Odd Day

This morning I did not want to get up... "Why is it so dark outside?" I should have stayed in bed. As I was heading to school, my 10 min. walk was a little longer than usual because of the thunderstorm. I was trying to walk in a straight line but it was so windy that I was just trying to balance myself. I did make it to school in one piece! The thunderstorm did stop and it was just cloudy for a few hours. And then, right after lunch, we looked outside and there was an orange tint. Thankfully I made it to my next class before the sandstorm. I was teaching in a theatre today so the kids asked me if I can show them a movie before they die because of the crazy weather. They kept saying "2010" and "The Day After Tomorrow".  In Vancouver, I always pack an umbrella and sunglasses. In Dalian, I pack a toque, gloves, sunglasses, umbrella, a hot baby (small hot water bag that I can just plug into the wall to charge and it will be nice and toasty), scarf, layers of clothes, and a flashlight.

I invigilated a Grade 10 English e-exam today during my prep block. Personally I like writing a test in paper form because I'm always scared that the computer will crash on me and everything will be deleted. I walked into the computer lab and everything was going smoothly. They were doing their exams on a netbook in the classroom I was in. The netbooks are brand new so I thought I did not have to worry. However, about 30-45 min. before the exam was supposed to end, about 8 netbooks ran out of battery life, one side of the wall did not have power to recharge the batteries. The students were starting to get antsy and I had to get some tech people in to figure it out. I found other netbooks with battery life and had to sign them back into their accounts and make sure everything was still there. The e-exams are designed to save every 5 second. We had to move students to another wall or into another computer lab. Thank you Will and the tech. guys for helping me out! I can always trust my friendly neighbour, Will, to help me out at home and at work. Everything worked out in the end!

Coming home to a clean place =)

This is my first time living on my own and working as a first year teacher in another country. I thought I could manage everything: teaching, cooking, socializing, and cleaning but cleaning takes up A LOT of my valuable time. It is very dusty in China and I'm always working so by the time I come home, I have to make and eat dinner. I hired an Ai Yi (maid), Ms. Bo; she is amazing. Today was her first day and she will come once a week. She not only helps me iron my clothes, sweep and mop my floors, clean my washroom, wipe down the tables and counters, wash my dishes but she also helped me arrange my place to make it more spacious! I feel so spoiled =)

Happy Diwali!

On the weekend, I attended an Expat Diwali event in Dalian City. Sumi was very kind and lent me her salvar kameez. It was a remarkable event. I witnessed a Diwali prayer before dinner. Also, the food was delicious and so much to choose from. They had butter chicken, naan, roasted fish, fried fish, tandoori chicken, chole bhature, and many other dishes I cannot pronounce or spell. There were at least 13 different dishes. There were Indian performances from gorgeous females from the medical school in Dalian. After the performances, we started dancing on the stage and I thought the stage was going to collapse because there were so many people on the stage we were jumping and having such a great time. Dalian City is very multicultural; there are people from Canada, Germany, Pakistan, Korea, Japan, Nigeria, etc. Maybe I'll be in the Dalian Today magazine again!!!

Invigilation

I never thought I would invigilate provincials and midterm exams like my high school teachers. I invigilated as a TOC earlier this year and also at Maple Leaf. I wonder what my high school teachers saw students doing while writing exams... This is what I saw or heard from colleagues: students cleaning their glasses, taking a short nap, picking their nose, killing bugs with their exam papers, fidgeting with pens, drawing on desks, checking their braces, combing their hair, cheating by using their cell phones, playing with a Mentos bottle, and a student found his exam quite "arousing" (he was doing something inappropriate in public... hmmm....). Sorry, no pics included in this post.

