Gettin’ fancy with the spices January 17, 2010

In the hustle and bustle of life, I still like to cook – preferably bake – for fun when I have the time and energy.  Lately, my little theme for my baking has been part of a line from the movie “Ratatouille” – “You were the one gettin’ fancy with the spices.”  Not that I’m just messing around with spices, but I’ve been tweaking recipes.  This weekend it was bagels with various mix-ins, and cinnamon rolls where I made half the batch into something closer to my family’s recipe of Swedish Coffee Bread.  I tried pumpkin pie spice on it too, but decided that didn’t work as well as the cardamom.  (Thankfully I only that particular spice mix on one small part of the loaf – I had a feeling it might not go well!)  They were all eaten up very quickly this morning at fellowship – I should have made one and a half batches, I guess!  The recipe was from Jane Pattison, and I think they’re the Krispy Kreme of cinnamon rolls – puffy and sweet with glaze on the outside, but not overpoweringly sugary or burn-your-mouth cinnamon-y, and once you have one you want to keep eating them till you burst!

there they go…!

The bagel tweaking was also win-some, lose-some, but overall good. (The recipe I tweaked is from Cultivating Home, a blog.)  The flour mix turned out well, at 1 1/4 cups wheat germ, 3 cups whole wheat flour, 2 cups bread flour, and the other 5.5-6 cups plain flour (inspired by The Sneaky Chef’s flour mix, but no way was I using a 1:1:1 ratio of plain:whole wheat:wheat germ when that third one isn’t available here!).  You can see specks of the wheat germ in the plain ones, which is fine but doesn’t seem very sneaky if you ask me.

that’s a lot of flour! the box has somewhere between 7 and 10 cups, all the varieties mixed before blending with the wet stuff and topping off with plain flour

The cinnamon-raisin batch turned out really well and the ones with the mixed dried berries are brightly colorful and taste nice, but the ones with cocoa powder and a few cocoa nibs worked into the dough weren’t spectacular.  But since they just taste like plain bagels, and I like plain bagels, I can’t really complain!  I’m still looking forward to trying the cocoa nibs and dried fruit in (separate) batches of wheat-germ-enriched granola sometime in the near future!  If you’d like to try them, the mix-ins were bought from NutsOnline and the wheat germ was a wonderful birthday gift from my mother, all carried back from the States by Carolyn.  That web site has a lot of neat stuff!  Including wheat germ, if your mother is a different brand of awesome from mine.

So, that’s the fun in my kitchen.

In other news, third grade now has a web site.  It’s not “live” yet, but I’m happy that it’s working for me to log in when I’m at school and get it looking like we want it to; now whenever I have time to work on it, I’ll be able to put links and such up there.  Hopefully also my weekly newsletter, but I don’t know if Word Press works with Publisher!  I’m really grateful that the tech department chose to use Word Press, though, since I’m already familiar with it from this blog.

Speaking of computer things, I’ve been using three different versions of Windows this year – XP on my classroom computer, Vista on my laptop, and 7 in the school computer labs.  If you count the Chinese version of XP that I was using on the school computers and my school-provided PC last spring, that’s 4 different versions in 12 months, but still only 3 simultaneously.  Anyway, comfortable though I am with XP after all these years using it and the older versions of Windows that it resembles, I was happy to upgrade my classroom desktop to Windows 7 on Monday, after backing up all my files on the server.  It’s been a week of re-installing things and learning a bit about where things are and how to do things.  I was relieved to find that it’s very similar to Vista, and since we were given administrator privileges for the week, I’ve been customizing it as I go, especially the Start menu – I always sort my Start menu into seven or eight folders.  Besides Accessories (which also holds anything to do with computer health) and Start Up (which I like to keep empty), I put all other programs/folders into Games, Media, Internet, Word Processing, or Reference.  I don’t like searching through long lists of program folders to find what I want to use!

And, in one last tech note, I started using Dropbox, which is a great little program.  It puts a folder on your computer – on the desktop, in the My Documents folder, wherever you like – and when you put something in that folder, it uploads it to your account online.  You install it on however many computers you like – for me, on my laptop and my school desktop – and then it automatically downloads and updates the files each time they’re changed.  Brilliant!  Now I don’t have to e-mail my lesson plan file to myself each time I change it, and I can transfer photos or files I pull off the ‘net for class easily.  I can also access everything in the box online by logging into the web site from any computer, or make some of the folders public to share photos or other things.  You get about 2GB of storage free; you can pay for more if you want, but I’m going the free route.  If you want to try it, please click the link above – if you arrive on the site that way and you do sign up, I get a little extra storage space!

OK, on to things with more pictures!

