Finally...

... I got my wish of owning a silk TaiChi suit. I'm wearing it now. It's white and has wicked (and very dangerous) dragons on it. I am the white ninja. Fear me. But trust me. 

Had to share in my new acquisition. More to come later in the week... from HARBIN! Yes, I'm heading back to the cold northern lands for New Years again. Keep your radios tuned in...

T

As another year fades

It's the twilight of 2010. Only about six days remain before another year rolls over and the arbitrary calendar date marks another trip around the sun. This weekend also marked the days when the nights become slightly shorter and the sunshine stretches on for a few more minutes every morning and evening. Time is a constant and continuous experiment in transition.

For this reason (I think), over the past few weeks, I've been thinking a lot about my chosen profession. I think I've done this every year around Christmas/New Years for a while now... a lot of reflection about whether I'm embracing my skills and passions and if I've found the job that I'm going to do for the next 25 years. It's a daunting idea: committing to a job for the next lifetime. And I keep thinking that I'm just not sure yet. It's in these times that I think about all the other professions that I could get involved with or find particularly attractive/sexy when I hear about them.

Yes, I would like a job being a Lonely Planet Travel Advisor. Is there a position for professional contestant on the Amazing Race? Yes, I would jump at a writing job if it came at me (even though my skills are quite hack-like most of the time). I've considered human resources. I once thought about being a lawyer. The idea of journalism leaves a longing taste in my mouth. But there's this teaching thing I'm into now. Hmmm.

The Christmas weekend, though, was great. It seems to get a bit easier every year to be away, even though I hate missing out on being with my family and friends back home over the holidays. This is year #3 of a non-Alberta Christmas... I had one in Victoria after I left Kelowna, then this is my second time around the block here in the far east. A friend/colleague here has been known to use the quote, "Leaving is my consummate and cursed talent" (Karen Connelly), and I'm starting to wonder if that's part of who I am or who I'm becoming. I wonder if I'll end up being that cousin/uncle/friend who everyone just refers to in passing periodically as the guy who's gone again. I love all my adventures and maybe I'm getting ahead of myself... just that time of year for reflection.

But I filled my belly with food and drinks and was surrounded by my best China friends. I exchanged and opened gifts with a few of the more select of said friends (it's an exclusive, invite-only sort of crowd). I did some house-hopping and story-swapping and now I'm just getting ready for another week of work in the land of people who let this holiday pass by in moderate silence (and when I say silence, I mean that the fireworks and techno music blasting from storefronts stayed the same).

So, from the land of dragons, donkeys and dust, g'night and a (possibly belated) Merry Christmas. Shèngdàn jié kuàilè. 圣诞节快乐.

T

Merry Merry Ho Ho

The clock just rolled past 8am here in Manjiatan, the town surrounding the school I teach and where my good friends the Seaths live. The sounds of percolating coffee and clicking mugs and a meowing jungle cat named Jojo and the movie Elf are doing a great job of making the morning of Christmas Day festive and just like home. You'd just have to substitute dogs for cats and the sounds of Garfield's Christmas for Elf and it's pretty much like home. In China.

The week seemed to fly by but, at the same time, last forever. And this year we got stuck working until about 1pm on Christmas Eve, so it took away from the feeling that it was actually Christmas. The chill in the cold, Northern China air sure made it seem like an Alberta Christmas... windy and about -15. Gross. :)

D and I just came back from the Manjiatan market where the normal Saturday business of getting the kiosks and stores ready for another day of non-holiday business. We talked about the fact that it's just another day here, when back home, Christmas Day is a massively important day of celebration. It's still funny that we can make such a holiday-esque atmosphere in an apartment when the world outside is oblivious to our feelings of merriment. I also just got a text from another friend who lives in D's building that she's got gingerbread baking downstairs. Guess where I'm going in about six minutes?!?!

I'll probably take some more time to write about the holiday tomorrow on Boxing Day, but for now, on Christmas Day, I'm going to just wish you all an excellent, wonderful and magical Christmas back home and wherever you find yourself around the world. If you send me your phone numbers I'll get some phone calls made via Skype as soon as possible. For now, and particularly because it's Christmas, lots of holiday love from China. Thinking about you guys back home.

T

And so.

