Reflections of a Daytime Tiger

After failing majorly as a blogger, I am finally posting again! (Hooray?) Maple Leaf classes are officially over as of Tuesday! Now the students are taking exams while the teachers busily mark and input grades. Thank goodness one of the two tigers has finished all of her marking and is now spending her time cleaning her office, helping out at the library, generally relaxing and posting blogs! My other half unfortunately still has exams to ‘invigilate’ (a word that I think only BC people use - basically means to ‘administer’ or ‘proctor’) and grading to finish.

My grade 9 students took their exams and left a week early as they need to take the middle school Zhong Kao exam. This is a standardized exam that all grade 9 students in China have to take. Living in a country will a population exceeding 1.3 billion, you can imagine the amount of pressure put on these poor students. I wish them the best of luck.


Anyway, because my students are gone, I’ve had a chance to reflect on both my growth as an individual and as a teacher these past few months.  Although it has been crazy challenging, I am so grateful I was given the opportunity to teach. Not only has it been rewarding beyond expectations, I can now personally empathize with my husband and understand his chosen career path. I’ve always had a respect for teachers - my mother is a teacher – and I’ve had some idea about the kinds of things they deal with. However, walking in the shoes of a teacher these past few months has greatly increased that respect and admiration. The levels of time, energy and love that go into teaching are truly tremendous!

When we originally planned to come to Maple Leaf, I was hired to be the librarian. When that opportunity fell through, I was pretty worried about what I would be doing. As many of you know, China kept feeling *just" out of our reach since every time we thought we were all set to go, something came up to post-pone our plans. By the time we actually made it here, I did not even care what I would be doing – I just wanted to get to China! Because of all this, the worry and concern I would normally have had before doing something totally out of my comfort zone wasn’t even there. I seriously did not even have time to get over jet lag before I was thrown into the classroom.

Looking back, I can see everything that led us here was a blessing. Being somewhat of a perfectionist, I usually psyche myself out and fail to even start certain things if I don’t think I can do them well. China has changed that about me.  I was thrown into a new country and a new job and I just had put my head down and pull through. Of course I had my moments when I broke down, doubted myself and hated everything around me. But those moments passed and I was rewarded with a stronger sense of who I am and what I can accomplish. I have grown so much from this experience and am so amazed I could do something totally new and end up enjoying it!

In the end, nothing is quite as awesome as having students ask you for advice or say “We’ll miss you, Ms. M!” I taught some great kids this semester and learned so much from them in return.

I am pleased to tell you that I’ve been hired as the librarian for next year. Although I’ll miss the students, I will not miss a teacher’s lesson planning and marking. ;-) I’m looking forward to this chance to develop skills in my field.  I am also positive that the lessons I’ve learned as a teacher will assist me in this new position.  We are ALL teachers of some sort, right?

To close I’d like to share a few pictures of my students doing skits where they had to sell a made-up product. They got really into them! Enjoy!

Class 1on the boys campus. Mark and Yasuo made me be the 'supermodel' in this skit.

Shrek, Edward and Peter from Class 1. 

Class 2, boys. 

Class 3 girls! The sweetest, smartest, most creative girls EVER!

Until the next post! Zai jian! 

The Two Tigers

Home-Making

I can't believe its been over a month since our last post!  Our life has been moving so fast.  We apologize to those people who were expecting more frequent updates from us. We honestly had every intention of blogging every week but time has just flown by!

Now for some updates: Well, Naw-Ruz came and went and we had a lovely celebration with the friends in Dalian-complete with a delicious all you can eat Chinese buffet! We moved in to our new apartment (pictures below), we hired an AMAZING ayi, we bought two baby turtles* :), we survived preparing, administering and marking midterms and we are now looking forward to May Holiday when we will head to Tianjin and Beijing for relaxation, family time and touristy stuff.

There is so much we could say and tell. We will post soon with anecdotes from teaching but for now we will just share a few pictures of our new HOME! How sweet it feels to have a home. Our first home together! A cozy, happy home of our own waiting to be blessed by visits from all of YOU - our dear ones from around the world.

“My home is the home of peace. My home is the home of joy and delight. My home is the home of laughter and exultation. Whosoever enters through the portals of this home, must go out with gladsome heart.” -'Abdu'l-Baha

 Welcome to our home!

Our living room.

View of Jinshitan from our apartment. 
Our building looks like the one to the right, but taller.

 View from the living room window looking towards the kitchen. 
Our heating has been turned off, thus the space heater.

Tea pot and tea storage area! 

Our room.

Another view of our room. We love our painting, Zarrin!

*Jinshitan has a Saturday morning market where all the surrounding farmers and vendors come to sell their wares. A few weekends ago we went to explore and when I was looking at plants, Niyaz found the turtle guy! Ever since I met him, Niyaz has talked about wanting a baby turtle - a baby sea turtle to be precise. But I don't think its quite legal to own one of those... Luckily the turtles he found were fresh water turtles.  Before I had time to look away from the plants, Niyaz had made a deal and purchased two turtles, a tank and turtle food. Now we have two babies which we've named Sherlock and Watson. They are teeny tiny and oh so cute! Sherlock just mopes about and hides under rocks but Watson is a little explorer. We kinda like him the best (we sound like horrible parents).

Getting plants (and turtles) really made it feel homey.

 

We think he's trying to migrate south or something...

Watson.

Watson waving.

Watson again. Sherlock is in hiding as usual.

Niyaz in Dalian. I centered that perfectly. :)

Asiyih eating. ;-)

Sending you love and hugs from Dalian! Zai jian!



