Matt and Angel:
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Busy Holidays

10/30/2018

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Ironically, holidays - a time when we take a break from daily life - usually end up making us busier! Even though I'm not working this year, the past month has still been super busy due to the holidays. At the end of September, China celebrated the Mid-Autumn Festival and then the first week of October is the Chinese National Day Golden Week.

Matt got a week off, so we traveled to Qingdao to visit some friends and give him a chance to spend some relaxing time in Qingdao since he didn't get to enjoy it much while being so busy at work there last year. We had some nice meals, got to hike a little bit, visit the beach near where we used to live, and hang out with many friends. We finished the trip off by getting food to go from one of our favorite restaurants in Qingdao - Burger and Bun.
The trip was a lot of fun, but unfortunately on the first day, as we were getting off the train, I didn't "mind the gap" when I was looking behind me to grab my suitcase, and my foot slipped down into the gap between the train and platform. I fell all the way up to my thigh, so my leg was pretty bruised up and I couldn't do too much intense activity during the trip. We were really grateful that nothing was broken and that I could still walk, just more slowly than normally. So, let this be a warning to everyone: really do mind the gap like the announcements say! It took a couple of weeks, but my leg is fully healed now.

After we came home from Qingdao, I discovered that my Worm Inn had gotten infested with fungus gnats. I've been trying to starve them out by not feeding or watering the worms this month and kill off the adults by putting a bowl of apple cider vinegar and dish soap in the Worm Inn. As you can see in the photo, I've successfully killed lots of gnats, but there are still some in there. Frustrating! So, I've ordered an improved worm home that zips at the bottom and the top (whereas the one I have now just zips at the top and has a drawstring at the bottom, so that's probably where the gnats entered). I'll get the improved worm home when we go to the U.S. in December, so hopefully that will solve my gnat issues once and for all!
At the end of the holiday week, after we got back from Qingdao, it was my birthday, so Matt and I went out to a nice Italian restaurant near where we live in Tianjin. Then, the following week I experimented with making some new dishes - everything bagels and sweet potato cheesecake. The cheesecake turned out really well. The bagels were okay but definitely could be improved upon in the future. During the second week of October, we went to the Chinese church where we volunteer once a month and led music. It was my third time playing piano publicly. It went okay, but it always makes me super nervous to play in public.
The third weekend in October, Matt and I were away again, but not together this time. He had to go to Beijing for a tech conference, and I went to a women's retreat in downtown Tianjin. It was a good time of fellowship for me and a good time of learning for him but also made the month feel quite busy!

​As soon as we got back home, we had another factor to contribute to busyness. Earlier in October, our friend asked us if we would help her family by taking a dog that they had been given by another friend who moved away. Our friend's family is in a busy season right now with health problems, and it was getting difficult for them to care for this dog. Our friend knew that we were open to getting a dog eventually, so she thought this would be a perfect solution. We met the dog earlier in the month and then after our travels were finished, he came to live with us. We've spent the past week adjusting to him and getting him adjusted to us. He was already potty trained and now we're working on getting him to go to sleep later and wake up later (instead of sleeping from about 7 p.m. to 5:30 a.m. like he was used to) and we're trying to teach him to sit and fetch. He's about a year old, so he has a lot of energy but fortunately, he also doesn't mind cuddling with me during the day and taking naps in the sun. So, without further ado, meet Aka!
In addition to adjusting to life with a dog this last week, a couple of other things kept us very busy: Matt was invited to be the guest speaker at a Model United Nations meeting in downtown Tianjin last Thursday, and Friday we had several of Matt's coworkers over for a Halloween dinner party. Both events were a lot of fun but took a lot of preparation work! Now, poor Matt had to go back to the office, but Aka and I have been relaxing today and yesterday to recover from all this busyness. It's a good thing we have a lot of leftovers from the party, so I can take a little break before getting back into daily life, post-holidays.
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2017 Recap

1/24/2018

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I just realized that we haven't had time to do a New Year's recap survey since 2014. Too bad because I like looking back and remembering what happened each year, but I guess that's just a sign that 2015 and 2016 were super busy.

1. What did you do in 2017 that you'd never done before?
We moved to a new city in China. I taught English writing to postgraduate students (one of the few combinations I haven't taught before...definitely a learning curve). Matt started a new job as IT director.