Another week has nearly bit the dust. I can tell I'm ready for it to end... I was in a mad panic this morning when I realized that, instead of hitting my "snooze" on my cell's alarm, I seemed to have hit the "Alarm off" button and I only had about 15 mins to get ready to catch my car to school. This is pretty much a tragedy. I typically wake up at 5:20 to give myself LOTS of wake-up time. The pickup takes place at 6:45am. Anyone who's stayed with me or lived with me knows that I'm a slow mover in the morning. I'm not too cheerful. Really, I'm nearly comatose for the first hour. Which is why, if I want to be productive, I need to wake myself up big time before I see the students. Today, my alarm went off at 6:20am. This was not a good omen

Luckily I escaped the day unscathed. 

The week, though, had a lot of potential for tragedy. This past Tuesday, I was scheduled for my first professional observation as a real teacher with our school's principal. Now, I haven't been observed since my practicum. That was 4 years ago. This was followed by a semester of TOCing (substitute teaching, which I miss dearly and loved endlessly), followed by a 5 month contract in the Okanagan (2 different principals and I didn't get my job back!), followed by a whole year of changing and rearranging and relocating my life, while working at: a coffee cart, a publishing company, a pub, and a microbiology lab. Jack of all trades but king of none? That's me. And then China came last October, but that wasn't real teaching. So it's been what seems like a million years of poor/no teaching to get me ready for a professional observation that can be used as a reference in the future.

As I hope you can tell, I'm writing this as a still-employed teacher. And I even get to keep the same pay! Awesome! I managed to stealthily hide my typical sub-par teaching ability and my principal actually walked away saying that he enjoyed the lesson and there were lots of good things that he saw. As with all, let's say "super detailed-oriented people", there are things he has questions about and has some suggestions/comments to make, but the fact that he seems happy makes me happy. No pink slips, no plane tickets in my mailbox saying, "Get out of China now!". So I feel pretty good about that. And I live to teach another day. It's stuff like this that makes me wonder about other potential professions, though!

Otherwise, life is pretty splendid. Had a bit of yoga the other night (which is still causing me a bit of pain), some friends are in town visiting, our staff Christmas party is on Saturday, and tomorrow's lessons are PLANNED! IN ADVANCE! I didn't think I'd see the day!

So on this quite boring but delightfully content note, I'm abandoning ya'll. More interesting stories will arrive on the weekend (I hope)... maybe I'll get in a traffic altercation with a donkey cart or a rabid dongbei dog again. Who knows. As a treat, though, I'll add in a ridiculous picture of me (with moustache at the free Christmas party with the crazy powerpoint signs), Santa (he's not alive) and one of the cute Tibetan dancers who were wishing us a "Peach Life". :)

T

Arrivals with no invitation (Hello, Winter).

I guess that's how karma works: you complain one day, and then it doles out something much worse. I guess it's like the first day of discomfort after a hard workout or a big race... it's always worse the next day.

Well, winter if finally and resoundingly here. Currently, it's about -12 and the winds are gusting to about 30km/h. This probably drops the air temp to something more akin to -20. You prairie folk knows what this means: it's cold. For those of the more weather-weak on the west coast, you probably won't be able to fathom such nonsense. 

Yes, I understand the reality of you all being back home in Canada and it being even colder in some places. But what people take for granted is the fact that often, you're going from warm place to warm place with discomfort in between. But alas, this isn't so much the case here. In China, you travel from uncomfortably cold place to another uncomfortably cold place. As I was teaching PE today in the gym, I could see my breath and I had to wear a toque and gloves while writing down participation marks. The wind was whistling in the windows of my English classroom so badly that I had the entire south side of my class ask to move. This seems like an okay idea, until you realize that I teach in the smallest classroom on campus and unless I want to teach with all the boys sitting on each other's laps, this is simply impossible. And I wore a toque and gloves. Likewise, I've been engaged in a battle of wills with the cleaning staff to keep the doors and windows closed. Apparently, it's bad for your health to have warm air coursing through a school. I've taken it upon myself to battle this ignorance in stealth mode, by going around at every opportunity to close all open doors and windows. They may have sheer manpower, but I've got some stubbornness and an iron constitution to match it. Thus, it's on.

I don't like seeing my breath and wearing gloves while I teach English. Period.

In other news, I only have 8.5 more teaching days until Christmas, 12.5 teaching days until New Years, and only 17.5 teaching days left before my winter holiday can commence. I'm heading to Tianjin first before flying down to Kuala Lumpur, then onto Singapore, Chiang Mai and Laos and Cambodia after that. I'm pumped. I know I have to kinda buckle down in the meantime, but it's hard to focus. Not only is the apathy and laziness setting in amongst my students, but the weather is miserable and it's just a tough time of year to get motivated. I don't get any actual holidays for Christmas (well, we get off 2.5 hours early on Christmas Eve) so the push from our holiday in early October all the way through to winter break is a long one. It doesn't help that my principal is coming to do an observation with me tomorrow and I'm swamped with marking that I continue to avoid like the plague. It's all part of the job, but it just not what I look forward to after a long day.