Last Sat...

my friend, Erin, and I went into Dalian. I bought a small side table at IKEA the weekend before but there were no screws inside the box. Thank goodness IKEA is super organized, I showed up with my receipt and she found the screws for me. There were hundreds of screws organized right behind her. Of course I had to have an IKEA ice-cream! I bought A LOT of winter clothes at Decathlon. It is similar to MEC in Vancouver but better prices. I bought yoga pants for $5! I bought a pair of sweatpants and I don't need to get them hemmed =)

We then took the train to a city between where I live, Jinshitan and Dalian City. I bought a pink and white Hello Kitty laptop sleeve! I am very happy and proud with my purchase. We then went to new deli in town. They had olive bread and bagels from a European bakery, many different types of cheeses and deli meat. All of these items are hard to come by in China. While we were in the store we met a kind American lady, Lisa. We were talking about different places we can purchase import items. When she was just about to leave, she offered us a ride home because she had a driver. Her husband, Steve, works for Intel so they have their own driver. Erin and I took the offer right away and got into the van. I would never do this in Vancouver. I guess in China, when you find someone that can speak English and generous, you automatically trust them. The driver was amazing, I did not fear for my life at least once. It was the best ride that I had in China thus far. When I got home, I made a cherry tomato, mozzarella cheese, and pepperoni bagel for lunch. It was DELICIOUS! 

In the evening, we had Autumn, a friend and a driver, drive us to the Caribbean Bar for our staff Halloween Party. Autumn has driven me to many different places in Dalian and she is a fun and sweet person! The party was awesome. Everyone was dressed up and in creative costumes too. I dressed up as a scarecrow protecting the sunflower. I had my costume made! What should I be next year? hmmm... Overall, it was an amazing Sat. because I met two very warm-hearted people and I had a blast at the Halloween Party. 

Thanksgiving

I was invited to two Thanksgiving dinners! We had all the works, such as, cranberry sauce, gravy, stuffing, mash potatoes, pumpkin pie, soup, freshly baked bread, vegetables, and even turkey. It was an actual TURKEY, not a pigeon or another kind of bird. I even made stuffing by scratch, I did not go buy boxes of Stove Top stuffing. It was very yummy! We watched some good old hockey games on Sunday night, it felt like home. I am thankful for meeting such wonderful colleagues and friends in China.

Shanghai Trip (Sept. 26th - Oct.2nd)

We had a whole week off for National Day so a few of my friends and I went to Shanghai! I had a lot of fun and many adventures. Here are a few highlights of my trip:

• I barely slept the night before because we had a girls night and I was very excited about going to Shanghai! In addition, I packed the night before I left so I didn't have enough time to find a smaller luggage. I ended up bringing one of my large suitcases with me. If you have gone camping, Whistler, events or band trips with me, you know I ALWAYS overpack. I pack enough for me and another person. My excuse was if any of my other travelling buddies buy a lot of stuff, they can use my suitcase too. I actually bought too much stuff ... When I got to the airport I remembered that I didn't check the luggage size limit for Southern China but the lady was nice and she let me go. Dalian airport is very small so for the smaller flights we have to go on a bus and it takes us to the plane and then we board the airplane. It was warm when we got to Shanghai! We took the Maglov and it was only a 6 minute ride. The Maglov went 301 km/h. In the evening, we went to Tianzifang to explore. The area was full of small alleys with many cute shops. We went to the Teddy Bear restaurant where they serve Thai food and you can make a teddy bear. The food was very good and the bears were cute! We then went to a coffee place after which was only a few blocks from our hostel but we didn't know that, so instead we took 3 metros to get home. Hahaha....
  
  
  
  
  
• We got free tickets to the Expo (Thank you Andrew!). We went to the Expo from the time it opened until closing. Our hostel was so close that we could walk to the Expo. It was a good day too go because it wasn't too packed and hot. I bought the special edition Expo passport; therefore, every Pavillion I enter, I have to get the stamp. I counted and we went to 12 different Pavilions in one day. We lined up for 2.5 hours to see the Korean Pavilion and there was a cute cartoon show. I did cry at the end of the showing because it was a very touching show. We got into the France Pavillion without lining up because of Andrew again. I liked the France one because it was so grand but everyone wanted a picture with Louis Vuitton's sign and tree. It was a little crazy in that section. I liked the African Pavillion the most because the people were so nice. I met so many people from all around Africa and we exchanged email addresses. One day I will travel around Africa! The Expo was very big, they have buses to take you from one side to the other side. Most Pavillions had their own restaurants with their own type of food. We went to the Peruvian Pavillion for lunch. Everyone was excited to be at the Expo and it was not chaotic at all.
  
