Just because you can hold a pair of scissors doesn't mean you should cut hair.

I am very happy to be reporting my desk in my apartment on this Monday morning because I'm on HOLIDAY! We have a week off of school due to the Chinese National Holiday. Also called: Golden Week.

"Three days of paid holiday are given, and the surrounding weekends are re-arranged so that workers in Chinese companies always have seven continuous days of holiday. These national holidays were first started by the government for the PRC's National Day in 1999 and are primarily intended to help expand the domestic tourism market and improve the national standard of living, as well as allowing people to make long-distance family visits. The Golden Weeks are consequently periods of greatly heightened travel activity." Wikipedia

So what does this mean? In short, don't go running on Sunday morning. I knew there was a holiday, and I knew Anwer had his Chinese classes on Sunday. Knowing these things, I still neglected the thought that other people might also be working. I wasn't. I headed out on my Sunday morning run and mistakenly decided to go a new direction to help find some new things. Terrible idea. I ended up running into the hoards of people who were in fact still working or heading to work. 

Then I went and got my hair done at a foreigner-approved hair salon. I had previously heard of the salon from other people at school. It also had some publicity on the Suzhou Expat Facebook group. I felt further assured when four other foreigners showed up in the salon while I was there. Why do I need so much foreigner assurance?? Well, I've experienced plenty of bad and mediocre hair cuts in India to know that you can't just trust anyone with scissors. I can remember vividly a traumatic experience in New Delhi where I felt like crying. Once a person screws up your hair, how do you tell them they suck but ensure they don't do further damage? It's a fine line.

I certainly didn't want to end up in some place where no one spoke English, and they never learned the colors and thought brown meant pink. Nope. Nobody wants that. 
        

Before

After

Camp 2014: It's raining 7th graders.

Similarly to WS, SSIS has a sort of activity week in which the students head outside of the classroom and presumably into the wild. WS definitely had an advantage here because we lived in the wild. It was an adventure just walking to school. Monkeys, torrential rains, rabid dogs, and steep, slippery slopes kept you alert at all times.

Here at SSIS, my students are hauled in by buses or driven in cars from various locations and walk on paved streets to get to school. EASY! Our "camp" was similar in nature. It was three days, two nights about an hour from school. We were sleeping in tents, but the rest of our time was quite far from a camp scenario. Even more ironically, due to the continuous rain and shabby tents, several students slept inside on the second night. We went to a marina and slept on the lawn. All other activities were very summer campy and team building themed.

I had a ton of fun hanging out with the seventh graders. They are funny people! They are high maintenance at times but know how to have a good time.

Oreo on your face-->get it in your mouth! No hands!

Classic.

There was a fashion show.

And then the boys tried to do this...

...while the girls did this

Dragon Boating

And now, one more week of school, and then a week holiday! We're headed to Beijing to visit our neighbors from Woodstock! 

Moon Festival

Happy Moon Festival!

The Moon Festival of Mid-Autumn Festival is the celebration of the end of the harvest.

"The Mid-Autumn Festival is an official harvest festival celebrated by Chinese, Taiwanese and Vietnamese peoples.^[1][2] The festival is held on the 15th day of the eighth month in the Chinese calendar and Vietnamese calendar, during a full moon, which is in September or early October in the Gregorian calendar, within 15 days of the autumnal equinox.^[1] The holiday coincides with the Korean holidayChuseok and Japanese holiday Tsukimi." (said Wikipedia)

What does this mean? No School! Fireworks and firecrackers! Moon cakes! Tons of people shopping! 

Unfortunately, I think I am welcoming another sinus infection and did not officially celebrate or go out today. Yesterday, we joined some friends and went to Panmen Gate. It is one of the oldest parts of the city. Without a guide, we could only guess which parts were old and which were added for our enjoyment.

Small example of the love and kindness the Chinese people have shown us.

Photo: MAK

Bought this for the cow. The dessert was mediocre.

Fed the fish...

This is what happened next.

Wisdom comes with age.

After teaching classes at my new school for 8 days, this is what I have concluded:

1. Teaching is teaching. It really doesn’t matter which country you are in or which type of school you work in. It is exhausting and takes great effort.

2. Teaching at an MYP school apparently requires a dedication to meetings. 

3. Some people suck. Same same. No different. 

4. Finding my new Wolfpack (college pack)/Alaska (Anwer, Lindsay, Anwer, Shannon, Katie, Anwer—get it?)/Le Crey (Woodstock posse) will be challenging, but I haven’t given up hope yet.

5. Random acts of kindness go a long way.

Riding the bus. City folk.

My homeroom students behaving so well ;)

Not in Kansas anymore.

The smog does clear, and the sun does come out.