2. Did you keep your new years' resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I did meet my GoodReads challenge last year and set another one for this year. Otherwise, I decided over the summertime to start making new school year resolutions instead. So far, they're going pretty well, but I'll blog about that another time.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
Matt's sister almost did, but the baby actually waited until 2018 to make his appearance.

4. Did anyone close to you die?
No, I don't think so.

5. What countries did you visit?
US, China, Japan

6. What would you like to have in 2018 that you lacked in 2017?
Better Chinese.

7. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
This is kind of a culmination of three years of work, but I think the progress that I saw in some of the students I worked with intensively at my ESL job was the biggest achievement of this year and 2015/2016. In 2014, 2015, and 2016, my co-workers and I would just speak English really quickly in front of the students if we wanted to say something about them or talk about something we didn't want the students to understand. Last year, the students who had been with me over the course of my whole time teaching at that school finally started cracking our code because their English listening skills had improved so much. I had thought that the hours after school that I had spent with some of the students doing grammar drills and helping them study was having no affect because they would keep failing their tests and not being able to remember anything. But suddenly, in that final year of working with them, so many things clicked, and they actually did retain things. It was really nice to go out on that note :)

8. What was your biggest failure?
I learned a lot from this, but I think my biggest failure was allowing the school-chosen textbooks to set the pace of my curriculum this semester in my new job. It made the classes way too hard for my students' English level.

9. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Just the virus I had from Christmas until after New Year's. I haven't been down that long with an illness since I was in middle school. I forgot how draining it is to have a fever.

10. What was the best thing you bought?
When we moved to our new apartment in Qingdao, I found a double decker dish drainer that stands above your sink on Taobao. It is so convenient and frees up a lot of counter space. I love it!

11. Where did most of your money go?
We finally found a good budget app, so I can actually check the reports now, and most of our money went to giving, groceries, and stuff for our new apartment.

12. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
Having more free time working at a university teaching job again.

13. Compared to this time last year, are you:
a) happier or sadder?
 
Happier (more free time)
b) thinner or fatter? 
Slightly fatter, but I'm trying to maintain weight.
c) richer or poorer?
Slightly richer

14. What do you wish you'd done more of?
Chinese studying

15. What do you wish you'd done less of?
Lesson planning

16. What was your favourite TV program?
Superstore, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, and The Great British Baking Show

17. What was the best book you read?
Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

18. What was your greatest musical discovery?
All Sons and Daughters, Audrey Assad

19. What did you want and get?
More free time

20. What did you want and not get?
Two bathrooms in our apartment

21. What was your favourite film of this year?
These were released in 2016, but I didn't see them until this summer when we were on the plane to and from the U.S., so I will consider them 2017 for me...Lion and Passengers. Both so good, they made me cry right there in my economy seat. Of movies that we saw in the theater (since I actually have time to do that now), Thor was the best. (Of course, Star Wars was amazing, but it didn't come out in China until 2018.)

22. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
Matt organized a dinner for me with some new Qingdao friends at a Xinjiang restaurant near our house. I turned 33.

23. How did you celebrate Christmas?
Sick in bed with a fever. However, the week before Christmas, we had two big parties with Chinese students.

24. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2017?
Yoga clothes in the hot summer and tons of Uniqlo layers in the cold winter. (I spend a lot less time in climate-controlled settings now that I no longer work in an international school.)

25. What kept you sane?
God and Matt

26. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
Jimmy Fallon and Stephen Colbert (who actually kept me sane about politics)

27. What political issue stirred you the most?
Always climate change/environmental issues, but of course, there were plenty of others this year.

28. Who did you miss?
So many people! It does get easier over time to be in another country, but of course, I always miss friends & family from home. Now, I also miss everyone from Tianjin.

29. Who was the best new person you met?
Some of Matt's new co-workers and one of my students who was really intentional about getting to know me outside of class

30. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2017.
Roll with the punches, but also learn from them.
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Recap of the Holidays

1/22/2018

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Sadly, I've fallen a bit behind on my resolution this year to blog at least once a month, so this month, I'll have to post at least two blogs. A record!

First, here's a recap of what made me too busy to blog over the past couple of months.

