Semester is over

(Oops a little late, I forgot to post)

Hello all,

Sorry for the long break but we have been recovering.

Friday marked the official last day of the semester for us.  Now we begin our Spring Festival break which is about a month long break.  We haven't exactly been working for the last 3 weeks.  Review began 3 weeks ago for the students so the only working we have done was teach Kindergarten for 2 days, then I got sick, then Ryan gave a presentation on the difference in Chinese and American education and then Ryan got sick.  And if one of us has been sick they have told the other one of us not to work and take care of the sick one.  After about a week, I think I am finally on the mend from a mild case of bronchitis and Ryan's cold doesn't seem too bad and he is doing better as well.

Good thing we are getting better, we are off to Thailand on Monday.  We are super excited to be in warm weather and be breathing clean air.  The air in Beijing has been slightly better, there have been blue skies the past few days.  Ryan and I have been planning on taking the subway to airport but today one of the teacher's informed us that someone from the school would take us to the airport.  Super nice of them. 

Well, in the next few days we should have more exciting things to report.  Today we are off to the city for Mexican food.

Also, we told you that we learned a Chinese song for the New Years Party.  I don't think we are going to be on Chinese Idol anytime soon but I think it's entertaining.  Enjoy:

Julie

Temple of Heaven, Korean Food, Seat Skating

 A couple weekends ago we went to the Temple of Heaven. 

 It was a warm day. No face mask.

 Just in case you were wondering how, here is the procedure of Worshiping Heaven.

 For some reason, I decided to run up the stairs.

 We also tried out some Korean food.  I don't think we really knew what we were ordering. 

This was some type of curry meat with rice.

 Cold mashed potatoes.  I actually liked them.  They had carrot and cucumber in them so Ryan didn't enjoy them. Good thing, I wasn't a fan of the other stuff. 

 This was yesterday at our favorite (the only one we have been to) Mexican restaurant in Beijing.  Also had shrimp tacos. 

 So today we went seat skating.  It was so fun.  I felt like it was 10 years old.  Lots of screaming and giggling. 

 This is the restaurant we had lunch at.  They have pizza and beer.  They told us they were only serving Western food today.  No problem! We are big fans of Western food. 

 I thought Mom would like the picture of my pretty napkin from lunch. 

 I can't feel my toes.  Good thing there was a Starbucks near by.  Venti Hot Chocolate for snack.  I met a guy from North Carolina at the Starbucks. 

We are feeling much better.  Just in time for Thailand tomorrow!!!!  Seat Skating one day, 90+ degree weather the next.  I'll take it.  Oh yeah, Ryan's really like standing up behind our seats and pushing me as fast as he could.  :o)

Back to work (and my first attempt at writing in the 3rd person)

Apparently it was finally realized that Julie and Ryan's (well Julie's at least) immense talent was being wasted over the last couple of weeks of this semester.  The semester officially comes to an end a week from Friday.  Students are finishing their exams today (Thursday) and apparently just watch movies and do fun stuff for the last week, however I was previously under the impression that student's didn't come next week so this may be another incorrect interpretation of what was said.  Back to Julie and Ryan.

On Tuesday the head English teacher (Ann) came and told Ryan that one of the administrators wanted Julie and him to go the kindergarten to teach at the kindergarten for the remainder of  the semester.  As Julie and Ryan have become accustom, this information came with the obligatory "I am not sure on the times but I'll get back to you later."  At four on Tuesday afternoon she did in fact get back to them with their new schedules; two morning classes and one afternoon co-teaching class each day through Thursday the 24th.

Now all semester Julie and Ryan have taught at said kindergarten for two classes once a week.  They would see each class once every three weeks.  Furthermore, the level of English spoken by the teachers appears to be about the same as most of the students but it is hard to tell, so determining if these students get any additional English besides Julie and Ryan's lessons is a bit difficult.  With the new schedule Julie and Ryan will see every student everyday for the next week.  Also, the free time for our main characters is sufficiently diminished as lesson planning for the age level and class time has re-entered the picture.  Poor Ryan will have to cut back on watching Quantum Leap, Oh boy! (Inside joke alert.)

