Yay Spring Festival: Hello Kuala Lampur!

Hey all,

So now that i'm on holiday, maybe i'll be able to blog (or blob) more often! We got off of school last friday and I was off for guangzhou on the saturday. Spent the week seeing friends, eating lots of food and sleeping - a lot. =) I managed to get some stuff done, but not as much as I was hoping for, unfortunately! Calvin and allie came up on wednesday night and today we left for KL.

So we've arrived safely in KL! We managed to navigate from the airport to the subway lines, and even to the area where our hotel is, but then we spent AGES walking around trying to find it. Eventually we gave up and took a taxi (with a taxi driver who totally ripped us off, but was otherwise very pleasant) to the hotel. Air Asia was good, their chairs look like lazy boys, but skinny ones, and they don't feed you. Thank goodness Cal stocked up on bakery buns! We were starving halfway through the flight and by the time we landed we were even more starved. Our walk around the area really didn't improve the situation, but after finding our hotel, we finally ate at this restaurant across the street. We met the boss lady in the lobby of our hotel and she was really wonderful. Since the whole menu was in malay, she treated us to some of the foods they have for tea. She gave us some Indian style pakoras, some deep fried banana bread balls, sweet coconut sugar and this potato/plantain type of starch. We also shared a roti canai - which was lamb curry with a pulled roti. YUMMY. I wish i took a picture of it, but we ate it too fast. She only gave us one in case we didn't like it. But when we wanted to order more, they were closed. boo! She was really sweet anyways, I'm sure we'll be back.

Our hotel is nice, but not as nice as the one that allie and cal stayed at in GZ. Rob is coming in tomorrow so i get to repeat the journey to the airport again to get him. haha.. fun! I'll start taking pictures tomorrow, but don't expect them to be posted until i get home, along with the ones from november on.. ;) tata for now!

Ridiculous!

So.... it's been a while since I published last eh?

How is everyone out there? Things here have been good. Busy, but good. There always seems to be something on the go and when there isn't surfthechannel.com has been my very good friend, but more about that later.

So what's been happening? Well, I've been settling into my class. My kids have grown. I got a new one this week. Things at school have been busy. There's been a lot of paperwork due lately and report cards in two weeks, so really we all know what I should be working on now, but aren't. ;) Really though, report cards for preschool? How much can be said about that? We had some pretty special days, crazy hair pajama day, halloween, more cooking fun that turned out better than my initial first experiments. ;) It's been pretty busy.

Outside of school things have been...well kinda unexciting. I haven't had much opportunity to really explore Dalian. Weeknights are kinda a bust and weekends have been pretty slack lately. It doesn't help that it's freakin' freezing here right now and to go out i need several layers of clothing. Dalian is funny though cuz for the most part it's gorgeous blue skies, sunny and bright, but the wind! On two consecutive days it can look exactly the same from my window, but one day will be a hoody day and the other day will be down jacket day. How's a girl to know how to prepare??? Needless to say, wimp that I am, I have gone to school in long johns already. ;)

October holiday came and went so fast. Allie, Cal and their coworker Karen came down to GZ with me. We had a really nice time wandering the city shopping and eating some good old cantonese food. It was really nice for them to meet Sam and get to see the city that I've spent so much time in.

A week after I came back Sam came up for his "birthday" (which really occurs in November, but for some reason he got confused... don't ask. ;) It was wonderful having him here, he was able to help me find some really yummy places to eat, even a tsim tsai tsui that serves char siu! it's sweeter than at home, but still yummy. We went to the beach and he got to hang out at the ocean a bit. It was wonderful having him here.

Our staff has had a never ending stream of birthdays since we arrived. Last month there were 4 and 3 of them were in the same week! Needless to say there have been quite a few parties. It's been exhausting. =P Halloween was a lot of fun. Three other girls and I went as the Pink Ladies. We got our costumes made at a tailors here. The jacket turned out really well! There was a Halloween party for the maple leaf schools. There were some pretty awesome costumes, but I have to say the best one by far was Lego man. Awesome! Here are some pictures:





I'll try to post more often, but you know how well that's been working out for me! More pictures! I'll try my best! ;)

miss you and love you!