  
  

• We took the train to Hangzhou in the morning. We went to Hangzhou because we wanted to see the West Lake. It was very pretty. It was drizzling so the lake was very misty. When we got back into the city we went to “Element Fresh” for dinner. It was DELICIOUS! Thank you Sarah for the recommendation. If anyone goes to Shanghai and/Beijing you MUST go to this restaurant. The food is very fresh and mouthwatering.
  
  
  
  
  
• We slept in on Wed. because we wanted some down time and we switched hostels closer to the Bund. The funny story is we thought we were smart to take a taxi with all our luggage to our next hostel so we wouldn't have to worry about all the stairs and switching metros and we found the cross streets to tell our taxi driver where to go; however, we did not notice that the streets crossed again on the other side of town (West and East side of town). The taxi driver took us to the cross streets but the wrong side of town. A tip for travellers, know how to say east, south west, and north in the language the country you are at. We then used our maps and took the metro to our hostel. It took us the same amount of time to get to our next hostel as Sui Ki making it home from Shanghai to Dalian. That was not the end of our adventure for the day, the metro station near our hostel closed earlier because it was the main station to the shopping area and also the Bund and it was the National Day weekend and we had to take the metro to see the Chinese Acrobatic show. We did not know about this so we had to find a taxi but it was a busy night. We ended up getting to the show on time! The show was quite silly because of the music and some of the stunts but it was a lot of fun. I haven't laughed so hard and so much in a long time.

• On Thursday we took the train to Suzhou, where we wanted to go see a water town. We had no idea what to expect in Suzhou. When we got off the train, we had no idea which bus to take and where to go but we randomly met a Canadian man. We asked him if he knew where to go and he told us he was taking a bus to a water town and we should go too because it's totally worth it. We bought our ticket to join him and his friend. The bus ride was about 1.5 hours. We did not buy a return ticket to the train station but we had a return ticket from the Suzhou train station back to Shanghai that we ended up not using because we took a 2 hours bus ride back instead from Zhou Zhuang, where the no. 1 water town is to Shanghai. Zhou Zhaung was quite touristy but the temple was gorgeous. It was definitely worth the trip even though we didn't know where we were going on the bus and the uncertainty of our two new friends we had met. In the evening we met up with a few friends for Vietnamese food. The restaurant is in the French Concession area call “Pho Real”. The owner came to sit and talk with us and the food was so yummy. Something that I miss about Vancouver is the food because where I live, there aren't a lot of varieties of food. 
  
  
  
  
  
• On Friday we went to Yuyuan Garden. The infrastructure reminded me of the Dr. Sun Yat Sen Garden in Vancouver but on a larger scale. Vivian, I still remember telling the students about the meandering walk way and how women walk on one side and the men walk on the other side. It was fun going through many unique door frames. There were a lot of people there because it was the National Day weekend. We also went shopping on Friday and Saturday at the Science and Technology area. I did okay with bartering but I will continue to practice!
  
  
  
  
  
• When we got back to Dalian on Saturday night there was a rain storm. The roads were flooded and there were lightening and thunder. Our first taxi driver was too scared to drive us after a few kilometers so I asked him to drive us back to the airport and we got another taxi driver to drive us. The second taxi driver was not scared at all, the water was up to the door. Rachel and I were quite scared though because he drove very fast in the rain ... Many cars were stuck and people tried to push their cars. We stayed in the city for the night and the next day we went to explored Dalian City. 
  
  
  

Overall, I had a lot of fun and I look forward to my next trip in China. I might do a weekend trip to Beijing next or a long weekend to Haerbin for the ice festival.