Ryan had developed a nice schedule of catching up on the most important events of the day (if you are similarly deluded to believe the FSU football and basketball news are included in the most important events of the day) and then spending a few hours in the private pilot app learning how to fly.  What will he come up with to do next?  Julie maybe more inclined to get back to work as she had been scouring the internet in search of her next career move, rebuilding a wardrobe, and planning for next semester.  It seems Ryan is a bit more adept at dealing with a lot of free time (shocking!).

Hope this finds you well and let me know how the third person came off (annoying, error prone, etc are acceptable responses, just so long as they're honest)

All the best

BAD air

Hello Folks,

I hope everyone had a good weekend.  So the air in Beijing is a bit smoggy.  The last few days have been record breaking bad.  see article for more info:  Beijing Air Quality  On a scale from 1 to 500, the air quality was 755 on Saturday and we have heard that either 1-25 or 1-50 is consider healthy.  I will never look at a bright blue sky the same again.  I used to take a bright blue sky for granted, never again.  Right now the air quality is 182 still not good but much better than Saturday.  I saw one of the English teachers wearing a mask yesterday and she offered to get us some.  One of the other teachers said they don't really help.  I figure they can't hurt so there may be some pictures to come with me sporting a cool looking medical mask. 

Despite the smog, we ventured into the city.  It's really neat living in a growing city, new things pop up all the time.  We knew there was a new subway line that opened (line 6) about 3 weeks ago.  It runs parallel to the line that we take into the city (line 1).  Line 1 was the first line to be built so it the oldest and busiest. We found out from a fellow teacher that there is a new express bus to the city.  We took the express bus and it ended up taking us to the end of line 6.  Not as close to the center of the city we expected but it was nice to ride on a new bus and new subway line that is not as crowded as line 1.  There are about 15 lines in the city and most of them are pretty crowded.  There is a saying in Chinese that I will attempt to translate: when you get on the subway, you must turn into a picture.  There have been times we have felt as flat as a picture.  I have wanted to take a picture of how crowded it is but we are unable to get the camera out because it's so crowded.

So back to Saturday.  With it being National Pizza month, I decided I wanted pizza for lunch.  We had looked up a restaurant, "Annie's."  We were pretty hungry when we got to Annie's.  We ordered Annie's pizza which was kinda like meat lovers.  We forgot that Chinese sausage is not very good.  It kinda looks like hotdog but tastes nothing like a hotdog.  Everything else on the pizza was good so we just picked it off.  They brought us bread and butter.  I love bread and butter and they had warm butter.  I think it's the first time I have had warm butter in 4 months so it was awesome.  I was quite exciting to find the restaurant we were looking for.  This doesn't seem to happen very often. 

Next off to the Temple of Heaven. There are some picture of this that I need to download.  Hopefully, I will remember soon.

Sunday I decided I wanted to try Malaysian food.  I kept accidentally calling it Mongolian food so Ryan and I had quite a few laughs about it.  Well, it wasn't meant to be.  We never found the place so we went to a near by mall and ate some Korean food which we wanted to try anyway.

After that, we were off to the National Museum of Natural History.  It was a pretty cool museum but we were not able to read much.  Only a few things were translated into English.  Anyone can enjoy animals, dinosaurs and fish.  So we had a pretty nice time except it was located in between about 2 subway lines so we had quite the hike to get to it.

Monday was back to work...sorta.  We haven't been doing any teaching as of late.  We were told today that we will begin teaching one class of kindergarten each day starting tomorrow.  I am looking forward to having a little something to do.

We had heard that the water cube from the 2008 Olympics has been turned into a water park.  Check out some pictures: Water Cube  I can't wait to go, I think it looks pretty neat and  I feel as excited as a little kid when I think about going.  Now we have something fun to do on the next bad air quality day.

Well, that's all folks, have a great week.

