hmm...November already??

Well, apparently I'm less faithful at writing my blog this year. Sorry! I guess things are just more comfortable here this year, and we're just used to life in Beijing. So maybe it doesn't seem as 'new' anymore. Well the highlight of this past month was definitely my parents' visit! What a fun time to have them come and experience our life here! It was so great just to show them the local places we shop, and get to know some of our friends and community. They probably weren't used to the amount that we eat out! It's quite convenient and most importantly CHEAP to eat out rather than cook for ourselves. Don't get me wrong, I do cook dinner at least 4 nights a week :) But my mom insisted on cooking dinner for us sometimes, which was a nice treat. Especially since she ventured to the meat section of our market (which I had yet to step foot in!) and buy some good cuts of meat and seafood! If you wonder what my mom thinks of us biking around the city, she said that she will keep praying for me everyday! :)

Other excitement would be that while my parents were here Pepper was taken away to get nutured! We were fairly certain Salt was pregnant. And then while Pepper was gone for his surgery we think she had babies! No sign of them until just a week ago. So they are 4 weeks old now. We've seen 3 of them. 2 gray, 1 black (with a white nose like Pepper). They are quite small and very cute! Of course, they are quite timid as well, because they were born in a burrow! We did manage to get a picture of one the other day.

We enjoyed a Thanksgiving dinner with other Canadians! Our dinner included all the regulars: turkey, potatoes, stuffing, cranberries, and pumpkin pie!

School continues to be busy, as usual. It's always fun to figure out how to do things with new staff and students. And of course, my students are a little wild this year. But I still enjoy my job! We've just finished reading Little House in the Big Woods! We even made butter!

I hope you're all enjoying the Fall weather. The leaves are just starting to turn here. BYE!

A few pics of the past month...

Camping Gang


International Family Day

We went to a wedding of a friend and fellow Canadian

We went to a themed birthday party: Dress up as your favorite musical character. Here are Todo and a Tree from the Wizard of Oz

October already!!!

Oops! Again, time has slipped by me. I'm sorry for not updating earlier. My parents are visiting though, so that's one less reason to blog :)

So, September is already over! What did we do besides work? We had one day off for Moon Festival (?) and were invited camping with friends. We went to a gorgeous spot in a deep valley, camped right beside the river with basically no people around - which is a rare treat here in China. Because of the Olympics we weren't allowed to have an open flame fire (even though we were about 2hours outside of Beijing). So we used hot coals to cook our food, and spent our evening eating and playing 2 Truths and 1 Lie. Great way to get to know people!

The highlight of the trip was Simon trying out the electric fly swatter on his face! AND swimming in the river, which was interrupted when a black and red striped snake swam right in front of Scott!!! The fun in the water was over with that! Definitely a memorable camping trip.

We also had International Family Day this past month, which is always a highlight for us. Us Canadians worked really hard this year and were able to make it 2nd place in ticket sales after the koreans! WOO-HOO!!! The Timmy's coffee, our crepes and waffles with maple syrup, and NHL Hockey on Playstation were major draws to our room! We definitely had the most people hanging out in our room, which was lots of fun.

My parents arrived that same evening, and we've been busy hosting them since then. Besides working for a couple of days last week, we've been to the Temple of Heaven, Olympic Green, and Summer Palace. They've also ventured out on their own to see Tiananmen Square, Forbidden City, and the older Hutong area of town. Tomorrow they actually take off for a few days to Xi'an, where they'll see the Terracotta Warriors, and various other attractions there. I'll be by myself for a few days because Scott is away for Enrichment Week. He's in Qingdao with the Grade 8 class.

Life goes on here...
-my students are still quite a struggle for me this year.
-My mom has been taken me to the back corners of our market next door to where the seafood is! She's been enjoying the cheap prices of all the food.
-Pepper, our male rabbit, was nutered
-Salt, the female, had babies on the same day (we're fairly certain, but can't see them because they're deep in the burrow)
-and thanks to technology it doesn't feel like you are all so far away!

Enjoy the Fall weather!!

First holiday!

Yes, we're back to school but thankfully we have a long weekend to enjoy right now! The beginning of this school year still seemed as crazy as the last. I'm not sure if that's because I've been trying new things in my class....but certainly my new students have contributed to the craziness. They are a different bunch from last year. More hyper, active, talkative, and certainly immature right now. Oh well....they'll mature. It's dawned on me that I only remember my last bunch as being mature, but that's because that's how they were at the end of the school year. I don't really remember what they were like at the beginning of the year.

