news lately surrounding all the playoff hype, and we have been enjoying following each game. Ben has been rising early to watch on a streaming site and we always read the news to see and hear the daily/weekly gabs and jabs. But after game 7 today, we were just plain saddened. What a shame to go out in a fit a rage and fury, for a city to represent itself like that and to self inflict such damages is childish. Canucks are the team, but fans make the team, and now the team has shame. So perplexing, such poor sportsmanship, and generally a great disappointment to have this as a mark on our beautiful city's reputation. Not to mention giving the naysayers more ammunition for the increasing cost of security and special events associated with a run deep into the playoffs. I know its always the few that ruin it for the many, but plodding through so many photos of people destroying property, drinking, carousing and causing general hostility and destruction, we noticed a good number of them were wearing Canucks jerseys. And if not causing the chaos, other C-jersey adorned viewers were caught documenting and sharing in the mayhem from the sidelines, how is this being a true blue fan? Is that what we cheer now? Dousing a car with accelarant and lighting it on fire? Throwing things through windows? Looting? How does that relate to hockey? How does that sum up the great run the Canucks had? It doesn't, and it just goes to show that all the critical and verbal jousting from non-Canuck journalists about Vancouver fans and their behavior was proved true by a small group of 'fans'. Disappointing to say the least. We hope this bitter taste passes and our excitement and love for our dear Vancouver returns before we begin our journey home.

Sunny Sunday

aside from the two center lanes closest to the middle median, these are all parked cars! None of them are moving nor have a driver present!

Ah this is the life! Sunny Sunday and we spent it well. Ben and I are in our last weeks of school and finishing things up for the year. So exciting to be at this place, yes some struggles, but so much good food, exploring, and bike riding in between, this weekend being no small exception. Waking up early to sun and heat tends to hit us most days now, temperatures are rarely under 32 Celsius though we do keep some air con on, in our room, through the night. Some meandering around the house this morning, puttering, reading then finally we decided to get outside for the day's adventures. One of our favorite things to do is take the 40 min bike ride to a neighboring town called Tanguu (said "tongue-goo). Here we usually spend some time at Starbucks marking student assignments, wandering around local shops and boutiques and chuckling at whatever strangeness we find. These days, couples wearing matching outfits is the in fashion and chuckle of the day (its cute but funny too), boys go as far as to gear up in pink cartooned kiddie style shirts, just to please their ladies and prove their allegiance to her, as she happily parades the other half of the matching set. Some women get completely dolled up, frills, sparkles, heels, and prints, simply to go to the grocery or drug store, only to complete their ensemble with a large full face sun visor and ankle length skin colored stockettes. We have seen so many styles coming out of the woodwork these days, but to top everything off, the color of the season is TRANSLUCENT! Yes folks, see-through clothing is on a rampage these days, and we have caught full views of any and every kind of undergarment in the process. We are not sure why people choose this kind of apparel, nor do we understand their choice to finish off the whole look with the most brightly colored underwear possible, but it is quite utterly amusing for us.
So Ben and I marked assignments and people watched for a while....actually I marked, Ben played Tiger Woods golf on the iPad, nothin keeps him from the game:)
We then headed for a quick pit stop to a foreign food store where some lovely ladies always warmly greet us and help us find all the necessities of a western kitchen. Then we trekked back up the highway on our bikes towards our new and beloved Oasis; the Renaissance Hotel Gym! Yes, true, we have committed ourselves to a full year membership of luxury. A piece of heaven, we are fondly finding it to be, fully equipped with an up to date gym, weights area, TV screens with programs in English, icy grapefruit water and fresh fruit galore, a lovely sky-lit pool, sauna, steam room, hot tubs, showers, massages, and MORE!!! The hotel itself is gorgeous, and we are excited that in the long bitter cold weekends of winter we will be able to simply plant ourselves in the hotel space and feel quite pampered and rejuvenated. So today we took ourselves to the new haven and relaxed for a bit before heading to our favorite Sichuan food restaurant. The owner continues to smile whenever we come in, she welcomes us, chats with Ben, smiles with me, and today, though we enjoy her care, service and smiles, we let her know that we would be taking the food to go for a picnic in the park, she smiled and laughed at such a good idea. The park is one we can see from our apartment, high above most other buildings, the 29th floor gives us a look into the massive green space. This is quite unique for China as green space is usually reserved solely for observing and appreciating from a distance, rather than gallivanting through in direct contact with grass and greenery. But here in TEDA our city is still not quite as congested as some other cities in China, so the park is open and free for people to roam and relax within. Since the weather has turned warm, most days many families will take tents and mats, games and toys, Chinese barbeques and even the family dog, to enjoy the shade, the trees, the fresh air and the long green grass. It was quite nice for us to watch all the interactions tonight. Kids play freely, parents relax, girls casually and oh-so-non-chalantly take glamor pictures of each other, dogs rummage through old food bags for scraps, boyfriends do cart-wheels and flex their muscles for their prized lady and we sit back and try to blend in as best we can:) Finally we decided it was getting late so we made our way home, coming upon the main road that passes in front of our building, it was beginning to become quite chaotic, a soccer game? Yes, and it must be quite a game since, now, looking out from our balcony, the usual 7 lane highway has shrunk to a mere 2 lane street. Cars are parked deep from the already double width curb all the way out past the middle of the road. This cramming of cars is usual but we have never seen it this bad. There are already roars that we can hear erupting from the stadium whenever TEDA makes a goal. The game will end around 9pm and then more chaos will ensue, cars tetris-ing everywhere, with only more amusement for us. A typical weekend in TEDA with the Farnells, food, fun and adventure.

a lovely picture from Tanguu:)

Hockey Talk

Christina and I chatted hockey the other day. She made a comment about the Canucks and it being the Stanley Cup finals, and then I asked her who she's cheering for... she said no one because Montreal isn't playing. I said good answer!! In truth, we're actually cheering for Vancouver, but the city rather than the team, because in four short weeks we'll be back in the mountain protected, vast blue ocean surrounded area in Western Canada, Vancouver (& Vancouver Island) that we have so desperately missed these past 10 months in the concrete jungles of North Eastern China.

We miss the ocean! We miss the green spaces, we miss the mountains, we miss the random and eclectic assortment of things to do on a Saturday afternoon, and yes we miss our families and friends.

That being said we have learned and experienced much this year. We have learned patience in dealing with students who don't understand what you are trying to teach, or what you are even trying to communicate. We have learned perseverance... October-January is a long time to teach 5 days a week, with no holidays or PD and only one day off for Christmas, all the while, if we were lucky, the temperature would possibly reach a 'balmy' ten degrees Celsius INSIDE the classrooms!! We expanded our palettes for various Chinese cuisine as well as sampling some tasty International fare. Christina has become a FIERCE bargainer, employing skills and techniques that the most experienced barterers would envy. Ben is learning, and continues to find that if he is riding his bike in front, no matter how hard he tries, Christina CANNOT hear what he is saying if he continues to face forwards... (this one is still being learned along with his need to check the distances before attempting to 'walk' to new places!!)

As the school year comes to a close we don't have much class time left with the students, two weeks in all, where final projects will be worked on, study tips will be shared and the students can see that we aren't as evil as they think... giving homework and actually making them work for their grades... whodathunkit??

Maybe one of these weekends we'll remember to bring the camera along on a bike ride and we can document some of our favorite getaways in the surrounding areas. I'll guess you'll just have to keep checking back to see if we do!!