Julie

20 minutes of work this week

This morning Ryan and I finished up our hard week of work.  Since Monday, we each taught for a total of 20 minutes each.  We were told we wouldn't be teaching this week because the students have to get ready for exams.  We teach 2 kindergarten classes on Friday and since they don't have exams, we went to go teach.  The teachers at the kindergarten don't speak English so it's always a little difficult to figure out what is going on. They seemed pretty surprised to see us but I got started teaching.  My class was about half the size it normally is with about 10 students.  Ryan said they had to find a class for him to teach.   After my class was over, they kept trying to tell me I could leave.  When I finally figured this out, I went out to find Ryan and he had also come to the same conclusion. 

Everyone (teachers and students) around us seem to be all stressed out and very busy with exams.  Then there is me and Ryan, we are twiddling our thumbs.  The only thing we have been asked to do is prepare a presentation on the differences between Chinese and American schools.  And we don't really know how that is going to work so we have some ideas together but are kinda waiting at this point to see who our translator will be and if we will have powerpoint access before we can complete the presentation. We also worked on a 20 second video that our placement company requested for recruiting.  That was pretty fun but you can't say much in 20 seconds. 

Even though we only taught on Friday, we got the feeling we are still expected to be here in the office since they are good at telling us when we can leave. 

There has been reading, catching up on TV shows, working out, planning the weekend ahead and our trip to Thailand... and walks to the local store so Ryan can buy a Coke Zero.  That about sums up our week.  We will try to do some exciting things this weekend.  It is pizza month so Ryan and I will be celebrating tomorrow. 

I hope everyone has a great weekend,
Julie

... another surprise.

As you have probably heard (or read) our daily schedules and plans have been a bit inconsistent of late.  First our New Year party turned out to be an over-night affair.  That was a good surprise.  Then on the proceeding Monday everyone at our school disappeared and after the rapture scare had passed we took the unexpected day off as a bonus.  We got back to work on Friday. 

Finally things are back to normal as we wrap up the last three weeks of our first semester.  Then Friday afternoon we were informed that our Saturday and Sunday had become a Thursday and Wednesday.  We went to our branch schools on Saturday/Thursday and then while we were eating our breakfast on Sunday/Wednesday one of our fellow English teachers told us that our leader (this is the most common wording used to describe the principal) had decided that today (Sunday/Wednesday) would be our last day teaching for this semester.  What?!?

Well it turns out the school calendar is a little different than we had assumed, assumed being the key word.  It was explained that we only had two weeks of school remaining as there is a teacher work week prior to the beginning of our winter break.  That meant that the students only had two weeks before winter break began (not three). 

Secondly, as you may have heard, tests are a pretty big deal here.  Prior to winter break all the students have their end-of-semester exams. Earlier this semester Julie and I were given a day off while the students were taking mid-terms.  There is such an emphasis placed on these final exams that the week prior to exam week is used entirely for review and preparation.  Additionally, from what we've been told our fellow teachers pay is directly affected by the students scores and from what I can (again) assume this is more of the stick than the carrot: if they (students) don't do well you get paid less. 

So if you take away the teacher work week and the exam week and the test prep week then all this adds up to Julie and I with a bunch of free time on our hands today and for the coming weeks.  The exception(s) may be our kindergarten classes which we teach on Friday mornings.  Again I assume but they could really have final exams, could they?  :  )

We were told that we should prepare a presentation on the differences in primary education between the United States and China.  As we have never taught in the US and it's been a little while since either of us were in a primary grad classroom Stateside, we have some research to do.  If anyone would like to provide us with some information that would be great, but we certainly have the time to find out what the internet has to say on the subject. 

Happy Monday!
Ryan




  

Another surprise... this one not so good

With the beginning of 2013, Ryan and I were greeted with sore throats and coughs.  Not too bad but just bad enough so we wanted to lay in bed and watch TV.  I'm glad we bought food to prepare in our room so we didn't have to venture out into the cold as much.  Well, we ended up going out at least once a day.  Cabin fever got us too.  We also needed to buy a DVD player.  Ryan's computer's DVD player only likes boy movies.  Ryan and I have bought about a dozen movies and his DVD player only likes to play the movies Ryan picked out.  We tested the movies in the teachers office to make sure they work and then off to the Wu-Mart. Also I think it's about time for us to take advantage of the 42 inch TV in our apartment.  All the TV channels here are in Chinese so we have been watching TV on the internet. 