In mid-December, we hosted two big Christmas parties at our house. Matt spent his Christmas break in California with his family, so I suddenly realized that if we wanted to have people over for Christmas, we had to do it before he left. So, with about a week's notice, I started planning. On Saturday night, we invited one of my classes over. Then on the next day, we hosted my training course members for a special Christmas "Free Talk."

For each party, I wanted to have a lot of homemade American-style food that Chinese people usually haven't had before. (My second post this month will be about an unexpected hobby I've started this year - a return to baking/cooking, which I pretty much haven't done much since we moved to China.) So, for several days before the party weekend, I was prepping food.

The parties went well. People enjoyed trying new food, including salty popcorn (Chinese popcorn is always sweet), homemade bread, potato and sausage soup, hummus and pita, cookie bars, brownies, and more. My favorite quote about the food was one student asking another student about the soup, "Is it sweet?" "No." "Is it salty?" "No...it's just, delicious!" We held a White Elephant gift exchange at each party, and everyone had a great time giving and stealing gifts. The best moment of the gift exchange was when Matt and I had accidentally put one of our wedding photos in the box we contributed to the White Elephant exchange. (Apparently, I had put it there when we moved and forgot about it.) When the student opened the gift, he was like, "Wow! Does the picture come with the gift, too?" After everyone finished laughing, Matt and I told him that unfortunately, he couldn't keep our wedding photo. Oops.
After the fun of Christmas parties and Matt's departure for the U.S., I promptly got sick with a bad virus that kept me in bed for several days straight. I had a low fever for almost a week,  had to reschedule two days of classes, and had no energy to get any grading/planning done. For about three days, my voice was totally gone, and it took a few weeks for it to get totally back to normal. In the video below (which shows one of the only "snowfalls" we've had this year), taken on January 7, you can hear my voice is still pretty stuffy, and I first started getting sick right before Christmas.

It was pretty awful to lose so many days of productivity so late in the semester, but there wasn't much that could be done about it. I went to the doctor's to get a flu test and see if there was any medication that could be given to help me kick it faster, but the flu test came back negative, so the doctor said it was some other type of virus, and I would just have to rest and wait to recover. The second week I was sick, I managed to go to class, and my fever had gone down, but I was still super out of it and not able to get a lot of work done. So, my Christmas and New Year's were both spent in bed - Christmas with a fever and New Year's just still trying to catch up on rest and recover my voice.
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Christmas Eve...in bed with a fever :(
After I recovered enough to really work productively again, of course, it was time for finals! So, for the last few weeks since the holidays, I've been working like a maniac to try to catch up on the work I missed when I was sick and to get through the final papers and final exams grading.

On Monday this week, the last exams were finally graded, and my Chinese New Year winter holiday break officially started. I now have almost 6 weeks off, but much of that time will be, of course, dedicated to prepping for next semester. Now that I have more of a feel for these new courses, there are a lot of things I want to change to make the next semester more manageable for me and for the new batch of students I'll have. The more work I do now, the less stress next semester, so it will be a working holiday, but that's pretty much the case for all teachers, I think.
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Even though I'll try to get a lot of work done over the break, we'll still do some fun things. We've already enjoyed the latest Star Wars installment at the mall down the street from our apartment, and we're going to Thailand for part of the break.

That's about all for my general life updates. More to come in a later post on specifics (such as how I'm keeping up with my other resolutions...some yay! some...at least I still have half a school year left...)
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New Year's Survey

1/13/2015

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I enjoy doing these New Years surveys to reflect on the year that's passed and the year ahead. A little late, but here goes:
1. What did you do in 2014 that you'd never done before?
So much! The most shocking thing (to me) was that I figured out how to balance chemical equations and then taught it to my seventh graders, all in the span of about 10 minutes one day during science class. (Oh, the joys of being a push-in ESL teacher with almost no time for planning with the mainstream content teachers. This means I'm constantly learning stuff on the fly so I can help my kids figure it out.) Learning chemical equations particularly stands out to me because I remember being SO confused by them as a high school junior, so I was pretty impressed that as a 30-year-old, I finally had enough cognition to figure it out.
2. Did you keep your new years' resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I don't think I made specific resolutions last year, other than my Goodreads challenge. I set my goal to read 100 books, and I made it to 74, so this year, I set my goal to read 75 books.
3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
I'm sure many Facebook friends did, but no one close enough to visit any newborn babies last year.
4. Did anyone close to you die?
No, I don't think so.
5. What countries did you visit?

