Well last year was a busy year! I started at a new school, am engaged, and am planning two weddings. The wedding in China is easy to plan because Jin’s mom pretty much takes care of everything and the wedding in Canada has been made LOADS easier thanks to my mom doing all the legwork for me. I finished my first semester with flying colors and am looking forward to next semester. I am hoping however, to be able to cut back some of my part time and private lessons.
It snowed again in Wenzhou this year and once again you could see snowmen hitching rides on the top of cars.
Linnea has made it to China!!! She will be working at a school called Mike’s English starting Feb 1. So far we have had welcome dinner for her, gone carpet shopping, been to my school, had coffee at Starbucks (a couple times) and gone out to the local pub.
I think this entry is just going to be based on pictures I’ve taken over the last year.
- My school: my classroom is on the 6th floor and although there is one elevator, it’s all the way across campus and it only goes to the 5th floor.
- My students: all the students gathered on the track field for the morning assembly and national anthem. I teach approximately half of those students.
- My student’s talents: This is their version of the paper airplane. Ours suck!
- Animals Of Wenzhou 1: Jin and I were walking one day and ran across this little guy. His sleek body and tiny frame made it impossible for me to not take a picture. While Jin was squirming and questioning me about my fear of bugs and not lizards, I snapped a picture.
- Animals Of Wenzhou 2: After a long day of work I returned home to find this poor guy trapped. With no way to escape out of the slippery walled sink he was forced to wait for me to get home and save him…or kill him. But I couldn’t possibly bring myself to killing him of course so I decided to try to save him. In this apartment I lived on the 6th floor. I didn’t want to touch him for fear he might emit some kind of poison or something so I grabbed a piece of paper and slowly scooped him up, carried him to my kitchen window and started to lower the paper to the window ledge. Before the paper ever reached the ledge though the little guy took his chance for escape and leapt from the paper. Unfortunately for him he misjudged the jump and went right past the ledge. There was a moment of silence before I heard a clang come from the awning of a third floor window. I do hope he’s ok.
- Animals Of Wenzhou 3: No major story here, but I picked up my school bag one day at school and this intriguing creature scared the c*** out of me! He’s pretty big too, probably 2/3rds the size of a penny. After taking a picture of him I shooed him out of my classroom.
- Animals Of Wenzhou 4: I was leaving the apartment one day and saw this guy waiting at my door. I’m assuming he’s waiting to be let in but I denied him the pleasure because I already have enough houseguests.
- Animals Of Wenzhou 5: this guy is the size of my hand. He was chilling out in the girls washroom sink at school.
- Cars of Wenzhou 1: This is a typical scene to see fancy cars parked (and blocking traffic) along the streets.
- Cars of Wenzhou 2: There is a trike hiding under that haystack somewhere.
- Funny 1: What are those babies looking at?
- Funny 2: On the bottom of the babies picture you can see that they offer “The World Best Edoucation.”
- Funny 3: Funny? The baby doesn’t look like a goon to me.
- Funny 4: Pardon???
- Funny 5: kinda counter productive I think.
- Funny 6: I don’t even know what to think.
- Just Wenzhou 1: This is a view from Jin’s parent’s apartment. That is Jiang Xing Island (the spelling is wrong I’m sure).
- Just Wenzhou 2: Some papermaking. This paper later gets turned into the toilet paper they use here.
- Just Wenzhou 3: One of the bus stops in a small village just outside Wenzhou.
- Just Wenzhou 4: A guy taking a nap during his lunch break.
- Just Wenzhou 5: This is a light store in Wenzhou. They definitely are way more fancy than we are.
- Just Wenzhou 6: One of the nice views of Wenzhou.
- Fujin 1: Jin and I had this room all to ourselves in Fujin; a city in the neighboring province.
- Fujin 2: This is the seafood restaurant street in Fujin.
- Fujin 3: A cool statue in Fujin.
- Halloween 1-7: These are a few pictures of different Halloween costumes this year. I was Robin Hood, Jin and his friends were “Nudists on Strike”, Craig was the man behind the mask, Pauline made her own skeleton costume by strategically cutting everything from paper, her friend makes a great avatar, Anna as the living bride and her friend as the dead bride, Rachel as a smurf, Sissi as Snow White, Heidi in her PJ’s, Austin was James Bond but I didn’t get a good pic of him.