Lovely things sent on by my family and/or ordered by myself, all brought over by Carolyn…

The items once they’d been un-bagged. Notice all those wonderful ziploc bags under the table! I was SO happy to get everything on (and under) the table – including the Nuts Online products and wheat germ I mentioned before, which you can see near the middle, a cast-iron skillet for the first time in my life, my pampered chef apple peeler-corer-slicer since my plastic one bought here is falling apart, the made-by-my-parents caramels, and … well, everything! (The nut chopper in the back was from Carolyn herself, isn’t she an angel?) The boys in my class had a blast with Battleship during indoor recess last week.

Any why was recess indoors, you ask?

‘Cause, baby, it’s cold outside!

Each morning the windows in the hall and the classroom would look like this. It’s not quite so bitterly cold out now, and they’ll be able to go out for recess again this week. But whew, whoever told me that the first two weeks in January are the coldest of the year was right!

The apartment is looking nicer than it used to these days

The books are no longer stacked to fill the shelves 2-deep, top-to-bottom, isn’t that nice?

Some moved here, some to the entertainment center, and the rest are in the closet on the right in the picture, taking a break from the light. At least until I get the shelves built for my bedroom! Jen did a great job of finally making our common area look lived-in instead of Lily’s-boxes-exploded-here.

Oh, I almost forgot, this was in the bunch of stuff Carolyn brought me:

A t-shirt from Wild Olive. I bought it for myself. It’s a bit thinner than I’d expected but very pretty. I’m actually wearing it now as I type, under my sweater, though that picture’s from the first day or two after I got it.

New winter skirt from the tailor!  It’s almost as warm as the grey wool one I had made last year.

New knit! For Pam’s babies. She’s not there with them now (the workers have it well in hand, of course), because she’s in GZ with her family, finalizing the adoption of their daughter, who they’ve had for her entire life – over 5 years – and who is now, finally, theirs! China has said so; they just have to go to the consulate there to get the US to agree. Standard adoption stuff, no worries, but I’m so happy for her! Stephanie is there now getting her precious Vivi, too – I’m tickled that they may meet each other. I only know Stephanie from her blog, Nihao Ya’ll, and because she and her sister are the ones who started Wild Olive to raise money to save precious children around the world. Check out her blog and the other web site(s) that she’s involved with, they’re totally awesome!

Welcome, 2010 January 1, 2010

A new year has begun.  I guess that’s not a huge surprise, it happens every 12 months, but as this is only my 29th (well, I was 8 months along 30 years ago, so I was probably aware of the party outside my mama’s belly – can I count it?), I’m still kinda jazzed.  Actually, even when I’ve had 80, I hope I still get excited by the New Year.  I haven’t always had stellar get-togethers – ‘99-’00 stands out in my memory as me being home alone and kinda miffed that I wouldn’t need the candles and stuff for Y2K – but generally I get to play some games with friends and eat a bit of junk food and feel like I have a good reason for being up so late, so I enjoy the holiday.  Taking down the Christmas decorations with the family the next morning is kind of nice, too, though I miss that here.

This is not going to be a look-back-on-2009 post, but just a wrap-up of this evening’s festivities.  Here’s a link to a very short video of the moment of the new year arriving, more or less (we actually just picked a time and counted down – no TV and the ball in NY wouldn’t be dropping for another 13 hours), followed by a few pictures.

The party was at the Thompsons’ house – they have 4 kids and a gorgeous 2-story apartment at the top of their building.  Is that what you call a penthouse apartment?  It’s how I think of this sort of apartment.  I’ve been in one or two before, and I always like it, though I liked theirs best of all partly because the building’s only 5-6 stories tall rather than 7-8!

You can tell a happenin’ party by the size of the shoe pile; you can also tell a family that entertains by the size of the slipper stash!  Most people chose to go in stocking feet, so there were lots of extra slippers, but I was pretty happy to find some big warm fuzzy ones to keep my toes toasty!

Some of the kids played board games, either on the computers or on the floor…

…some sat and talked or did magic tricks…

..some played video games… (I got to try a Wii for the first time. Meh, it’s just as hard to steer a car on the Wii as it was on our old Atari. Sigh…)

…some were more into music, either with their MP3 players or actual instruments.  A few of them were going to record a song, though I didn’t hear whether they did it.

There was also some basketball practice and a game of Capture the Flag outside for a sizable chunk of the evening, but no one over 20 took part in that as far as I know!

Meanwhile, the adults (and some of the kids) played games like Dutch Blitz and Uno, or just talked, while enjoying the various snacks people had brought.