US, China, Hong Kong
6. What would you like to have in 2015 that you lacked in 2014?
More time to spend with old friends, better Chinese.
7. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Finishing my master's program.
8. What was your biggest failure?

Not finishing any research projects (which I need to do if I want to apply for PhD programs in a few years).
9. Did you suffer illness or injury?
No, nothing serious.
10. What was the best thing you bought?
I didn't buy it myself, but our school provided me with an iPad since some of my students use iPads in class, and I've liked it a lot more than I thought I would. So convenient.
11. Where did most of your money go?
Maybe food? Grad school payments? We don't keep a specific budget anymore, so I don't know for sure.
12. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
Hmm...I'm not a very excitable person. I think I was most excited that they made an Into the Woods movie even though I still haven't been able to see it (it didn't get released in China).
13. Compared to this time last year, are you:
a) happier or sadder?
 
About the same, maybe a little happier since my master's is finished.
b) thinner or fatter? 
About the same, maybe a little fatter since we ate so much good food in Hong Kong last month.
c) richer or poorer?
Definitely richer. New job pays much better than the old job, even if it is a ton of work.
14. What do you wish you'd done more of?
Research.
15. What do you wish you'd done less of?
Lesson planning.
16. What was your favourite TV program?
Best new show I discovered: The 100. Best old shows I still love: The Walking Dead, Grey's Anatomy, The Good Wife, and Dancing with the Stars.
17. What was the best book you read?
Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese
18. What was your greatest musical discovery?
Um...Hillsong? Not really a discovery, but I did listen to them more last year than in the past.
19. What did you want and get?
A good Chinese teacher.
20. What did you want and not get?
To finish writing at least one research article.
21. What was your favourite film of this year?
I guess I didn't see many films in 2014. I just skimmed through the first few pages of IMDB's list of 2014 movies, and most were totally unfamiliar to me. Of the ones I did see, the only ones that stood out as good were X-Men: Days of Future Past, Maleficent, and Guardians of the Galaxy. But I wouldn't rank any of those as a favorite. If I had seen Into the Woods, I'm sure it would've been the favorite.

22. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?

I helped give language placement tests at school. It was super busy, so I barely had time to eat, much less do anything fun for my birthday. I think Matt got me a donut from the bakery near our house, but it was such a busy day, I barely remember. Oh, and I turned 30.

23. How did you celebrate Christmas?
Christmas Eve, we hung out with friends from work at the Harley Davidson restaurant near our house & then played games. Christmas Day, we had a big dinner and White Elephant gift exchange with friends from our church.

24. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2014?
dressy teacherish.
25. What kept you sane?
Prayer.
26. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
Pretty much the only celebrities I know are from Dancing with the Stars. Last season, I liked Sadie Robertson (from Duck Dynasty) and Alfonso Ribeira (Carlton on The Fresh Prince) the best. They both seemed like such quality, down-to-earth people and are awesome dancers. I was glad they got the top 2 spots in the competition.
27. What political issue stirred you the most?
Always climate change/environmental issues. 

28. Who did you miss?
So many people! It does get easier over time to be in another country, but of course, I always miss friends & family from home.

29. Who was the best new person you met?
My coworkers, especially those in my department. My middle school students. Friends from the leadership group at church.

30. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2014.
"You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need."
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When the moon hits your eye, and fireworks are in the sky, that's Mid-Autumn Festival...

9/22/2013

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PictureMooncakes
Last week, we had another traditional Chinese festival. (I'm not sure why I only seem to post about festivals lately. I'll try to post about other stuff soon, but things are getting busy again now that school's in session.)

Mid-Autumn Festival, which took place on Thursday, is also called the Moon Festival, and from the name, you can probably guess that this holiday celebrates the moon. We both had the day off from work, so we relaxed at home, then went out to dinner and to the grocery store. On our way to the grocery store, we saw tons of people milling around our campus looking at the moon (which was a little hard to find with all the city lights).

