Back at School!

A quick note, my new personal blog is
http://allisongetscreative.blogspot.com I am trying to get it updated
on blogger to show on the side, but since I have to work through
proxies, I am having trouble updating things like that. Perhaps blogs
will eventually be open again in China...... wishful thinking? Maybe.
The only other option is to get my own domain hosting and do a blog on
that.. but I don't have the inclination for something like that. When we
go away in January/February, we can change the options on the side of
blogspot.

Today was the first day that I stepped foot in the school. We had some
professional development today, and stayed mostly in the auditorium.
Tomorrow we'll start work in the classrooms and dealing with
"administrivia". I saw some of our students from last year today. It's
been a little worrying because I saw an entire horde of students, but
only some of them were from last year. WHERE DID ALL MY STUDENTS GO?
Perhaps they don't all have to come for military training.... I will see
the class lists sometime this week and then maybe I will stop worrying
so much.

We have many new teachers this year, and they all seem to be doing well
on their own. Getting right out there, nice and independent. It's good.
With such a large staff, we won't all be together all the time. It'll be
interesting to see a new dynamic at school this year. Last year was very
informal and relaxed (for staff meetings), but this year, we have almost
20 people (? I haven't sat down and counted the number of people yet --
I'm just waiting for someone to tell me how many "international
teachers" there are). I expect that this year, staff meetings might be
a little bit more formal, and we won't be as familiar with EVERYONE as
we have been last year.

Other than that, nothing much has changed as far as I can tell..

****

In other news, I have gone and purchased a new fitted sheet for our bed.
Our bed is a King Sized bed. (180cm x 200cm x 20cm). We had originally
purchased a sheet from Tesco that said that it was the right size, but
it doesn't fit. I don't know if it was defective or if it shrunk, but it
always pulls off, and then we end up sleeping on the plastic =(. This
weekend, I went to the fabric market and commissioned one to be made in
the colour I want. So a bit of a price comparison. A fitted sheet in
plain cotton at Tesco (same as last time) is 79 RMB, to get a nice PINK
sateen one is 99 RMB. No choice on colour. I chose a nice purple sateen
- with labour, it comes out to 75 RMB. What a deal! (FYI, I did not
negotiate the pricing as I thought it was fairly reasonable..... I could
be wrong, but I stand by my decision). I pick up my new sheet next
week. Will update you at that time.

On the way back from the fabric market, we stopped off and had lunch at
a restaurant Karen and I had been eyeing -- a Chao Zhou (cantonese: chiu
chow?) Dai Pai Dong. It was great! It had some good southern-style
foods. We tried their gawn chow ngow ho (dry-fry-beef-rice-noodle) and
it was pretty decent! So exciting! Next time, I will try their teng gie
jook (pardon my cantonese pinyin... i don't know how to do it!). Alvin
also went all the way to Tianjin and had some dimsum, so things are
looking up this year already.