I joined Dutch Blitz for one hand, and then I jumped into the Uno game for several rounds around 11, after crocheting, talking, etc, earlier in the night.  The Uno game was crazy-fast, with 9 people playing a version I had not yet experienced – you can jump in with your card any time it exactly matches the top card, even if it’s nowhere near your turn.  My first hand, someone on the other side of the circle put down a Wild Draw-Four, and the person next to me put one on top of it, and I had to draw eight!  It got most confusing when people would pile on the reverses, because then play changed locations and you had to figure out which way it was now going!  It took me a couple hands to get used to it, but then it was fun.

Around 12:45 I accepted a ride home in the van with the Pattisons (whose kids are visiting from the States), along with Stephanie and the Fentons.  Lisa Fenton bought Ethan a puppy for Christmas – that reversal of the pet policy is being taken advantage of already!  The Thompsons have new pets, too – Merry and Pippin, two young cats who briefly escaped the bathroom in which they were shut for the party.  Helping get them back out from under the couch was probably the most unexpected thing that I did at the party, but it was nice to hold the one I caught for a moment!  Just a few months and I’ll have a cat or two again, too, Father willing!

Happy New Year, ya’ll!

A few reflections September 30, 2009

I just got back from our short vacation in Weihai.  (I bought my camera, but was afraid to get it sandy, so this post has very few pictures, sorry!)  The school took a lot of the staff and their families there for a two-day, three-night optional holiday.  It was a mixed bag but generally a good time.  Kudos to the people who put it together so quickly, when our earlier plans for the holiday week were nixed.

(The view from just outside the hotel lobby.)

On the way there, we stopped at a gas station about mid-way through the four-hour-plus drive.  (Much to my relief, because I had a cold and was drinking lots and lots of water to keep from coughing.)  My acquaintance with Chinese gas stations is pretty thin, not owning a car myself, but it seemed about standard compared to the one or two I’ve visited – gas pumps under a very high roof so buses and trucks can access them, a small shop with overpriced junk food, and toilets with thigh- to waist-high walls between the stalls.  Actually, like the bus station when I visited a friend my first winter here, it wasn’t technically toilets, just a trench running through all the stalls.  Not my favorite kind of facility, but since the other women were my co-workers rather than curious strangers and the smell was somewhat better than the college bathrooms often emitted, I was pretty comfortable with it.  And a bit amused at the reaction of some of the others who have been here as long as I have or longer but haven’t dealt with these before.  On the bus today, though, I did hear stories of other such places, some less easy to deal with, that some people here have encountered, either in China or other parts of the world.  I’m glad I was forced to get used to squatties in the nicest possible way my second winter here.  (Sorry, no blog entry to point you back to about that, but maybe one day I’ll write it up; it’s one of my “The-Father-has-a-sense-of-humor” stories.)

(some lovely landscaping outside the hotel)

The first morning in Weihai, I went out on the beach to lay on a towel and read with some of the other ladies.  Around noon I went into the water, and had to kneel down to get wet past my waist – it was shallow for quite a long ways out!  Then I headed inside to wash off the sand.  Since the hotel was not near anywhere populated and was very ritzy (ie, pricy), I just ate some snacks I had brought for lunch, and read a second book.  In the evening, I went out with a couple of families for “barbecue chicken” a not-too-long bus ride into the city, then attended a seminar on time management.  After that I didn’t really know what to do with myself; the problem with hotels is that people disappear into their rooms and you don’t know where or what is going on!  I ended up painting my nails with a small group in one of the meeting rooms, then going up to my own place, where my roommate was already asleep.  A lovely lady from the US with the same name as my mom, she and a few others had come over the help out with childcare, and she woke and went to bed before me each day there.

(another view from the hotel.  I didn’t go out on the pier, but it looks nice!)

Tuesday morning I was back out in the sun despite the mild sunburn I’d gotten on Monday.  I’d signed up for some boating activities, but I wasted the first 45 minutes walking to the wrong place, walking back because I didn’t see anyone from our group, and then walking past that place again on my way to the right place, trying to keep my sandals from falling off my feet without constantly curling up my toes.  To spare my toes after the boating I walked back along the slightly shorter sand route, but of course almost-a-mile on sand is just as hard for feet as a mile on asphalt.  Ow!

(The small buildings to the right of the big sail-like buildings are the boat rental place.)

