Trip to Suzhou

As most of you have probably seen from John's site, last weekend we had a getaway with a few friends to Suzhou. This is a smaller city that is mostly used for vacationing. It is known for its gardens and beautiful surroundings. We headed out right after school on Friday with our friends Jayme, Channing, and Laura. It's a 45 minute subway ride and about one hour train ride away. The train station is always a joy - yuck!! It's not the cleanest place to be:) The actualy train ride was a little different than our first one to Honzhou - so many more people, most of which stand around you and stare, one because there is nowhere left to sit and two, they just love to stare.

Here are some various pictures of sights around the city. John and I took a boat ride around the river channel. Along with the old parts of the city, bridges and such, we got to see some daily routines of some of the locals...brushing teeth in the river, washing clothes, scrubbing mats, reading the newspaper, etc. All of us visited one of the many gardens, did some street shopping at the markets, went to "walking street", and various other activities.






My friend Laura is engaged to a German man - Thomas - and they are planning a summer wedding in Alabama. It's been fun to hear about their plans, and also get see G blessing them as they figure out paper work as to how they will legally be married. It's not easy putting that all together when neiter of them are in their own country. Just recently though everything has come together and they should be able to have a marriage license before their "wedding ceremony" in America. Laura is getting her dress made in Suzhou (where Thomas is living and working on his thesis). If only I could have waited one more year....her dress is beautiful...and let's just say A LOT cheaper ($80). Crazy huh!

Home for Chinese New Year

All of us teachers had off from February 5th to the 24th for Chinese New Year. This holiday is celebrated like the Christmas season is celebrated at home. Everyone travels to see their families to enjoy much celebration including lots of fireworks. We have seen some areas of burnt grass - very interesting.

We had such a wonderful time visiting friends and family. The time flew by though - so if we were unable to see you, we look forward to seeing you this summer. We spent about a week in Wisconsin and a week in Minnesota. Here are just a few pictures. We weren't on our usual picture taking mission to fill the blog - so the pictures are few. Thanks to those of you who went out of your way to come see us and also for those of you who opened your homes for us to stay in. We're so thankful for our dear family and friends!!

Visitors!


At the start of the new year my friend Jenny and her sister Heidi came to Shanghai. They stayed with us for 2 weeks, getting to experience the life here in China. It was fun being able to show them around our school, have them meet my kids, and experience all the different things that we experience each day, and of course very nice to have girls to shop with - although John loves it so much. They got to do a lot of traveling around the city while we were teaching.



On the last weekend of their visit the four of us went to Hongzhou, "the paradise" of China (that's what people here call it). The city is about a 2 hour train ride. It was quite beautiful. Unfortunetly it rained most of the time that we were there, but still, it was so relaxing being away from the busy city. We stayed on West Lake for one night and walked around most of the lake. We also took a boat ride that stopped at different little islands and historic points around the lake. John and I look forward to going back in the spring.

Hong Kong!

Yes, it has taken me quite some time, but I'm finally attempting to update my blog. The internet has been so slow, I haven't even attempted.

Christmas in Hong Kong was wonderful! We enjoyed being away from Shanghai for a short amount of time, and enjoying the beauty and cleanliness of Hong Kong. We had so much fun traveling around seeing the sites. The best was being at the "Peak" which was an overlook of the city from very high (not sure how high?). We waited in line for over an hour, then rode in a little rickety trolly up to the peak of a hill - scary - but fun. There was a whole little city/area on the top that we ventured around and tried to take many pictures. We're still working on learning how to use the camera so bare with the blurriness. If the user's guide wasn't in Chinese it would be a quicker process.




On Christmas day we rode on a double decker bus to the southern beaches. Again, amazing!! The views of the green hills and ocean was breathtaking. The busride was quite an experience too:) Rounding the cliffs sitting in the top of the double decker - wow.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Christmas is almost here, 3 more days. Christmas isn't a very big deal in China...but at SMIC (our school), we celebrated as if we were home. I had a lot of fun teaching my kids all about Christmas, doing many activities, and talking about Christmas at home. When I first introduced the holiday about 3 weeks ago, I asked, "WHY do we celebrate Christmas?". The overwhelming response of "It's Jesus' birthday!!" made me smile. Whether it be from their Christmas program songs, learning about it last year in kindergarten, or from home - many of the kids knew the true meaning of Christmas. That is hard here, since the stores only sell commercial items. PTL that these kids have a chance to hear it so young!!

All that to say, John and I have had a really nice time celebrating with our students and friends here in Shanghai. We started the season homesick and wishing we wouldn't have to miss another Christmas. Two Christmas seasons away from home is different. But, were truly blessed by all we saw and experienced here at SMIC. Here are some pictures of my kids in their Christmas program. They sang a song about baby Jesus written by one of the music teachers here, and they played instruments and danced to Up On The Housetop. Wish you all could have seen - it was adorable!!




Here are some pictures of John's 10th grade honors class helping my first graders write their own lyrics to "The Twelve Days of Christmas". They had some interesting songs! Mr. Taylor's class began the time with their own Twelve Days of Christmas. Although my kids barely understood - they watched in wonder and found the funny lines.