Friday morning come around and back to school for us.  We are still a little under the weather so the only thing getting me out of bed this morning was knowing I only had one day of teaching and would be able to take it easy over the weekend.  Ryan and I did think it was weird that school would be open for only one day before the weekend but hey we're in China and we just go with the flow.  Teaching went well today.  I tried a new game with the kindergarten classes. I was also glad I had lots of videos for my 1st grade class because my voice wasn't up for talking too much but made it through and ready to relax for the afternoon and maybe do a little lesson planning to catch up.  Well, as soon I got back to the teacher's office after teaching I was informed that we will have classes on Saturday and Sunday.  We will be following the Thursday and Wednesday schedule for those days (my 2 hardest days).  There was some confusion about us teaching tomorrow since Thursday we are at the branch schools but we did find out that yes indeed we will be teaching tomorrow.  I sadly informed Ryan of this information when he returned to the office.  Well, we just had 4 days off so I guess we shouldn't be complaining.  We did ask a while back if we would be teaching anymore weekends and were told no but oh well, what do you do?  I was told that tomorrow and Thursday will be the last time we go to the branch school this semester (which ends at the end of January).  So I'm not sure if Ryan and I will have another project to do during that time or not.  In the meantime, I will assume we will have Thursday off to rest and relax. :o)  Once we found out we were teaching, I needed to hit the lesson planning.  I was not prepared for Thursday teaching.  Luckily I had an idea for grade 3 and 4 and, Ryan had a lesson I could use for grade 5 and 6, and for grade 2 I will use my grade 1 lesson from today.  Ryan and I started making flashcards about 10 til 5.  I think we made them in record time.  (I can't believe we have job where drawing in part of the job description).  I decided it's probably better we didn't know we were teaching this weekend or we would have dreaded it during our holiday break.

All this talk about Thursday reminded me of a weird observation that Ryan and I have witnessed for the past 8 weeks.  8 weeks ago, we were driven to the branch school and we saw a truck with a flat tire in the middle of an intersection.  Not a super busy road but it's a 4 lane road with a decent amount of traffic.  We didn't think anything of it (thinking that it must have happen recently) until I saw the truck on the way home from school that afternoon.  The next week the truck was there. The weekend after that, the truck was still there.  By week 5 or 6, there were 2 flat tires of the truck.  Is the truck still there?  Ask us tomorrow?

Well, off to relaxing for the rest of the night.  I guess we won't be heading into the city this weekend.  We usually celebrate international food day on the weekends so everyone please eat some delicious international food for us. I like anything cheesy especially pizza and Mexican.  Feel free to take a picture and send me.  :o)

Hope you all have a fun weekend. 

Julie

Happy New Year

Happy 2013.  I hope everyone is enjoying the start to the new year.  As mentioned in the previous blog, we had an early start to our New Years celebration. Since school was closed, we headed out to the city a little earlier than expected so Ryan did some research and found a nice pizza place to eat at.  Well, we found the pizza place but it was closed; they only serve dinner.  Just like always, things don't go as planned but we just come up with option B. Next door from the pizza joint was a restaurant that looked nice so we went in.  They had a very large menu and lots of things that looked good (and some things that did not).  Ryan ordered the duck with orange.  I think duck looks like little turkeys.  It was great.  It tasted like left over Christmas or Thanksgiving ham.

 I ordered a Thai bowl.  As you can see there are all kinds of things it there.  This was also wonderful.  There were these little tiny eggs in there about 1/3 the size of a chicken egg.  We tried to figure out what bird the eggs came from but decided it was probably better that we didn't know.  We also ordered broccoli which came out last but we were pretty full by then, we did eat some and used the left over Thai sauce to make it tastier.

So for a late afternoon snack we had a hot dog.  It was an American hot dog.  Chinese hot dogs are not very good so we were happy it tasted American.  It's hard to specially order things here given the language barrier so Ryan has learned to just pick the pickles off and I eat things I mildly dislike like ketchup and mustard.