While I was down at the boating area, I was able to take out a small one-person sailboat (yay!) which was fun but would have been more if I had planned to get wet and thus hadn’t been so worried about swamping. So much for my notion that boats are to keep a person dry!  Then I gave in to the wetness and took a two-person kayak/canoe out on the water.  Both rides together were shorter the time it took to walk there, I think, but hey, it’s SO amazing to me that I have actually sailed a boat by myself!  Then I watched other people sail, including: a couple of the guys learning to windsurf, my TA and her friend trying the kayak even though she can’t swim (we all had life vests, of course), and some kids riding on the mesh front deck of a catamaran to look into the clear water as it was sailed around the area.  Three of us walked back together and I went to my room for more sand-removal and reading and snacks for lunch.  I also talked with a couple of people in their room before sitting in the lobby to see who I could join for dinner.

(the hotel lobby as we checked out Wednesday, complete with chandeliers and with plant displays in the revolving door)

Tuesday evening, there was the possibility of my showing a movie for the “youth” (an age which was never satisfactorily defined but at least meant “older than my students”), but the youth themselves were quite happy to be free to do their own thing, so I left them to their pizza-eating, Lord-of-the-Rings-watching, and whatever else they were up to, and played a game of bowling with a couple of families down in the hotel bowling alley, then watched another game while I knitted and cheered people on.  It was not a stellar performance by yours truly, but I had fun getting those 50 or 60 pins down, and I even had one strike (followed by the only score-less frame. figures.)   The best part of the evening was realizing that I need and want to get to know the families here more.  I think that’s part of what I miss from ZZ, part of why I’m lonely even though I’m with so many people every school day and Sunday morning.  There are lots of great single women here – I went to dinner with several Tuesday night, read on the beach with others Monday morning – but I’ve always been a bit “different,” playing with kids of different ages, having a difficult time bonding with girls in my own class, cooking instead of reading star magazines, coming on my own to live in China…. I have tried to define what I’m missing here before, and I think part of it is what made me “fit” in ZZ with the other people who also came there without any kind of organization to show them the ropes or give structure to their lives during the transition and life in foreign culture, a part I may not find right away here as I don’t have a lot of time to get to know other foreigners outside the organization I now work for, but I think the other part of what’s missing was being adopted into the Southey clan, mixing with the Neal children on Sunday in between their homeschooling and Chinese schooling, going places with Sarah on our electric bikes, gleaning wisdom from Pat and John on our cab and bus rides together, talking and working with Kate and Kirsten and Samson and other students from my college, working on school things and surfing the internet and cooking dinner while “Melissa” Wang Fangfang and “Lucy” Ma Peixuen and their friends did homework at my table and ate anything I set before them (as long as it wasn’t pork, for Lucy) and sometimes brought me noodles or junk food they bought on the way home from school but remembered not to buy the smelly spicy meat because I asked them not to bring it in my house and were always willing to help me garden or clean house or just sit and play with my cats.  I miss the people, and also the flavor of the community.  It’s just taking a lot of time to adjust socially, with school eating up most of my waking hours and leaving little emotional or physical energy for introverted-me to reach out.

I guess I’ve veered a long way from my original topic about the mini-vacation.  There isn’t much left to tell.  After bowling I went up to Carolyn’s room* and we read together – just sitting in the same room each finishing a novel made us both feel less reclusive.  And then this morning, breakfast and packing while watching (gasp! shock! wonder of wonders!) CNN Asia on the hotel’s TV.  My thoughts go out to Manila and Samoa, the latter of which dominated the news.  The hotel’s breakfast buffet, by the way, was quite good, with a mix of Western and Chinese options.  Cereal and juice and cheese on toast and bacon, three days in a row, yum.  Then back on the buses to hui jia (return home).  I finished all but the last three rows if my Goforth/QMIS House Unity Hat on the bus ride, then read another book, my third of the trip.  (The last three rows of decreases needed DPNs, which I didn’t bring, but they’re finished now!)  Now I just need to have a movie-watching-and-yarn-skein-winding party to get the yarn I bought for the matching scarf transformed from big hanks into neat balls for knitting up.

(the hat before leaving on vacation)

(the finished hat)

Tomorrow, Thursday the first of October, is National Day and the PRC’s 60th anniversary.  I’m sure it will be quite an event. Our holiday continues through Monday, and my plans are to get next week’s lessons ready, work on my classroom, and get a better feel for where I’m going with the curriculum this year (or at least semester).  That’s what I like to do at the beginning of the year, but there just wasn’t time before school started, so this is my first chance.  I’m also going to take at least half a day to talk with the Father and work through some of the transition stuff I touched on above.  It should be a good “break,” though I don’t know exactly how restful it’ll be.  I think I’ll go call a couple of families and invite them over for that movie-and-yarn party one night this week, now.

*: Carolyn also moved here from another city in China (same company though), likes to cook, and likes Star Wars as well as teaching children.    Maybe I’ll invite her to the party too.

Remodeling plans, beginning September 20, 2009

So, here’s the wall in my room that I decided on my first day here had potential.

The other suite in the apartment already had some awesome book-display-shelves and cabinets built in, but thankfully the roommie has turned that space into her own domain and loved the teal wall with birds and branches (I like the pattern, but NOT the color – glad it’s in her room!).  I was sorry not to have the shelves already built in like she has, but I was willing to trade them for the potential of this room.  Her room’s already painted, accessorized, and gorgeous, but that’s a whole other post.  I’m planning to work on mine, sometime… (if you know me, you know what that means).  But I’ve taken the first step, and so my journey of a thousand translations, explanations, searches, ma-fan’s, and kuai has begun.

Back to the space.  I bought the wardrobe in the corner because, well, I needed some storage, like, right now, and it was available and cute and I’d never bought a wardrobe before!  I don’t know what I’ll do with it if I go forward with my plan, ’cause it really isn’t part of it.  Maybe it can fit elsewhere in my room.  But probably it’ll have to go.  Sad pandas.  But I’m not too terribly attached to it yet, as all it does right now is hold my shoes, and my new shelving unit would have a place for that that’s fitted to them a bit better!  Well, and it provides me with a good full-length mirror, which I will dearly miss, even if I did have to stand back by the door to get a look at myself because of all the stuff piled against the wall in front of the mirror!

And this is my grand plan.

(totally-out-of-proportion drawing with measurements that include the molding at the top and bottom of the wall, the door frame, and even the radiator cover and indentation in the wall that covers the pipes in the corner.  Back when I thought I might include that area with some teeny-tiny mini-shelves!)

1:10 scale drawing (well, it is on my paper; I don’t know about your screen!)  (That’s the light switch on the left, by the way.  The door isn’t in the drawing because my paper wasn’t 35.1cm wide.)

My grand plan.  Or mostly.  I’ve already thought of a pair or tweaks to the bookshelves near the top.  Basically, the 4×4 grid would be immobile (though part of it right in the middle would be just a small frame, not a full wall-between-shelves, unless I’m told in no uncertain terms that that’s completely unstable, and the two big storage spaces with doors on the left and right bottom might not have that shelf in the middle of them), and the rest of it would be adjustable, with the possible exception of the yarn cubbies – depends if such things can be built non-permanently!  Here’s a gorgeous picture from HelloYarn (hosted on my own Photobucket account, not hotlinked)

Pretty, eh?  Not that mine would be so pretty; the cubbies would be a little larger and the yarn not so uniformly cute.  But still, a nice way to see what I have and much better than the tacky plastic baskets they’re in right now (because B&Q doesn’t have the pretty, affordable wicker baskets I used to buy from Home Depot but didn’t ship).

So, each of the 16 rectangular sections is 60cm x 50cm, and most are sub-divided, the top will be a place to stick “decor” items and will extend across the top of the door, possibly with lighting above, there will be glass doors on much of the top half (if possible) to keep the humidity here out of my books and yarn, wood doors on the bottom to hide storage, no backing to the top half so the pretty wall color I’ll chose can show through, not attached to the wall any more than necessary (hopefully not necessary at all), and that’s the plan, Stan.

Advice, tips, comments, suggestions, gushing expressions of delight?  Please comment!

Too much to say… September 8, 2009

…for a Facebook status update.  Definitely too much for a tweet.  So here it is, take your pick, they’re all my status as of sometime today.

I:

was amused at the variety of cultures, accents, and languages at this afternoon’s staff meetings.

am, thanks to my math curriculum’s year-long “Length of Day” project, painfully aware that I now get up every morning before the sun, and will therefore continue to do so for the next seven months, until it starts getting up earlier than me again.

managed to spend less than 2000 yuan on Sch*lastic book orders when I turned them in today.  Plus a hundred dollars or so worth of bonus points books, of course.  (The fact that the majority of my last paycheck is already safe in my US account and there is still half a month till the next paycheck in no way explains why I was able to stick to so reasonable a budget.  Really.)

fervently hope that tomorrow’s fire drill goes smoothly and I don’t forget my attendance book.  Not that I can’t take attendance of ten children without it.  Just that I’d feel un-teacherly.

love rediscovering that I live near the ocean when I walk home from the bus in the afternoon/evening on days I don’t have to do errands along the main road.  It’s right behind my complex, but that’s the only time I see it, so I forget it’s there half the time!

really look forward to when people stop running their AC units (it’s in the 60’s this evening, why are they still on?) so that I’ll be able to hear the ocean again from my bedroom window.

am completely done in, and aim to get to bed ASAP.

This is Life September 5, 2009

When I came to China, I learned a phrase: “This is China.”  I thought it was kinda cute, a way to remind yourself that things are different because you’re in a different place, so don’t waste time being upset over them.  “TIC,” you could say to your foreign friends when something made no sense or seemed “incorrect” compared to the Western way.  I think I even wrote a blog post about it that first year – search my archives if you’d like to see it.

But in the last year, someone – maybe Peter, maybe someone else – pointed out that it wasn’t a very complimentary phrase.  It was generally said to highlight a complaint, as if people here can’t do things right.  Rather judgmental, and not a good way to connect with the culture, adapt to living here, etc.  I can see that point. Side note: Kind of like the warning I was given before I came, to not think or say “we” and “they,” or you’ll never identify with or get close to the people who live here because you’re always generalizing them as different from “us.”  In any case, I never used the “TIC” phrase much anyway, and I try not to use it now lest it offend anyone who feels it’s rude.  I still think it’s good to remember that, hey, it’s a different culture here, yeah, you’re not in America any more, so stop expecting it to be the same, but perhaps it’s a bit like taking the L0rd’s name in vain – if you only say it when you’re annoyed, instead of celebrating the good things, it’s probably not a good thing to be saying at all.

Thus, the title of my post is instead “This is Life.”  Another title could be, “The Saga of the Refrigerator.”

A few weekends ago, we discovered that if you leave the door of the fridge open, it starts going “ding, ding, ding.”  What a neat feature! The thing has a digital display on the front with six buttons – everything in Chinese so of course we just have to guess, but still, what a high-tech machine.  We generally figured the part of the display that said something like 3 was the fridge, and the part that said something like -18 was the freezer, and didn’t worry about what the middle number was (found out later it was something to do with the space between them, which is why it was generally around 0.)  No worries, everything’s cool.  Except that, a couple days later, the freezer display wasn’t a negative number. No bright “bing, bing” to let us know, just a number in the wrong part of the scale.  Uh-oh.  Work hours being what they are and the craziness of teaching being what it is, I didn’t get around to calling maintenance for a couple more days, once the standard push-all-the-buttons-and-see-if-you-can-fix-it method failed.  I tried the unplug-it method too, but it didn’t seem to help, so I put the partly-thawed things in the fridge.  Only, after re-plugging the machine, that stopped staying at a low number, too.  Hoo, boy.  Definitely time to call in maintenance!  I made one last effort, looking for a manual in English online (nope, though I did find a Chinese one on an English-language website, thanks a lot, guys), and asking a friend from Hong Kong to look at the manual that came with it (nope, only general care and use, no trouble-shooting.)  By this point I was finally putting things in a neighbor’s fridge.

That Thursday, workers from Samsung came to check it and said they needed to come back with a truck and take it to their shop.  Great, but we aren’t generally home during business hours, and Tuesday and Thursday are the only mornings our ayi is home.  We’d already given a spare key to another teacher’s wife who is a “stay-at-home mom” (I know, how many moms actually stay at home all day? But at least she had a better chance of being there!)

Come Saturday I’m out at school working and get to be part of a phone chain that runs repair shop -> school housing and maintenance department -> actual resident (me) -> neighbor and back again, setting up a time for them to come get the fridge.  They got it.  That week, we put leftovers of ayi’s cooking in the neighbors’ fridge and generally didn’t eat very well because who wants to bother the neighbors all the time – even very friendly ones – to get the salad dressing or a cup of yogurt?  (I must say, Dale and Jenni were wonderful about it all!)

Saturday again and still no fridge, the same answer as when it first disappeared – “several days” – and our hero of an elementary principal offers to unplug the mini-fridge in the secondary building’s conference room and bring it over for us.  Heaven!  It’s one of those little cube-shaped jobs, just big enough for a few necessities (or, pretty much everything we’d managed to salvage from the old fridge that was still worth eating, and a couple things that weren’t).

Finally on Thursday I took the early bus home so I could meet the workers returning our fridge.  “Don’t plug it in for three hours,” they said, killing my hope of asking them to show me how the buttons worked.  They did assure me that I didn’t need to press any buttons when I plugged it in, and they spoke true.  It cooled right off once it was plugged in, and I transferred things over before bed, wiping out the mini-fridge and leaving it to dry.

So, now we have a working full-sized fridge again (and a cube fridge in the corner, waiting to go back to its place).  Friday after school I went grocery shopping, so we have frozen dumplings and corn, loaves of bread and fresh eggs and other nice things to put in it.  Still some stocking up to (re-)do, but we’ll get back to full operational level soon in our kitchen!

And chalk another one up to the “Well, I survived that.  What’s next?” stories.