-The Two Tigers

            

China Beginnings

Ni Hao! Hello! Here we are in China. Finally. We had been planning for our move since before we were married and so much has happened since then that its kind of hard to believe we have been living here for three crazy, exhausting, wonderful weeks.

Niyaz and I wanted to record our adventures in China and we figured writing a blog would be the best way to share our new life with you: our friends and family.

Some of you may be curious about the chosen title of our blog. Well, other than the obvious reference to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Niyaz and I chose this title because we were both born in the Chinese year of the tiger and out of all Chinese food, we love jiao zi (dumplings) the best. More specifically, we really love the juicey delicious pork and chive jiao zi. SOOO YUMMY! Seriously. They are amazing. We just came back from a trip to KaiFaQu (Dalian’s development zone) where we were able to properly satisfy our jiao zi craving. It’s a good thing dumplings take so much time to make and that we have yet to hire an ayi (a maid/cook that most foreigners get) otherwise I know we’d end up living off them and probably eventually start to resemble them.

We’ve been in the northeastern coastal city of Dalian for three weeks now. Actually, we are technically an hour east of the city in an old fishing town, now a national resort called Jinshitan—literally translated to “golden pebble beach.” Jinshitan is quiet and very cold in the winter, with the northern Siberian winds blowing down from the surrounding mountains. We’ve heard, and can imagine how beautiful it is in the spring and summer months, with lots of tourists streaming in to enjoy the beach, the trails and the amusement park.

We jumped right into teaching at the high school almost as soon as we arrived. The school is a Canadian-Chinese private high school with mostly Chinese—and a few foreign—students. Niyaz teaches mathematics on the boys’ campus and I teach communication skills on both the boys’ and the girls’ campuses. We were totally overwhelmed, exhausted, cold and stressed after the first week. By the second week, we were still cold, exhausted and stressed and now after our third week, we finally feel as if we are beginning to get used to things. It’s been rather difficult for me as this is my first time teaching, EVER. Luckily, I have Niyaz who has an education degree, practicum experience and the job of supporting husband. Plus, the teachers here are all very friendly and willing to collaborate with one another.

My main difficulty has been coming up with fun, creative, age-appropriate ways for my students to practice their English speaking and listening skills. I’ve been so exhausted everyday that I feel my creativity levels are practically non-existent. If anyone out there has game/activity ideas, please send them my way! I’ve talked with some of my fellow teachers who have awesome ideas but I know I will always be in need of new exciting things for my students to do.

Hmm. What else? Well, during our second weekend we were able to attend an Ayyam-i-Ha party with some KaiFaQu friends. It was such a wonderful night and Niyaz and I felt like we had found a new welcoming and loving family.

I kind of expected it would be hard for me to adjust living in China but the funny thing is, I have been so busy with work alone that I have not had time to really dwell on things. Other than our extremely cold first floor apartment and the fact that I do not speak the language, there really hasn’t been anything too hard to handle. :-) Life has been moving forward as normal. There are little things of course – like getting used to using a gas stove and trying not to freak out in the middle of the night (thinking we may have forgotten to shut off the gas valve) and getting used to taking less than 5 min showers before the hot water runs out.

Luckily we were able to find a new, warmer apartment and will be moving in this coming week! We are very excited and have been counting down the days. It will be so nice to have a real home, a place where we can finally feel settled. I think we’ve also had easier time adjusting due to the simple fact that we have each other. Not only is Niyaz fluent in the language, but it’s also been a blessing to have the support and be able to wake up together to fast during these weeks. Even though we are physically tired, we have definitely been feeling spiritually refreshed.

Oh, speaking of freaking out in the middle of the night, Niyaz and I thought we’d share a little story with you. Every evening during the first week of classes, we’d would come to our apartment, collapse on the bed and start laughing hysterically. I’m pretty sure it was due to exhaustion but we’d laugh about the crazy things that had happened during the day and about how we couldn’t really feel our legs after standing on them and running around for 8 hours straight.

Last week, in the middle of the night, I woke up disoriented and asked, “Niyaz, what time is it?” (thinking we were late getting up for the Fast) Niyaz responded, “You have to print out extra copies of the worksheets! There are two kinds of worksheets…” Half asleep and utterly confused I said, “What are you talking about? Niyaz, the time. What time is it?” (I did not have a cell phone near me). He again stated firmly that, “There are two kinds of worksheets; one has answers and the other doesn’t and you have to print the one with no answers.” By this time I was getting pretty frustrated, “The TIME. Stop being ridiculous! Do we have to get up?” Still the same crazy response from my husband. A few more frustrated minutes passed and he finally got it and said, “Oh, it’s only 2 am…” We then immediately fell back to sleep. The following day we both could not stop laughing about our confusing sleep-talk conversation. It’s crazy/sad/amusing that even in our subconscious state we cannot get away from worrying about our schedule and what we have to do for work.

And now we come to the end of this post. We promise there will be many more to come! This is mainly for our own benefit, but we’d like to close with a list of things we are looking forward to doing (which we will most likely end up writing about here):

Moving to our new apartment complex and meeting our neighbors, setting up our home (including internet), being able to Skype/blog/be in touch with people regularly, Asiyih seriously starting to learn Chinese, bonding with our students, befriending our fellow teachers, getting an oven so we can bake(!), buying a yogurt maker(!), exploring Jinshitan, KaiFaQu and Dalian, getting bikes, joining a tai chi group, finding an ayi and inviting our (hopefully) new friends and neighbors to our home.

Until next time! Zai Jian!

Much love, hugs and squishes,

Asiyih and Niyaz
The Two Tigers