Adventures By Design

Today we had a photo shoot with a photo studio near our previous apartment called Ivision Photography. We had heard good things about the studio from friends and colleagues, and we liked their style. When we lived near the studio, we had often seen the photographer, Happy, shooting photos on the grounds. He even tried to get Inca to pose with clients a couple of times (Inca was not cooperative… we think it’s because he hadn’t properly compensated her, in bones, for modeling.)

We planned on taking photos of the whole family, and so brought Inca with us. Unfortunately the flashes, noise, and general busyness of the occasion made her nervous. Thankfully, Mark and Lyndal live really close to the studio, so I just ran Inca upstairs for some quality time with Mark.

Within a week we’ll see the proofs, and then we’ll chose which photos we want, and what kind of prints. We’re thinking of getting mostly prints for our apartment. Once we have something to show you, we’ll post them.

Plus bonus footage of Inca!

Please excuse Ric’s silly incredibly sexy facial hair, he did it for Movember and apparently didn’t realize that November finished 2 weeks ago! (he has shaved it off since then, and is looking a little more normal).

So Aria has begun smiling socially… it’s the coolest thing.  Today she was hanging out on the bed while I brushed my hair in the bathroom.  When I walked back into the room she smiled at me (TMI warning: I had my shirt off and I think she may have been smiling at the sight of her food source).  On Saturday she smiled at Ric and so he did what any father would do and spent the next 20 minutes with a camera aimed at her trying to get her to do it again.  He didn’t quite succeed, but surely we’ll get a proper toothless grin up here for you soon![gallery link="file" order="DESC"]

It’s been a busy couple of days. We’ve been trying to get our apartment marginally organized before the painters come, and packing and preparing for our trip to Canada.

Inca isn’t coming with us to Canada this time.

We haven’t been writing on the blog much, and we’re sorry, but we’ve been very busy and school is pretty exhausting so far. We’ve been here for about two weeks now, though it feels like two months most of the time! In all that time we haven’t had an actual day off yet, so we are really looking forward to the weekend. Hopefully we can sleep in a bit (if Inca doesn’t jump on our heads too early) and do some exploring around our new city. We don’t have much housework to catch up on because we’ve hired an ayi (literally ‘auntie’) who comes in to clean, do our laundry, and take Inca for a walk everyday. She comes in the morning, so we don’t actually see her or talk to her, but she’s good at her job. Hopefully Inca will get used to her soon. So far when we get home from school in the afternoons Inca freaks out and jumps all over us. We figure she’s trying to say: “That weird lady came again, and she moved things, and made the house smell funny, and she put my leash on me and took me outside…. I was afraid she wasn’t going to bring me home!!” or something like that.

We’re pretty impressed with Suzhou so far, although we’ve mostly just seen it out of the school bus’ windows! The part of the city that we live in is well-planned with tons of green space, which will be wonderful when we get Inca out a little more. There’s lots of space in our apartment complex too, including a little fenced in area where Inca’s been able to get off leash. However, the first time Ric took her there to play Frisbee, he accidentally threw the Frisbee over the fence around our complex. He had to climb over the wall to retrieve it, which set off the motion sensors, which sent the guards our way. Thankfully, by the time the guard arrived Ric was already back on the proper side of the wall so we just got a polite smile and bow instead of a cavity search.

The school is good, the beginning of any new school year is a stressful and busy time, so although we exhausted by it all these days we’re still really happy. The other teachers (both new and returning) are very friendly and helpful and we’re already making friends. We’ve got plans this weekend to have another couple over for dinner and drinks (we’re going to have to order dinner though; our kitchen is in no way ready for entertaining!). So stayed tuned over the weekend and next week, hopefully we’ll have some stories and photos for you.

We’ve been in Suzhou for a week now, and have been super busy the whole time. Things are going well with school but they’ve certainly got a lot for us to do! For the first couple of days everything was pretty low-key; we went to see the Master of Nets Garden and the Suzhou Museum one day. We also got to go on a little boat ride on one of the canals here and see part of Suzhou’s old town. The part of town that we live in is called the Suzhou Industrial Park (SIP) and it’s new, clean, and modern, as we were promised from the school. We haven’t taken a lot of photos, but we plan to put some on here soon so you can all see.

The best part of this first week being over though, is that Inca came home today!! She has been in quarantine since we arrived, and we’ve been quite lonely for her. Today the company we hired to take care of all the customs and quarantine stuff brought her home to our apartment. As we walked up after school we saw a bright red van waiting outside our building and had to restrain ourselves from running to go see our puppy! When we got up to the van we found both the driver and Inca sleeping inside. We woke them up, greeted Inca, paid the driver for everything, and then brought Inca inside to see her new home.

Inca seems to like the new place, although we’re going to have to get some throw rugs; all the tile and hardwood is a little tough for her to run on (it’s entertaining for us though!). There are huge window seats on two of the windows so she can hang out there and watch the world go by. Inca’s tummy seemed a little off tonight (we’ll spare you the details) so we’ll have to keep an eye on her. Isn’t it ironic that she had to go to quarantine to make sure she wasn’t sick, and ended up getting sick there?