“Your mother doesn’t live here.” August 29, 2009

I remember my first year away from home.  (And my second, and so on.)  As an intern and then a college student living in dorms, I remember being told, “Your mother doesn’t live here.”  Whether it was piles of laundry on top of the dryer, dirty dishes on the kitchenette counter, or the state of the suite bathrooms, we were to pick up after ourselves, be responsible, and not act as if our moms were coming around to tidy up after us.

The “mom” they were describing wasn’t my mom.  I didn’t work hard at home, but I was expected to do some chores once I was old enough: wash the supper dishes once a week plus any I used between meals, vacuum or clean the bathroom from time to time, help get dinner ready if Mom was pressed for time or had had a full day.  Still, I got the point.

Only, I think that mother that they were talking about – the mythical one that takes care of your every need and mess – I think I have found her.

We hired a wonderful local woman to help us keep house.  She comes two mornings a week while we are at school and basically mothers us.  I had an ayi in my old city (though she told me not to call her ayi because she wasn’t old enough to be my aunt.  I called her by her name instead), but her one job was to clean.  Three hours Friday morning, she’d clean my apartment from top to bottom, stem to stern, and that was that.  There’s plenty more I could say about her, she was wonderful too and I count her as a friend, but the point is, the ayis here in my new city apparently have a broader job description.  This lady cooks us dinner, washes our laundry, tells the school repairmen what to do if they come while she’s here, and cleans the apartment.  She irons.  She does stacks of dishes.  She shops.  For now it’s just for ingredients to make our meals, but if we ever figure out how to write her a list, she can get other stuff too.  She’s amazing.  I think if I live here long enough, I may forget how to wash my own clothes!

So, to anyone in college, your mother doesn’t live in the dorm with you.  She lives here.  Come teach here when you graduate, and I’ll introduce you.

First Week August 23, 2009

A week of school under my belt, and what memories will I carry with me?  What do I mean to do differently next week?  What do I expect for the rest of the year?

School began with a half-day on Thursday a week and a half ago.  The short beginning week meant to ease students back into the school routine was a good taste for me, too, though it wasn’t anything like normal school yet!  I set my class some lessons over the first day and a half, but because Chinese and Science classes hadn’t started yet, and Friday has an unusual schedule anyway, it was probably the longest I’ll ever spend with my students in one day for the entire school year – I was only without them for about 15 minutes of lunch.  Exhausting, but it made the next week seem much easier by comparison!

Monday was the beginning of the regular school schedule.  Since nine out of the ten students in my class speak English as their second language (or possibly third, if they learned Chinese before English), we’re encouraged to focus as much as possible on Language Arts at the beginning of the day.  I actually have three segments of LA most days – right after morning work, right before lunch, and again near the end of the day.  In the afternoons, after Chinese and (Monday through Thursday) Music or PE, we have Science and Social Studies time.  This may change as the timing of Art is throwing it off a little twice a week, but for now, the plan is that Lisa – the other third grade teacher – covers a unit of Science for about four weeks, and then I’ll cover a unit of Social Studies in a similar amount of time, switching off as the year goes on.  This allows the students to work in bigger groups with people who aren’t in their class all day, and means that we each get a month off every other months from teaching that chunk of time in the afternoon.

I’m slowly learning how to interact with my teaching assistant.  She’s been working here for the last two years, so she’s a great resource when I need an idea about how to handle something, or when I forget – as I did twice in the first week – where exactly to lead the class!  (Our school is divided between three buildings on an even bigger campus belonging to a Chinese school.)  I certainly trained to teach a class on my own in college, but now that I’m working with her I don’t know how I would pull it off alone.

Work days start early and end late – I hear that in the winter you don’t really get to see the sun at home during the school week.  We catch the school’s bus around 6:30, have a morning gathering at 7:10 (it may differ some Tues and Wed), students start to arrive right as that ends, and then school officially begins at 8.  I think I’m going to be catching a taxi in at 6 or 6:15 on Mondays so I can get my head on straight and just savor a moment or two alone in my classroom before the students arrive.  School ends at 3, but we’re required to stay on campus until the first bus home at 3:45 – a bus I only know by reputation, having taken either the Chinese staff bus at 4:30, or the second foreign staff bus at 5, every day so far.  Since there’s more traffic in the afternoon, it’s generally well after 5:30 by the time I get home.

