It's been awhile...

For me, the defining characteristic of my experience in China has been how wonderfully happy I’ve been. That in itself is great, but it has left me with lots of questions. Why was it that I was so unhappy (in comparison to before), and will this happiness one day ware off or become dull? (I honestly believe the answer is no, but we’ll see). Thankful it has answered one question for me; whether going to China was a good choice or not. Not only am I sure that it was, I’m certain I picked the right school to join. I don’t think (though I try) I can express to you what it’s like being with the kids throughout the day. No interaction is bad. Even one day, when I had a little girl crying because another girl had hurt her feelings, the experience of helping her resolve her problem with the other kids was great. I could go on, but I won’t, because I will always fall short of giving you a true impression of my experiences here.

I’ve also wondered if this happiness I feel is felt constantly by some people. If so, I’m pretty pissed (though not really pissed), that I didn’t get to fit into this boat. On the flip side I now believe that no matter how miserable someone is, they can find an environment that will make them happy. That’s a darn good thought; pretty much guarantees happiness so long as you’re clever enough to find it.

Of course with things going so well, I’m beginning to become protective of my happiness. I definitely don’t want to upset the state that I’m in, so I’m keen to keep my life in a rather static mode. Luckily that just means more time with kids, learning Chinese, and making friends -- An excellent combination.

Though don’t get the impression that my life (or that I think my life) is perfect; I’ve simply traded some displeasures for others. The deal was this: I get to enjoy life, and professional grow as a teacher, but in exchange, I take a very removed break from physics. I don’t think you understand what that means, but I’ll put it this way (which you are likely not going to believe). Imagine that you’re Christian and you temporarily trade your relationship with God, and in return you get to be incredibly happy. You’ll be exactly that, incredibly happy, but something very important will be missing. I know you think I’m exaggerated, but ah well, it’s not my job to convince you, after all this is just a blog with a silly name.

Before moving on, I do want to say one final thing, and that is that there is a lot that I would like to include in my life that I can’t. I do very much miss my friends (you should all know who you are!), and it does make me sad to be far from all of my family (though Darryn is only a few hours plane ride away, so that’s not too far).

So that’s that. I’m happy, and it’s ridiculous.

Now I haven’t posted for awhile, so a lot has happened, Unfortunately I’m bound not to remember much of it, so I’ll just write about what I have pictures of. That’s probably what you really read my blog for anyway – the pictures.

Let’s start with some of the cute kids.These are the kindergarten kids at my school. Once a week I take care of them at recess (I’m usually with the older-than-kindergarten kids).



I’m sure you can tell that they’re cute, so I’ll leave it at that.

A few weeks ago one of the teachers and I took the boarding kids (all of whom I teach) to the beach. Every week there is a different activity (another week it was to a gym where a fitness trainer followed me around and made me exercise with him. He was super nice, but only interested in me because of my English, so a little annoying). Anyway, we got pretty wet.




My favourite part was riding the waves with one of the students.



The same night I had a fantastic dinner with some of the teachers (One of the teachers, Luke, use to be a Chef). The only worth while picture to show is this one of Chris’s baby:


I went to Qingdao for the weekend, and had a pretty awesome time. Granted, this might be because pretty simple things make me happy. For one thing, getting this ID (it’s a discount card), with the name Boblar was wonderful, but probably more wonderful was the look on the waitresses face when she heard that I was Boblar for Canada. I think she thought the name was awesome, as I obviously did. The girl kissing me is “Audrey Hepburn.”


The next morning, I got an email from my rock climbing friend Xu that a group of people (that she herself didn’t know) where going to climb a mountain called Laoshan (which is famous here). This was perfect! I loved the idea of having a group of people to practice my Chinese on, and that’s exactly what happened. Of course, my Chinese is bad so I had to use a lot of gestures, and Xu as my dictionary, but it was great. I felt like a diplomat, sharing what I loved about China, and what I love about Canada. Of course, talking about all this love led to a lot of “cheers-ing” and after 2.5L of beer, I was done drinking for the night. It was just an incredible night. Here are the pictures.











After that weekend experience, I didn’t do much that was exciting during the following weekends. This was almost entirely due to the fact that the school year has been in the process of ending (yesterday was the last day of school), so I’ve been very busy with writing exams, and writing reports. Having of course very little guidance about how to go about doing this, it took a lot of my time to complete, but it was a great experience. So the last two weekends I spent almost exclusively at the school, with the occasional meet up with friends to eat/play.

Also, I know that I joke about being the head of the science/math department, but sometimes it’s tough! I’ve woken up from nightmares in which I find that the books I’ve ordered are filled exclusively with words (an ESL nightmare!). I’m not even going to get into the feelings I have about ordering lab equipment. It's cool to have thousands of dollars to be able to spend on new equipment, but it brings its own stresses.

Another big thing that’s been going on at the school is the end of year production. I have some really cute videos of the kids performing in it, but they’re too large to upload to YouTube, so for now they will not be making it to the walls of Cute Qubit. Luckily though, I have pictures of most of the cast.

There were sailors (ECE kids):


Pirates:


Sultanas (+Sultan):


Mer People:


And Neptune's gang (these are my kids):



I should note a few things. First off, the girl giving a peace sign is almost impossible to photograph without her covering her face, so this is a rare picture to have. Secondly, though I have these 8 kids, I will also teach 10 others next year (the ones moving up to Year 7). Secondary is also getting two more teachers and two more classrooms, so a lot of growth for my department.

But for now school is over. I’m moving to Shenzhen for a month to live with my brother and then I have to start getting ready for school in Beijing (I’ll explain that another day – I’ll still teach in Qingdao) at the start of August. As I’ll be less busy, I’ll try to shrink the time between blog posts. But for now, I’ll leave you with this picture from “frosh day,” a day where we introduce the year 6’s to the secondary world (secondary starts in year 7 in the British curriculum). This is at the end of a yogurt boat race: