Adventures By Design

Since it’s been so long since I posted last I’ll just give you all a quick run-down on life for the L-B’s. I can’t really face the thought of trying to write out everything that’s happened in the last month out in long form, so I’ll give it to you in point form. If you’re interested in more details, or clarification about anything send me an email. I may not write here very often, but I do answer emails (usually).

School Stuff:
• I’ve just finished the first Grade Three unit on City Systems… it’s kinda boring to study about cities for 6 whole weeks!
• We’re starting our new unit on World Religions tomorrow… though it’s something you probably wouldn’t be able to teach at all in Canada, I think it will be a wonderful unit and I’m really looking forward to it
• Ric’s finished a unit on Expressions and Impressions, and is just starting one on Businesses… he’s not too taken with the idea of students creating capitalist enterprises, but we’ll see how it all goes down
• Last week Ric went away to a super-cool camp with his kids where they got to do trapeze jumps and build rafts. He also got his own hotel room with a hot shower and a double bed… swanky!
• Last week I (Gin) got to stay at school and do a sleepover in the gym with 120 8 year-olds. I slept on the floor, and didn’t get to have a shower… not so swanky
• We had two fire drills, one of which involved fake smoke and a staged rescue out of a second-story window.
• We also had a real fire…ahem, overheating, during the sleepover in the Gym. Lucky we had all those practices because the kids evacuated like pros! (Note: it wasn’t really a ‘fire,’ just a whole bunch of smoke and sparks pouring out of an air-conditioning unit, still scary though!)
• We’ve both had our first evaluations with admin, and all went well. A few things to work on which we already knew we needed to work on
• This morning we went into school super early (left home at 6:30 when we usually leave home at 7:30… not that early I suppose) and I totally rearranged my classroom… Somehow doing that puts my entire teaching practice into perspective and I’ve set a few goals for myself and am feeling alright about things today

Non-School Stuff (what some might think of as real life):
• We moved about 2 ½ weeks ago. We used to live on the first floor and Inca would bark at anything that came within 100 metres of the apartment. We were also living in a perpetual state of twilight because if we opened our curtains the entire neighbourhood would stare in our windows to find out how foreigners live
• Now we live on the third floor; Inca still barks occasionally, but at least she sleeps through the night now. We’re also feeling less vampirish. The new place is also in a much better location with a plaza outside the building rather than a street, several shops and restaurants right downstairs from us, and a bunch of friends in the same apartment complex.
• Bringing me to my next point: last weekend we had an ‘apartment crawl’ where we went to 5 different apartments in our complex and had food and drink from a country the inhabitants came from or had lived in. Ric and I hosted and had kimbab, pajeon, and yogurt soju, all from Korea of course, not Canada
• We made some new friends who have a Golden Retriever who gets on great with Inca. We dogsat for them the weekend that we moved, which was busy, but fun.
• One of said friends is also a yoga teacher who is doing some private lessons for us in our apartment twice a week. It’s really great to get back into yoga, and even better to do it in the comfort of our own home.
• Ric is jamming with some friends this weekend (he might buy a new guitar before then, or he might just use his djembe). It’ll be good for him to play music again. The other outlet he’s looking for – rockclimbing – doesn’t seem to exist in Suzhou which irritates him to no end.
• While Ric jams, I’m going to Shanghai with a couple of friends for a daytrip. We plan to do a little fall/winter clothes shopping, walk around, have a great lunch and then come back home. We wanted to take the super-fast train; it only takes about 30 minutes to get there. Sadly that train was sold out and we had to settle for the 50 minute journey instead…
I’m sure there are all kinds of things that have happened that I’m forgetting right now, but those are some of the most important ones. Hopefully there will still be someone out there to read this and you haven’t all given up since it’s taken so long since the last post.