I only have 12 right now, but I do think they're generally more difficult to manage than last year's class. I found out that one student was diagnosed with ADHD and is on medication! So he's actually doing better than he did last year, but is still a challenge. But the end of this week was good. We've been in school for 2.5 weeks now. I'm not really sure where the time has gone....it just flies so fast when we're busy.

So we have Monday off for Mid-Autumn Festival....Moon Cake festival really. And tonight we were invited to go camping! So we leave tomorrow, just for 1 night. We're excited! We love camping! And we're going with some friends from church that we've been wanting to get to know better. And then on holiday Monday we're going to the Paralympics! We'll be watching 5-a-side soccer.

Most of all I'm looking forward to my parents' visit! They arrive in 2 weeks!!! Yay!!

That's all for now!
Thanks for reading :)

Scott's Team

Olympic Fever!!!

Ok, here it is, all you want to know about Scott, Sylvia, and the Olympics! I'll do my best. Sometime last Fall we applied to volunteer. We had interviews in March, heard in May that we were accepted, and then got trickles of emails here and there. Scott is assigned to the Olympic Common Domain, doing Spectator Services. Basically, he stands inside the Olympic park (south end, between the Bird's Nest and Water Cube) and helps foreign spectators with any problems they have. The biggest problem he encounters is that people get dropped off by taxi, or enter the wrong gate. Then they have to walk 500m the other direction. Because of security you can only go into the park at certain spots. There's just a lot of walking involved. Even for us, the bus drops us off one place, we have to walk up to the security gate, then walk back down to check-in, then back up again to your location. Chinese people are used to it, but foreigners generally get pretty fed-up with all the walking :) So that's Scott. His managers are really great, they contacted him right away when we were back from camp, he was working before the olympics even started. He basically is required to work everyday, but it's kinda flexible. He usually works 4 then takes 1 off. The chinese are pretty thrilled about the Olympics. They don't take days off!

As for me, I had never been contacted by my manager. I called an Inspector for my site, and he said that they had problems with the manager, he wasn't answering his phone. Finally, 3 days after the Olympics had begun, I was called to go pick up my ID badge. I went to the south end of the city to get that, then had to go to my venue at the opposite end of town. I am also on the Olympic Green (park where most of the venues are), but in the northern end, about a 15min. bus ride from Scott's location. I am at the Tennis, Archery, and Field Hockey venues. As I found out on Monday, I'm in the office for the Volunteer Assistant staff. This office is in charge of checking in and out of all the volunteers for the tennis venue, getting uniforms for them, some statistics about the volunteers, numbers for catering, and writing a newspaper for the volunteers. So the question was at first, what would I do?? They didn't really have anything set for me to do, so I suggested maybe something in English in the newspaper, because there are other foreign volunteers. So I'll be interviewing foreign volunteers, and writing some short articles for the newspaper that gets put out every other day. It's been pretty laid-back though. We have a TV in our office, where we can watch all the Olympics we want. And today I helped make some paper flowers! My job is much easier than Scott's, but a bit more boring.

Our office is located underneath one of the tennis courts. Our security clearance doesn't allow us to go INTO the actual venue, but we can get pretty close, and peak inside. Yesterday I peeked at the match between a famous chinese girl and a spanish girl. Also, we went into Center Court when there was no game going on. But I'm pretty sure it was a William's sister that was practicing there. Tall, black, USA uniform. Pretty cool. And yesterday I saw some of the field hockey action between the UK and Argentina. We receive free breakfast, lunch, and all the drinks we want. The food isn't that great. Actually, lunch is pretty bad. But at least the drinks are good! The Olympics are totally sponsored by Coke.

One of the best things about doing this is meeting other chinese people. Most of our colleagues are university students. They are all excited to have foreigners working with them. I was paraded around to other offices to meet them, but it kinda felt like they were showing me off. It was kinda awkward.

We went to 2 women's soccer games last night. Brazil vs. Nigeria and Canada vs. Sweden! Good times. And on Friday we're going to see Handball. Looks like fun. We're also hosting 2 delegates from Niger right now, so our French is coming in handy! We're all going out to dinner now so I've gotta go! Thanks for all your comments!!!!