Disaster!

So I haven't posted for a while, so you'd think I'd have lots to share and tell, but honestly I don't! It's been a ridiculously busy couple of weeks and I've got very little to show for it (picture-wise). Quite honestly I've spent more time at school than I have at home, or anywhere else for that matter, and except for a fabulous weekend with the Woos, I've spent pretty much every waking moment at school. =P

One thing I thought I'd share to give my good friend molly-o a laugh, again.. it comes back to my cooking... ='( Teaching preschool, I thought it would be a good idea to do a little cooking. They seem to LOVE playing kitchen and cooking and they've playing it every day when they can at center time, so I thought, since we're doing the letter A, we could make something easy like apple crumble without too much hassle. WELL... let me tell you...

So I bought a toaster oven a couple of weeks ago, and I got the "inexpensive" (read: cheap) one. It was kinda a spur of the moment thing. I found a bunch of food at Metro (China's version of Costco) that needed toasting and I grabbed one quick. Turns out there is no temperature dial on this one and it's something that is necessary when baking apparently. =) So I test drove Apple crumble at home, just to make sure it would work. There was a bit of smoking but it wasn't the first time that I've had smoking out of this oven, so I didn't pay too much attention. About 10 minutes before the timer went off, I thought I'd take a peek. Lo and behold, I look inside the oven and blue flames are dancing on top of my apple crumble!!! Scorched the top of my oven and the top layer of the apple crumble was history, but the underside was pretty good!



The topside and underside of my first attempt.






Luckily we figured out how to do it for the kids. Our apple crumble at school turned out quite well, so that was lucky!

Here are some pictures of my birthday celebration at school. =) Yum, meat!

Early Discoveries!

A slice of cantaloupe on a stick... yummy!

The beach that we finally found... there's nothing like a little R&R next to a construction zone!

Some of the crazy architecture in KaiFaQu. Are we in China or Europe?

Oh, definitely in China! ;)

The aliens are coming! Was this park inspired by War of the Worlds or what? =)

My apartment. Pretty cute eh? =)
My workspace! Sorry you can't see my hot new DVD player! It's white and PINK!!!
Dinner at Noah's - they have awesome pizza with some interesting ingredients. We had one this night that was called "Angry" - it had some hot jalapenos and it made a couple of people pretty hot under the collar! I just tried another one that had peaches on it... who'd have thunk it?

My First Classroom!

I know, I know... it's only been two weeks and already I am behind on my correspondences! I apologize, but I've been busy! Here's where the bulk of my time was spent:









This was my classroom. There were quite a bit of toys from last year and the last teacher left a bunch of resources! Thank goodness! =) The two on the left are my classroom and the room on the right is the nap room.

This is my classroom now:














I know! I've got my own name plate!!!!








My Calendar:










The furniture is gigantic isn't it? I can barely see over it... and the kids could fit inside! You'd think that metric measurements would be the same the world over, but apparently something is lost in the translation! ;)

Ok, time for bed! I'll post again sooner rather than later! ;)

Getting to Dalian

No time to waste, we developed a complex and highly technical food rating system on the plane. Little pasta noodles that taste like cheese: THUMBS UP!








Our Japanese hotel room had two bathrooms: one for the toilet and an impossibly small sink and one
for the shower and a much more manageable sink. Personally I think the toilet could have used that sink more than the shower, but what do I know? =)

Yes, the toilet was multi-functional: it was also a bidet and a "shower". Not sure what that means.








A street in downtown Narita. Unfortunately I didn't get a shot of any of the cute Japanese cars. They are adorable!









Shannon and my mystery soup, well.. the mystery was more why the menu had a picture with clams in it, but gave us soup with shrimp heads!








These vending machines were EVERYWHERE in Narita. Every 10 feet on the street , just standing by the side of the road. Pretty funny.







Dalian Airport: we jam-packed 10 people's luggage and 14 people into a 25 person van. Nice team building exercise! ;)