Lastly, here are some pictures from the BIG Christmas party. I say BIG...because we were the only class to have a Magician come right to the classroom. Not real sure what he was saying the whole time, but the kids sure bought into his tricks and laughed hysterically. I had more fun watching my kids. After the magician, Santa popped his head in to. Talk about a bunch of crazy first graders. I'm pretty sure the party was a success!






Even Mr. Henderson wished he could be part of the action. Mr. Henderson, Dan, is another first grade teacher and a good friend of John and I. Whenever John is missing - I know he's over at Dan's playing ping-pong - his new love:)

Making Dumplings



After a day trip to Yu Gardens (traditional Chinese buildings and shopping), we enjoyed an evening with John's language partner Rita and her friend Jeff. They brought ingredients over to make one of our favorite foods here - dumplings. We wanted to learn how to make them to make sure we could still eat them at home. They're served at most restaurants here, so for the trouble of it - we'll probably stick to ordering them to eat while we're in China. But...when we're home - be ready to eat lots of dumplings when invited over to the Taylor's.







Jeff started by making the dough while Rita made the inside (ground pork and vegetables). John and I were busy....watching. Occassionally we tried to give a hand - but usually we were just in the way. We did get to take an active role in forming the dumplings which includes placing an amount of inners into a perfectly circular rolled thin piece of dough. Rita enjoyed watching John try to do this part - she laughed a lot, but after a few tries he caught on and made some normal looking dumplings.




The best part was eating....of course!

The Night Market

Last weekend we found our way to a new exciting stop in Shanghai - a night market. A night market consists of sellers lining the streets with their goods, anything from fake purses to jewelry to kids toys. As most places here, you can bargain your way to whatever price you want to pay. Occasionally they shoo you away for offering way too low of a price. You win some you loose some...That's just how it works. Our friends Channing and Jayme were gracious enough to let John and I join on their favorite weekend activity - eating street food and seeing what new deals are on the streets. We tried a little bit of everything, delicious lip burning dumplings, egg rolls, some kind of wrap/gyro, fudge filled chocolate cake (ya, that was the best), etc. This will for sure be a new favorite for us:)

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!

Another year away from home for the big turkey day. Still so much to be thankful though. As much as we miss family and friends at home, John and I are so thankful to be here in Shanghai for this chapter of our life. We're thankful that we can spend this time together, being able to experience so many new things all at once:) Besides being thankful for God's provisions for us here and for each other, we couldn't be more thankful for the students that he has brought into our lives. We both have loved our teaching experiences and continue to grow closer to our students as the year progresses.

I brought Thanksgiving to my room quite thoroughly this year. I've been teaching my first graders about Thanksgiving for the past 2 weeks and we ended with a fun celebration...a potluck feast! All the parents were invited to join by bringing a dish from their "homeland". We had everything from dumplings, chicken wings, pasta, sushi, milk tea, pizza, to things never seen before. Oh yes, I tried it all!:) And the difference between kids at home and here...they tried it all and especially loved the shrimp fried rice. After our meal we had a presentation for the parents - a secret that was hard for the students to hold in for the week. You can imagine their excitement to be able to show what we've been practicing. We taught the parents about Thanksgiving by presenting the ABC's of Thanksgiving, followed by a couple songs - packed with actions:) The parents loved it!






After school was over we hurried to the bus, then subway to get to our Thanksgiving Dinner reservations. It's been raining for a couple weeks now so traveling bus style isn't as fun as it usually is - ok, it's never all that fun:) We made it with plenty of time to spare - shopped around at the "Super Brand Mall" to wait for our reservation time. To me "Super" would imply to me that the mall would be packed with stores - not quite - all we needed was a pair of shoes for John - not one shoe store! So...we continue to be on that mission.

Anyhow...dinner. That is what's important in this blog. We had dinner at the Shangri-la Hotel. They have the largest and best buffet in Shanghai is what we've heard. It was for sure the most AMAZING buffet we have ever seen or been to. 7 cuisines all with their own chefs, everything served gourmet style. I'm thinking dinner in heaven might be something like this:) The western station had turkey and cranberry sauce, potato wedges (not quite the usual - but they were delicious) along with prime rib and everything else. I loaded up on sushi - which has become a new liking of mine in the past year. Never thought I'd like raw fish. The chefs at this station were excited to fill a confused girl's plate with unknowns. What I did know was that one of the things I ate was octopus - very chewy - not so sure I'll go back for that specific entree. THEN...to end...the best dessert selection ever! (except for my mom's of course) - There was everything! I had a mini pumpkin pie, pecan pie, and apple pie, as well as many chocolate treats, ice cream, and gummy worms. Even took a few things home:)
Visitors....I hope you're getting excited...because soon you will have this experience as well!:)

The First Graders!

Here's just a few pictures of my kids on picture day. Cute as ever!!

KTV

Karaoke TV will go down in the books as one of the most entertaining nights for our group of 12 SMICers. KTV is a Karaoke building where you rent a room for a group, choose songs, watch 80's music vidoes made up mostly of marching bands, and share 3 mics. Since meeting John he's been talking up his karaoke skills - and he proved his talent. The crowd loved his crazy singing and comments on the videos. Him along with a couple of his friends were a hoot!:)