Weekend shopping!

As the weekdays are filled with work done at school or planning for the next day, that leaves the weekends for all of our market shopping. A good friend of mine, Hannah, and I hit the ground running as went made a successful trip this morning! From the stationary market to a street food pit stop, then to a candy lady on the go, and then off to another market, we were exhausted by noon. Luckily we were focused enough before our shopping stamina left us.

A typical street food scene.

My favorite fried chicken!

Yum!

2nd best part....sweetened popcorn!

I thought I would capture this....Chinese people never cease to amaze me with how much they can carry on their bikes.

A new room design!

There's nothing like being asked by your husband to help change his classroom around. What an exciting request! All he "technically" wanted was his desk moved to the front of the room, but I did some gentle nudging in the direction of creating a new and improved library area. Surpisingly, he let me have at it! Here was our big project this Saturday:

The room before we got started. Notice where his teacher desk and the books are.

Hard at work

My good friend Julie (3rd grade teacher), came up with this space-saving design for bookshelves. Thank you Julie!

Getting there...

Posters are up, carpet put in and pillows set! Tomorrow we are going to get those pillows re-covered...maybe shades of blue (we don't want it to look too "girly").

Ta-da! Here is Dave's new 4th grade classroom :)

Enjoying his new reading area.

Update on Dad's surgery...don't eat before looking at this.

My dad had his surgery and is now in full recovery mode! Talking with him this morning just had me laughing...how he looks at life is so positive. When he went "under" they discovered that it was actually worse than they thought, and had to stick pins down through the tops of his toes (gross, I know). To help with some of the missing tissue, they had to add some for him......from a cadaver! With all of this happening, he still had energy for sarcasm by calling himself "dead man walking"...haha. Love you dad.

Keep lifting him up as he will be recovering for at least the next six weeks. Hopefully he can get back to work after Thanksgiving. Good thing his job is pretty flexible since most of it is with the computer.

Here he is one hour after his surgery :)

Yes....those are pins sticking out from his toes. Hopefully he can build some sort of contraption so that he doesn't accidentally stub his toes!

Puttin' on a show...

Last weekend, we (a group of foreign teachers) were able to go to a Chinese Music school. It was a very interesting experience as we were able to see a taste of what Chinese education was like....how different! While this was a music school, it was still characterized by the more formal design for student-teacher relationships (standing up to answer, rows and rows of desks, no pictures or color on the walls). Not wrong, just......different. Several things that I saw, really got me thinking. When I glanced into the 1st grade classroom lined with rows of desks and white walls, I just thought "What would their thought be coming into MY classroom?" Probably, "How is a child going to learn with that much distraction on the walls!" Not sure....but it definitely had my mind spinning for a while. Then as we saw the room showing the camera footage for every (and I mean every) classroom in the school, I thought "Would I want my classroom to be on display for anyone to watch and inspect?" Privacy....one of those things as an American we all feel entitled to...haha.

Impromptu singing for the high school English class (see below for story)

As we made our way into the high school English class, we were instantly taken in and prodded to "let the students hear real English". The only problem was that everyone did not necessarily feel the same way as their teacher and just sat there...not even looking at us. AWKWARD! As she looked around sensing the apparent lull in communication, the teacher decided to have all of the Americans get up and "sing a song...any song!" We willingly agreed upon "Amazing Grace" and began...only to finally watch the students light up with their cell phones to document the whole thing. Oh, those paparazzi moments. Without doing much of anything, you can be a real star here in China.

A bad break...

I just called my dad this morning to find out that he recently broke his foot in three places! As he was working in the crawl space underneath our cabin, his foot slipped into a 3 ft hole (all the pressure on his one foot!). Please lift him up as he will have to undergo surgery some time this week to get pins put in. For being such an active guy with work and racquetball, this is going to be tough.

We're lifting you up dad <3

A note in Chinese characters!

It is so nice when all of the hard work of studying and learning Chinese characters actually comes in handy. We just realized that we had no oil, and really needed some by tomorrow. Remembering that our Ayi (helper) comes on Mondays, I just whipped out a pen and paper and wrote her a note.....in characters! I didn't even have to think twice about it! Thank you Linda (my Chinese teacher) for challenging me....it is well worth it :)

Can you guess what it says? "Qing mai zhei ge. Xia Xia!" (Please buy this. Thank you)

Oh how I love Sundays...

The one thing I love the most about Sunday, is that it is just so wonderfully routine. Keeping things so predictable helps me to actually get work done while relaxing at the same time - what a nice balance for a weekend! Since Dave and I wake up at the normal time even on the weekend, that leaves about 4 hours for us to spend just relaxing and chillin before we actually have to be anywhere. 4 hours......there is so much to do with that much time!

The events once fellowship begins go a little like this (every Sunday): order Chinese and eat lunch together as a big group, pack up the school work and bike/walk down to the local coffee shop to sip steamed milk while being productive at the same time. After staying for a few hours, coming home to relax some more....what a beautiful day.

Dave practicing his guitar before playing at Fellowship

Look at all the food! With all of the people that stay and eat, most of it is completely devoured by the time we are done :)

It is always a fun time with all of the babies on the team now. Last year it was a room full of pregnant bellies, and now we have both Enoch and Maddy (and Jachin too) to play with!


A quick $2.00 fix up on Liz's bike....she can finally ride again! FREEDOM!

Sipping at the infamous "IS cafe" right down the street. This is my good friend Hannah sitting across from me as we are trying to be productive ;)

Now that I actually wrote about my "being productive" on Sundays, I better get to work.