 Then we were off the the hotel.  Like most planning around here, Ryan does it and I just go a long for the ride.  I don't know why I haven't learned from this but he keeps things exciting.  So we took the subway and walked to the area of town were the hotel and bar was for the New Year's Eve party.  I wasn't sure where Ryan was taking me.  It was all dirty and dusty and old looking.  I mean really dirty and poor looking. The alleys that we walked down were very narrow.  However, like many times before, once we got to where we were going it was beautiful inside.  We got to the hotel and Ryan knocked on the door.  No answer.  There was a phone number so he called it and someone answered in Chinese so that got us no where.  Then we looked on our conformation card and called that number and no answer.... so what to do now?  Well, I knocked on the door with some gusto and sure enough someone came to answer.  Later we found our there was a door bell...

 After checking in we made it to our room.  The hotel is 200 years old and had little insulation.  The room was very nice inside but FREEZING.  I tried taking a nap under the covers and we cranked the heat up but it never really did warm up. 

 Slippers anyone?

 

After our short nap we tried to find the hotel restaurant but they were closed for New Years Eve.  We weren't that hungry from our afternoon hotdog and thought there were going to be snacks at the brewery for the party so we just hung out at the hotel bar because we didn't want to venture out into the cold anymore than we had to.  Have we mentioned that it's cold here?  

  We found the brewery for the New Years eve party.  We were the first to arrive.  It was nice to talk to the folks running the joint.  They were from America so it was nice to talk to some fellow native English speakers that know where Charlotte is.  There were some other foreigners at the event it was nice talking to everyone. They had great tasting the beers.  It was much better than the typical beer here which is light beer.  The first one I tried was a Christmas ale but the beers called Flying Whale IPA and Monkey Fist were our favorites.  Maybe that's just because they have cool names.

There was a snack at the party but just peanuts.  We were getting pretty hungry by this point.  Someone had pizza delivered and we thought that would be a good idea.  The owners wife (who is Chinese) helped us order a pizza.  It was a great tasting pizza.  We really love anything with cheese because it's so rare.  Ryan and I didn't make it to the champagne toast.  We ended up leaving at 11:45 for the 10 minute walk to the hotel.  So I think I was brushing my teeth as the clock struck 12.

 So the heat in the hotel room was finally working at about 3 in the morning.  I think the temperature had risen over 20 degrees from the time we first entered the room.  The next morning Ryan asked what I wanted for breakfast.  Remember how dirty the walk was to the hotel?  I told Ryan that I wanted food that was in a sealed container and lots of water.  So we ended up eating potato chips for breakfast. 

 Ryan took this picture.  I think it's for his brother.

 Next we went to a shopping mall.  Ryan and I end up at a lot of shopping malls for people who don't like shopping.  We think we go there because it's warm and they usually have good restaurants.  This mall was 10 floors high.  They had a Cinderella event going on. 

 Cinderella and Prince Charming... oh wait.. there are behind us. 

We aren't sure if we teach tomorrow since we had Monday off.  I hope we don't. I haven't prepared class for Thursday.  Ryan is also feeling a bit under the weather.  The air quality here is pretty bad and the air is dry.  In our apartment, we run a humidifier all the time so when we are away for even a night we can tell a difference in how our throats feel.  Hopefully he will be better soon. We have found Halls cough drops and very glad we brought some western OTC medicine.

We have had a pretty lazy day today.  Ryan watched football. I have been painting. We made a trip to Wu-mart for lunch and shopping for necessities.  We had rice, veggies, beef or chicken, and salads at a restaurant that shares spaces with Dairy Queen.  It's my new favorite place near us to eat; I think because the food isn't covered in oil.  I decided that since we had figured out how to use the hotplate in our room, I wanted to taken advantage of the International food section at Wu-mart.  We bought pasta and Hunt's tomato sauce.  I hope it turns out good. I bought enough for 4 meals.  I don't plan on going outside for a while :o). 

Ryan has been sleeping for a while so I think I will go wake him up.

Have a great start to the new year.
Julie