There are many issues that affect the frequency of the blogging:
1. The Internet basically sucks here, it was hard to post before, often taking 3 or 4 tries for each post, but now because of the recent earthquake in Taiwan, it is even worse.
2. We have been doing really nothing other than teaching as of late. My life is not that interesting here. I am actually really looking forward to coming home at this point.
3. I had wanted to finish the series on our trip to Inner Mongolia before posting anything else, but the pictures we were going to use belonged to someone else and we cannot get them anymore.
4. I am lazy.
But I will do my best to make a more concerted effort now that classes have ended at SIE, as of yesterday for me, today for Karli. I am still teaching my night classes at Emerson, and we have three weeks of Winter Session coming up, but between then and now I will promise to try…
So this is what has been happening:
- We took our trip to the Great Wall at the beginning of November – it was truly amazing.
- We celebrated Karli’s 24th birthday by drinking two bottles of wine at a new bar we discovered after shopping at Walmart (yeah, I know, I am selling out over here) called Jia – very cool place.
- We had our first snow and made a lovely, if small, snowman with our friend Pete. The snowman was christened Dr. Gan Bei.
- We celebrated a very different kind of Christmas – Matt Norick came to visit us from Korea. We partied it up royally the first night at Sunny Nightclub, took Matt for all sorts of Chinese delicacies (I think he really enjoyed the food), and generally had a great time together. One Christmas Eve, the school took all the foreign teachers and Chinese staff out to a supper/party at a hotel. The food was great and then there was entertainment – some of it great, some of it not so much. It was fun though. We said goodbye to Matt at 4:30 Christmas day, and Karli had to teach that morning. We spent the rest of the day talking to family and friends, reading and drinking red wine – basically trying to forget we were missing Christmas at home. We kept waiting for it to feel like Christmas, but that feeling never came. We both agree that we have to treat it as though we just skipped Christmas this year, for our own good. It was just another day here... We finished by having hamburgers at Pete’s apartment with all the other teachers and Crystal, where we all exchanged gifts.
- Now New Year’s – that was better. I think it was easier because it is not as much a family holiday, more of a party time. I started the day by running some errands, then the school had a big lunch for all of us in the adjacent hotel. Karli was not there because she had been taken to a restaurant with some of her students to learn how to make dumplings - she had a great time. I went to two of my classes’ New Year’s “parties” in the afternoon. Their parties basically consist of them sitting in a classroom eating fruit and sunflower seeds (which most of them just huck on the floor) and they all get up and sing KTV. So different from University parties in Canada. Then Karli and I cleaned up and decorated for the party we were hosting. Everyone came over at around 7:30 and we ate, drank, visited and danced until midnight. At 12, we all shot off these big tubes that have compressed confetti in them. It got everywhere! We are still finding it is the drapes, light fixtures, etc. But it was so fun! Then we did a cheers with magnums of “sparkling wine” that Steve got for about $2.50 each – they tasted like sparkling cough syrup. Then the best part – we all got our pots and pans and ran outside letting all of China know it was 2007! As we were banging, two guards came up to us. We were a little worried, but then one of them started banging one of our pots! It was, all in all, a really fun night.
- We finished our finals with our classes at SIE, and so here we are…we don’t start Winter Session until January 22nd, so we have the next two weeks basically off…
- We are going to Harbin, to the Ice Festival, on Tuesday night – that should be awesome.
- When we get back my parents will be here for the next week visiting. I am sooo looking forward to seeing them and showing them around the city I have some to call my home in China.
- We teach Winter Session for three weeks and then it is Spring Festival starting February17th, so NO WORK!!! LOTS OF FIREWORKS!!! LOTS OF DUMPLINGS!!! LOTS OF FUN!!!
- Then our plane tickets are booked for February 21st and we get back to Regina at about 8:15 PM the same day (but about 22 hours later…) Cannot wait to get home!!!
So that’s it - you are all up to date now. Now all I have to do is send some pictures if it will work!
So this was actually not the REAL birthday celebration Karli will remember...or maybe not... This was the party at lunchtime to satisfy the rest of the staff members - they love their cake! But when the dust settled, we found ourselves wandering into a swanky-looking bar down the street from Wal-Mart where we had been buying groceries. Once we established that there was no secret password to the "secret password door", this was when the trouble started...it seemed like a good idea at the time. We took an instant liking to the manager, as she did to us. Her name is Asia and she is from Siberia. We decided to first order a much craved (for Karli) bottle of Guiness - I had one too. Then we decided that since the bar was so fancy and suave, we should really be drinking wine. So we shared a bottle of white wine. It tasted like pure heaven and we were having such a good conversation that one thing led to another and we ordered another bottle...oops! It was a great time, but we sure paid for it when we both had to teach at 8:20 AM. We know you've all been there... All in all a good birthday for Karli - just wish we had the camera with us that night!