Some of the memories I’ll carry with me:  Having to stop and ask my TA, “Is it on the third floor of this building?” the first Friday when we were already late because I’d forgotten what time the assembly was.  Feeling once again the joy that comes when a student gets that “aha” moment as I explain something.  Realizing on Thursday afternoon that I’m going to be done teaching by 2pm that day each week – possibly even by lunch time, if we do science that day – because they have art the rest of the afternoon and then the TA takes them to the bus.  Printing up a newsletter for my class with Publisher (ah, how I’ve missed thee, Publisher!  The rest of Microsoft I can do without, but Publisher, I love you!)  On that note, discovering that I can function better in the Chinese MS Word that was on my old school’s computers than I can in whatever the really-new version of MS Word is in English on our school computers.  Gah!

And, best non-teaching moment of all: browsing the secondary library after school on Friday.  Browsing a library in China!  I could have floated back to my classroom!!!  (The public library system is one of the things I miss the most about the USA, and this summer I was in VA for such a short time, I didn’t even get to visit the library once.  It hurt.)  I read two Young Adult books this weekend in between working in my classroom and going to felowship.  Not a balanced social life, but a wonderful way for me to unwind.

The best moment of the week (that actually relates to the students!) was realizing on Friday that I know all their names.  OK, so there are only 10 of them, and I’d make myself learn my campers’ names by Wednesday each week when I worked at the Triple R, but with the constant need to think about what’s-next, how-to-explain, classroom-discipline, where’s-my-overhead-pen, etc, etc, while I’m with them teaching, I was surprised and pleased to find that I can tell them all apart already.  Now to work on the other third grade class’ names this week, so I won’t be clueless when Social Studies time rolls around!

Goodnight and best wishes for the new week, from me here in China!

Watch this space, coming soon… August 16, 2009

New blog post coming… sometime soon! (Hopefully this week)

Coming together May 15, 2009

With the new job settled, the plethora of other big and small details to settle are coming together. I’m feeling good about it today, so much seems to be working out and getting done. Here’s a quick look at what I’ve been able to cross off my to-do list lately, and what still remains:

Attend summer training in the US: (3.5/8 done)
-Get the OK to leave ZZ before my contract ends
-Move up my last four classes so I’ll be done in time
-Buy plane tickets from China to the US, to training, to VA, and back to China
-Buy tickets to and from my international flight in Shanghai
-Find accommodations in Chicago, preferably with a friend, for the night I’m there on the way
-Fill out all the forms and personality tests required for the training
-Buy some short-term medical insurance for while I’m in the US
-Finish grading everything possible ASAP so I can dive into research-paper grading when all 70 of them are turned in next Thursday

Prepare to move:
-Contact my landlady about when I’m leaving, getting back my deposit and hopefully the August rent I already paid since I’m leaving in July, possibly selling her my two air conditioners, and suggesting a new tenant
-Figure out how to move my things to a new city – I just heard from Sandy that I can send things by train for 2.3 yuan per kilo, as long as it’s all in bags or boxes (ie, no furniture, no electric bike). They provide door-to-door service and even sell empty boxes and bags (what, a packaging supply shop?!? Something I’ve never seen in China.) This is great except it doesn’t answer my question about how much to budget for the move, as I have absolutely no idea how much my books, clothes, kitchen supplies, and other things weigh. 200kg? 1000kg? Probably somewhere between those two numbers! At least I know it’s not going to cost 5000 yuan or anything, as I was thinking it might – that would equal almost 5000 pounds of stuff!
-Sell my bike, apparently, as well as selling the small pieces of furniture I own and my dining table and chairs set
-Figure out what to do with my cats

Prepare for the new job
-Visit the new school and city, to find out all I can about the curriculum, students, school culture, etc before the summer, and to see what kinds of things I’ll want to pick up in the States for both my classroom and my apartment this summer. Hopefully I can do this later this month, or in early June, though pushing my end-of-term schedule forward by a week has made me even more busy in the weeks leading up to my departure.
-Fill out yet more forms that come with employment at the school
-Be in contact with lots of people there – I’ve already been in touch with four or five different people at the school about various things, including one biggie:
-Renew my residence permit before I leave, because it will expire while I’m in the US… or, get the paperwork started to get a new visa, so I can get it while I’m in the US.

Say goodbye to everybody!
-Hopefully I’ll have some sort of goodbye party, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to squeeze one in in June, and then in July lots of foreign friends will be out of town, so… who knows.

And that’s not everything on my to-do list. But I’m cheerful because I’ve finished absolutely everything I wrote on my to-do list for the week last weekend! Admittedly, it was an incomplete list – I didn’t write down to order my dad’s birthday gift, but I thankfully remembered to do so; I also didn’t write down to finish planning tomorrow morning’s lesson, which I still need to do today. But… *runs for pen* Aaaah! It feels wonderful to cross off that last item!

Hoping your week has also been a productive one,
Lily