An interesting international breed.

Teachers are a special type of people. Whenever teachers gather, it's teacher time. It's probably super annoying to non-teachers. Teaching is such a unique profession that offers various challenges and amazing experiences. And great holidays! When you start talking international teaching, it's a whole bag of crazy.

It's taken me awhile, but I have concluded that no matter where you go, what you do, or how you do it, there will be people around you who suck. At first international teaching seemed like a great opportunity to be around a bunch of like-minded people who loved children, travel, and adventure. After a short time at Woodstock, I realized how misleading my previous claim was. Obviously, I did find those people, and they are my people. The rest of the crew, however...

The other side of the international coin is the crazy bag. International teaching has lots of pros that draws in a certain... lazy-crazy crowd. We coined this term as le cray! Most international schools pay well (WS being the exception to that rule). People who work at international schools like money, which can be confusing to the profession in the USA. Typically, labor is very cheap in foreign countries. Hiring a nanny, cook, or house cleaner is very affordable and quite common. Having help in school is also very common. At WS, I had three gym helpers who were in charge of setting up equipment, taking it down, organizing, etc. More times than not, it was easier to do myself, but at times, it was awesome. In China, there are sooo many ladies up in the school milling about and "cleaning" or more likely gossiping. Either way, they're there.

So first, it's possible for many international teachers to do minimal manual labor once at school and at their homes. The stranger part is that international teachers enjoy complaining. I know I do my fair share of complaining, but some of these people lack perspective. I used to live on a mountain people. A MOUNTAIN. Relax, we're in a city of 11 million people. You'll be fine. 10,999,999 other people seem to be coping well. 

Sweating with the Chinese.

It's hot. It is 95 degrees--feels like 109. Luckily, we're living in our temperature controlled apartment, which is a comfortable 71ish degrees. The Air Quality Index (AQI) is 155-Unhealthy. Ick.

Anwer trying to order-notice how funny it is to the guy in purple.

School orientation has been underway since Friday. It has been moderately paced and minimally overwhelming. There is a lot of information to take in, but I am feeling well taken care of by the fabulous team at my school from airport pickup to housing searching to today's medical check, things have been well organized and low stress.

We moved into our apartment on Saturday evening. It is so lovely. It definitely needs some love and character, but I am confident that I will never find a monkey in my kitchen eating bananas. Our apartment complex has 12 different buildings and every night there are LOADS of people out walking, kids on bicycles, people playing badminton, a couple dancing---it is like we're in a Chinese sitcom. 

Where do we actually live? Good question. 

Our complex is located about a 35 minute walk from my school in an area of Suzhou known as Suzhou Industrial Park (SIP). It's very suburban like and expat friendly. The city of Suzhou has around 11 million people total, but it does not feel like that where I live. There are lots of restaurants, shops, and supermarkets within 20 minutes of my house. It's fairly spread out, traffic is calm, and the streets are very clean. The city is very green and is covered in canals. So far, I like it A LOT!

Home Sweet Home

Living Room

Grocery Shopping

Oh, hey smog!

Running with the Chinese

I arrived in Suzhou on Wednesday evening with little hiccup (not including the 6 hours before my flight when I found out my ticket was cancelled and needed to be reinstated by my Chinese travel agent). They brought me to a fabulous hotel that has white robes and a bath tub-my dream. It became quickly apparent that getting by with only English would be significantly more difficult than it was in Mussoorie. I tried to call the front desk to ask which internet network I was supposed to connect to. No one knew what I was saying. My travel buddy got on the phone, and he told me they'd call me in two minutes. I was skeptical, but in two minutes, two men showed up at my door and plugged in my router. Problem solved. Within an hour, I was back on the grid and ready to tell the world I was safe and sound.

House Hunters International

On Thursday, I went apartment hunting. I felt like I was on House Hunters International. There was an apartment that I had been shown a couple months ago that I was interested in, and they had been holding it for me. I looked at four different apartments. One was brand new and very IKEA'ed, but it was surrounded by construction. I was also concerned with the newness of it all-everything that wasn't right would be discovered by me. I saw a couple other buildings with great views, but they just seemed very plain or had weird features that weren't visually pleasing. My second choice was an apartment on the 29th floor of a building, and it had a bath tub. In the end, I choose the one that I had seen a couple months ago. It has some sort of geothermal temperature control, and it is 71 degrees year round. After freezing in Mussoorie for three winters, I felt like it was an obvious choice.

Today, I have orientation ALL DAY! I went for a short jog this morning, and I did not get lost. I got waved at by a local-totally blending in! I'm definitely ready to see my new school and meet my new, hopefully, best friends. AND ANWER IS COMING!!!