One of the traditions on Mid-Autumn Festival is to eat mooncakes. There are many flavors of mooncakes. I don't like most of them (rose flavor is my least favorite), but we had some mango-flavored mooncakes this year that were actually quite good.

Chinese people like to get married around special festivals, so there were a lot of fireworks going off over the past four days, including some in front of the hotel on our campus. Those were pretty loud! The moon, mooncakes, fireworks....that's Mid-Autumn Festival!

A weird thing that China does around holidays like this one is to give people a "day off" but then have them make up their day off on the following or previous weekend. For example, last week, I didn't have to work on Thursday (the actual day of Mid-Autumn Festival) or Friday, but I had to teach my Friday classes yesterday (on Sunday). In my American opinion, Friday is not really a day off, and I'd kind of prefer it if they'd just not give us the "day off" that's not really a day off. However, after more than 2 years in China, I'm starting to get used to the strange "day off" system. When we first came to China, I could not believe that anyone would actually show up on a Saturday or Sunday to make up a "day off." I was shocked when all of my students showed up the first time I had to teach a make-up class on a Sunday!

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Spirit Day

8/23/2013

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PictureBurning paper money for ancestors
When I see "Spirit Day," like most Americans, I think of the days in school when everyone would come dressed in school colors and we'd have a pep rally to celebrate our sports teams and school spirit.

When I saw "Spirit Day" listed for August 21 on my Google calendar of Chinese holidays, I figured it would not be along the lines of our American school "spirit days."

Matt and I went out for dinner that night and as we were coming home, we saw many small fires on the streets where people were burning paper money for the spirits.


Sometimes it's hard to believe that as Chinese society becomes so modern and materialistic that people still hold to traditional supernatural beliefs, but so far, Chinese culture has managed to incorporate a lot of Western materialism while maintaining belief in ghosts and supernatural activity, to the point where many people believe they must burn paper money for their ancestors so that they don't do anything bad to them.

One of the students I tutor told me a few stories that make me think a lot of this preservation of traditional beliefs is handed down in China because grandparents have such a strong influence on Chinese children. Most Chinese children are raised by their grandparents while their parents both work. Grandparents often tell impressionable children about ghost stories and how to keep spirits from bothering you, so many kids grow up with these beliefs even though they are also becoming more influenced by Western culture. The boy I tutor told me that his grandmother said whenever you walk near funeral processions, you should spit on the ground 3 times to avoid the ghost of the dead person bothering you or entering your body. She also told him that whenever you are by yourself in the dark, you should never look behind you and you should tap both of your shoulders, or a ghost will get you. My student is pretty modern and mature, but he still feels a little scared by these stories. Rationally, he believes they aren't true, but when you grow up believing them, it's hard to completely disregard them.

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Dragon Boat Festival

6/11/2013

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Today is Dragon Boat Festival. Which means we have the day off from classes. Which means I should be working on my paper for my master's class. But I'm having writer's block, so I'm attempting to unblock my brain through writing about Dragon Boat Festival.

So you get to learn about a traditional Chinese holiday! Lucky you!

As far as Matt and I are concerned, Dragon Boat Festival (or 端午节, duan1 wu3 jie2) is not one of the more enjoyable Chinese holidays, mainly because of the snack that is commonly eaten for Dragon Boat Festival and that our students are fond of giving us around the time of the festival. Zongzi:

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Zongzi is the traditional food eaten for Dragon Boat Festival (at least in Tianjin). It's basically sticky glutinous rice mixed with maybe some red bean or a little bit of meat, wrapped in a big leaf. It kind of reminds me of some zhou (congee, 粥) that's been left sitting out too long. And was then wrapped in a giant leaf for some reason. I don't know, we just don't think it tastes that good. Some of our students love them, but most admit to us that they also don't like zongzi very much, which is I guess why they try to pawn them off on us.

So far we've managed to stay zongzi-free the whole day, but we're going to a birthday dinner tonight for one of our Chinese friends, so we'll see if we can keep the zongzi away throughout dinner too...
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    This blog includes posts on our life in China. Want to know what the food is like or how we deal with pollution? Find the answers here. We also include periodic updates on what we're up to for those of you back home who want to stay in touch.

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