Western weekends

It's about 8pm on Monday night here and I've still got a bunch of work ahead of me tonight. We're in the middle of our Independent Schools inspection, which means that a group of Ministry of Ed people will be going through our policies, procedures and teaching practices for the next week to ensure that by providing the BC Programs, our school is living up to it's end of the deal. Officially speaking the teachers aren't responsible for the school getting re-certified, but we still have to jump through all the necessary hoops relating to the inspection, which means having materials that are far more detailed and organized than would ever be required back home. For the most part my stuff will be ready to go, but some things will not have the polish that some of my other colleagues will present. 

Part of the reason I'll be up for the next few hours doing this hoop jumping is related to my participation in a solidly western weekend.

This weekend involved a few particularly Canadian adventures with only the slightest tinge of being China. Saturday night, as many of you will know, saw the arrival of a long-awaited movie featuring a particularly resourceful wizard with the initials HP. Well, since I've seen all the other movies and since Dalian almost never gets English language movies, I thought I'd hop on board with a bunch of the FNS crew and take it in. It was definitely entertaining, and the crowd was like a meeting at the United Nations... pretty much all the non-Chinese expats in Dalian were there. We followed this up with a trip to Brooklyn Bar for some snacks afterward and then cabbed it back home to KFQ. 

The morning brought even more Canadian awesomeness. About 6 other people were at my place by about 10am for Hockey Morning in China. Typically it's just me and my buddy Jade, but this week 5 others joined us for the end of the Toronto-Montreal game and most of the Vancouver-Chicago game. Since I have a vpn that can route through a Canadian ISP address, I can stream CBC website feeds just like watching TV back home. And since I can hook my computer up to my big screen and add some make-shift surround sound, it's just like being at home. Only with a better TV. We cooked up scrambled eggs, bacon, mini-baguettes, and had all the fruit, coffee and juice we could stuff in our gills. Everything was amazing (other than the TERRIBLE Vancouver loss... 7-1 for Chicago!) and led to a pretty slow-moving afternoon.

So I'm now up to my ears in work and am thinking about how I'd love to be back there on Sunday, making breakfast and watching the game. Nothing good lasts for long, I guess.

Time for work. Lots of love, everyone. Keep donating to MOVEMBER!!! See the links in the last posts to donate. THANKS SEAN! The EduMoCators have now received $90 from my friends, so keep 'er going!

T