Enough complaining, though. Time for work. One final shout-out before I hunker down... HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM! Lots of China love!

T

Memories I don't miss (I hate you, wind, but I love Chinglish!)

I can feel the cold air dancing across my legs as I sit here typing. The draught coming in through my patio door is relentless and adamant about sticking around and harassing me. Much like last year, I'm in slippers and I'm wearing a scarf indoors.  Luckily, I don't have any frost building up on my floor like my apartment in Daheishi. Still, though, this wind just doesn't want to let up. And needless to say, my doors aren't exactly sealed or weather-proofed.

A random story from last weekend...

So, everywhere we go here in China, travellers/ex-pats encounter nonsense signs and Chinglish, both in speech and in print. Menus can provide hours of entertainment, advertisements can be thoroughly enjoyable nonsense, and parties feature no shortage of jibberish provided by local hosts. Last Friday, CG, me and a bunch of other teachers attended a free Christmas/holiday dinner for ex-pats at a local hotel and restaurant. They hosted us like we were kings with free wine, food and entertainment. Although the food and wine were delicious, the entertainment was even better... it was simply priceless. And even better, they had a powerpoint plastered on a screen describing each of the performances.

The top 5 titles on th e Powerpoint were as follows:

5) "Lady Gaga's, 'Porker Face'" (A new reinterpretation of "Poker Face"??)

4) "Drinking Song" (A Wagner piece, I think)

3) "Tibetan People Through Dancing to Wish a Happiness and Peach Life" (A traditional Tibetan-style dance)

2) "Folk Art Play & Throw Some Stuffs With Goth - Chinese Juggle" (It was a clown juggling stuff)

AND THE GRAND FINALE...

1) "Paper-cut Hands Girl! ( A Paper-cut Show in Form of Dancing Chinese People Use Paper-cut Art to Celebrate Festivals)"

This was a dance.

As usual, China, you find ways to make me smile. And as Christmas approaches, I hope everyone back home and around the world is having an enjoyable countdown to the holidays. Much China love, all...

T

Monday.

Teaching PE sucks.

Okay, I should qualify that statement.

I love teaching PE. Or, at least most days I enjoy teaching it. It's a nice break from academic English, and you get to know the students in a new way which is different from the English classroom. 

But it's terrible when it's -2, the wind from the North is gusting up to 37km/hr, and the windchill feels like it's -10. And you're forced to teach 75 minutes of soccer down at the soccer pitch OUTSIDE near the icy waters of the Yellow Sea. In December. And you left your toque at home. The last 10 minutes were spent huddled in the storage room... thank goodness I needed to hand out some worksheets!

Things around these parts have been good but, as usual, super busy. We're only about 6 weeks away from winter vacation which I can't stop thinking about it. It's gonna be amazing. Kuala Lumpur is booked, then it'll Singapore before heading north to Chiang Mai and onto Laos and Cambodia. I'm ready to get my sweat on and go on more adventures.

The weekend featured our Mo-down Hoedown to celebrate the end of Movember and the end of the Moustache. It was fun and a good chance to get pics with all the guys who participated in the Mo-grow. Now that Monday has arrived, there are a bunch of fresh and young-looking faces to be seen amongst the teaching staff. I feel like I'm about 10 years younger and it seems as though the ladies are quite pleased (and relieved, maybe?) that the month is finally over. Next year I hope to make it even bigger and raise more cash, so beware, all! I also attended a free Christmas/holiday dinner with a bunch of friends, teachers and ex-pats from the area at a KaiFaQu hotel... it was pretty amazing, with sushi, turkey, a million other dishes, wine and entertainment. I'll hopefully post a few of the more entertaining pictures in the next few days.

I don't have a huge amount to report otherwise... I've finally started using my gym pass and I'm planning to be a buff stud by the spring, I'm busy with badminton club and sponsoring some of the debate events with the kids right now, and am getting ready for Christmas by sprucing up my apartment with lights and stockings and filling my computer with Christmas movies. Since it's officially December, I've allowed myself to be pulled into the Christmas vibe. If only Starbucks had their Peppermint Mochas in China. Things might be perfect!

For now, lunch calls. Lots of China love, as always, and thanks again to all those who helped me raise more than $200 for Movember! My one team raised nearly $1800! 

T