Now available at our local pharmacy...

Just an update: Matt and I have both been granted visa extensions to stay in the country here through July 21. The visas are being processed at the police department, and we will pick them up next week. Mine will be valid through July 10, 2009. Matt's will be good for 30 days, and he will apply for a student visa over the summer. We are very excited to have this burden off our backs!

Exams are not only graded, but scores have been turned into the office, as well. Grading the exams for our Western culture classes offered some fun moments...

A few of my students said that prisoners in Australia were punished by being forced to catch poisonous snakes! Matt's students were asked to use idioms in a sentence; one student said, "Matt's wife's green eyes 'threw me a curve', because I thought all Americans had blue eyes."

Overall, we are enjoying our first week of no classes! Even now, Matt is hanging out with a friend in the living room, and I am heading out the door to go shopping with some girls. We're definitely loving the summer holiday of a teacher's schedule.

One School Year Behind Us...

Well, final exams are over, and all that's left is grading and turning in reports. We'll be moving into our new apartment in early July. We'll also be traveling a bit during July--maybe visiting the hometowns of some of our new friends. And in mid-July, we'll be heading home for the summer! We're excited to see family and friends, and we have no shame in admitting that the promise of steaks, ribs, Chick-fil-A, and Arby's entices us!

We (yes, Matt helped) have done a short scrapbook of our first year as teachers in China. Hope you enjoy it!

Eating Zongzi

During the recent Dragon Boat Festival, more than a billion Chinese people got together with family to eat zongzi (sounds like tsong-zuh). As most Chinese holidays have a traditional food and legend to go with it, zongzi is the food for Dragon Boat Festival.

The short version of the legend goes that when a well-loved Chinese poet threw himself into the river and drowned after being exiled, the people in that village were devastated. They wanted to keep his body from being eaten by the fish in the river, so they began to throw rice, wrapped in bamboo leaves, into the river to feed the fish. This way the fish would be too full to nibble on anything else.

Today, people still eat zongzi to commemorate his death. The zongzi includes seasoned rice wrapped around meat of nuts and then wrapped in bamboo leaves to boil.

One of my former students brought me some zongzi back from her family's celebration a while back, and we tried them today. Not bad.

Last night, Amy had her first hamburger since coming to China. Since the quest for a burger ended unsuccessfully a while back, we decided to search again. After a suggestion from a Chinese friend, we ended up at the Irish restaurant. It was good, although not the fat, juicy burgers of home; but for China, definitely not bad!

Visas and Moves

Although the move is still 3 1/2 weeks away, we began packing yesterday for our move to the new apartment. It's amazing how much stuff you can accumulate in just 10 months! Although we came to China with only 2 suitcases each, we've managed to add a Christmas tree, pots and pans, dishes, bedding and a host of gifts. Our new apartment actually looks like a Western-style house--the only one I've ever seen in China! We will occupy one of the four apartments inside the house. The house has a nice yard around it and is next to a pond. The campus at Amy's new school is definitely newer and nicer than where we currently live.

Our visas to stay in China currently expire on June 30. Amy's new school is issuing her an extension, since she will continue to be a teacher. Matt's visa, however, will have to be switched from a resident permit to a tourist visa (over the summer, he will apply for a student visa). He will go the PSB (police department) tomorrow to attempt the change. We are trusting that it will go smoothly; however, government restrictions for granting visas have been tightened a lot lately. We'll keep you updated.

Nearing the End...

It's a long weekend here, with the celebration of Dragon Boat Festival on Monday. We'll celebrate the weekend by avoiding the crowds of tourists. In fact, yesterday, we spent the entire day inside the apartment where we had a DVD fest of 4 movies. (We justify this by the fact that it was raining.) Besides, our students are spending the holiday studying.

For some of our classes, we will give final exams this week. For other classes, we'll finish the following week. Either way, we are definitely winding down to the end of the semester, and we are certainly ready for the summer holiday!

However, I woke up this morning feeling a sense of urgency. With exams beginning, students are holing up in the library more and more, which means that our opportunities to hang out with our friends made this semester are becoming fewer and fewer. We want to make the most of this busy time.

Friends from Home!

We were so glad to spend Sunday with Pat and Patrick--our friends from Cleveland. Pat does business in Hangzhou, as well as other cities in China and always finds time to say, Hi, when he's here. We love seeing people from home, and we really enjoyed our time with them this weekend catching up and having meals together.

Fruit Market at Night

HK and Macao

Last weekend I took a little trip to Hong Kong. I went alone (though pity is wasted on Amy--she has expressed her opinion that she has no interest in seeing Hong Kong on several occasions), and it was quite an experience. I arrived in HK on Friday via the ferry from Shenzhen. HK is definitely an amazing place--container ship after container ship can be seen leaving the port at almost any time of day--and it seems to rise straight out of the sea. My first visit was to Victoria Peak, the ideal place to see the skyline, as there are too many buildings to get the proper perspective from ground level. Unfortunately, the haze had set in by the time this picture was taken, but I waited at the top for nightfall, when the haze seems to enhance, not detract from, Asian city skylines. The wait was worth it, as the view was breathtaking.


Saturday I woke up early and headed to Macao, the former Portuguese colony an hour away by fast ferry. Nowadays, Macao is known as being the Las Vegas of Asia, but is also known for its colonial architecture and cuisine. My reason for traveling was as much "When else am I going to be an hour away from Macau?" as it was for the food or scenery. With its tropical climate, humidity, gambling, and colonial architecture, Macao struck me as a cross between Miami and New Orleans (pre-Katrina), with a Portuguese-Asian flair. Here is a picture of the symbol of Macao, the facade of St. Paul's, along with a picture of the runaway winner of the world's ugliest building. No other nominations can be accepted at this time. Unfortunately, this building was visible from all over town, and it was so overwhelmingly ugly that I had to take pictures of it from multiple perspectives.