Happy Independence Day to Our Mexican Friends!

To all of our dear friends in Mexico,

Happy Independence Day! We can't believe that a year ago, we were there to celebrate with you. Even though we are thousands of kilometers away, you are all in our hearts. We celebrated with a toast of vitamin T and hours of Maná. Don also kept his shirt on to teach his class this afternoon. They are the only students in China who know what September 16th and El Grito are.

Abrazos, Julietta y Don Dengue

Happy Mid-Autumn Festival!

It was Mid-Autumn Festival on Sunday. We got a holiday out of it and lots and lots of mooncakes. Growing up in Canada, we celebrated this festival but I never realized how important the holiday is here. It turns out that it is the second most important holiday in China, only after Spring Festival (Chinese New Year). While preparing for class, we learned all about it. It is a time to celebrate abundance and togetherness. Families and friends get together to eat mooncakes under the moonlight. There are also many different legends surrounding the festival and they even have a version with a lady on the moon.

We had to call on our friends Sunrise and Cruise at bbq last Friday to check the ingredients of mooncakes for us. Since there is no English on most of them, we have no idea what the fillings are. Some of them are marked with Chinese characters on the mooncake but many just have a swirl pattern. We will be eating mooncakes for a couple of months.

Welcome Newbies!

The school welcomed the freshmen last week. Here is a welcome sign at the south gate... I guess cause I can't read it :)





There was a crush of them arriving shortly before their first day at university. Many were accompanied by their parents. All the street vendors took advantage of this and started selling necessities like washbasins, thermoses, bedding, towels and other basics. Even our fruit lady got into the act and sold more necessities then fruit.













The basketball courts became temporary parking lots to accommodate all the parent units' cars.





This was their first day. Instead of starting classes right away, they have 2 weeks of military training. It was very hot today, about 30C! Notice all their water bottles in the stands. Poor dears.

A Walk in Jinan

Here is a good steady business at a small fountain downtown. A guy sells a baby bottle of fish food to passersby. The fish were almost jumping out of the water.



















These are nice closeups of a newly demolished site. Not too long ago, there were rows of low buildings here. Guess it's making way for progress. Some people have described Jinan looking like a post war city. From these photos, it certainly does.

Another Video of Hong Kong

Here is Don's video from the evening we watched the sound and light show in HK. Enjoy!

Preparing for the First Day of School

Hey, we've been off for two and a half months! It's hard to go from doing nothing to lesson planning. Our apartment got really clean last semester because we found that a great way to procrastinate was to clean. I was further challenged yesterday cause it was stormy and threatening rain all afternoon.

I am happy to report that we've both made it to our computers to start preparing. Unfortunately, there's a lot of files to be organized first and then there's the perfect music to play in the background and then there's this blog to write...

Laziness is...

“Deep summer is when laziness finds respectability.” – Sam Keen

Since our return from Hong Kong, we have done very little and only move when absolutely necessary. We stay up late. I sleep in. Don catches up on documentaries. When I get up, we watch more tv from the Internet. Periodically, I get hooked on a series and watch it for hours on end. It’s a great way to watch tv really, no waiting for the next week or the Fall season.

We’ve been on vacation since the middle of June. This has been our routine except for the few days we traveled. We had great plans. We would travel lots. We would prep for next semester. I wanted to study Mandarin from the books, cds and flashcards I have. But then laziness took over.

Traveling by ourselves turned out to be a lot more than we had bargained for. Then there was the money issue. Teaching English is not a lucrative career choice.

The hot days here make it uncomfortable to go outside much so we wait till evenings. It leaves us very unmotivated. That’s our excuse and we’re sticking to it.

It’s also been very quiet in our building. Rob, Don and I are the only teachers in the building over the summer. All the others have either left for good or will return for the next semester. Mr. Hou, the caretaker, is the only other person in this 5 floor, 20 unit building. For the two weeks we were gone, Rob pretty well had the place to himself. We had talked about playing some kind of drinking / bowling game in the empty hallways but then the laziness set in.

Luckily school starts again on August 28^th. I still don’t know if I have classes on that day yet. They’ll tell me next week. Don already knows his schedule and will have a busy day on Thursday, his busiest of the week. We’re looking forward to getting back to teaching and reminding the students what English sounds like. It’s highly unlikely that the majority of them practiced at all during the summer.

Our contract here is up at the end of January and what we do next is up for discussion. I’ve got to get back to the couch now. J xoxo

p.s. If anyone out there has any suggestions on what we should do next, we're open to your advice.