August 17, 2025

China Life #2

Dear Friends and Family,

We’ve now been in China for 3 weeks. In a way it feels like far longer than that— we are already planning our first holiday at the end of September. School stared last Monday for new students, and Tuesday for everyone else. Everything has been happening so fast that I can hardly keep up. My teaching schedule looks as though it has a lot of blank space on it, but every minute gets filled up. I’m pretty sure that blank-ness translates directly to my face most of the time because I spend large portions of every day just wandering around in a daze trying to figure out where I am, where I am supposed to be, what I should be doing, and who I am talking to!

My students are largely Asian— mostly Korean and Chinese. There are a few Japanese, some Thai, Philippino, Malay, and even less of everyone else: Indian, Russian, Kenyan, Ghanaian, American, and I have one student from Zimbabwe. The one student I have met who claims to be Canadian has a very heavy Chinese accent and “doesn’t remember much” about living in Vancouver. It appears that there are a few more European kids in the high school; I only teach 3 grade levels. Learning names is (and will continue to be) a challenge. Particularly the Korean students have names that are largely unfamiliar to me, and many of them have chosen “English” names that they prefer to use, but they say them very quietly with heavy accents and then laugh at me when I try to pronounce what they have said.

For example, last week out on the basketball court a couple of grade 4 girls came up to say hello and I asked them to tell me their names again. The first one said what I heard as, “Chee-oh”. So I said, “Chee-oh? Is that right?” and they burst out laughing. “No, teacher! CHEEOH!” “Cheeoh?” More giggles. “NO!” So I asked her to spell it for me. “J-I-L-L” “Jill? Your name is Jill?” “YES!!!” …. and of course now I can’t remember which one she was so I’m going to face this all again tomorrow. (Because I’m sure that I do have at least one student who legit is named “Chi-oh”.) The quiet voices, combined with my huge classroom with 12-foot ceilings and the pounding (almost ceaseless) rain, make it an enormous struggle for me to hear. Luckily my classes are small, so I only have 16-18 students at a time.

My kids are also facing daily adventures and challenges, of course. They are not used to actually having to work at school. They are both in IB now, and both finding math in particular extremely challenging. Noémie is taking Psychology and has a wonderful teacher for that, so she loves that part of her day. Kieran has chosen Visual Art as one of his electives, and next week will decide between Spanish and Mandarin as his third language.

The school held the Extra-Curricular Activity fair this week, where teachers (and external staff and/or volunteers) set up tables and advertise the after-school activities we run. It is a huge deal. Kieran signed up for Cross-country and also wants to do swimming but it is on the same days. I found out that indeed he is allowed to do both, so we have to figure out how to get him registered. Noémie has signed up for Model United Nations (debate), handwriting, and Math club. I was proud of her for choosing the latter and dedicating her Tuesday afternoons to working on her math.

On the home front, we are figuring things out. I spent one evening putting a power-point presentation together for HR at the school of the issues in our apartment which need sorting. Yesterday the A/C in Kieran’s room was repaired so the water has stopped dripping from my bathroom ceiling.

Last weekend we went skiing.

Like, actual snow-skiing.

There is a mall about an hour’s drive from here that claims the world’s “second largest indoor ski resort”. So— off we went to Sunac Snow Park. It was really weird packing our socks, thermals and winter jackets into a bag while it was 37 degrees outside. Then we got there and had to figure out lift tickets and rentals. The lady selling us the tickets was skeptical that all three of us wanted access to the “expert” run. (Thank goodness we did!) It is the run with the chair lift and takes about 45 seconds to ski down. I’ll attach pictures… it is kind of hard to describe the insanity.

It is a joy having Ayi come once a week to clean.

Kieran bought a skateboard and is enjoying that.

Noémie got her nails done and was thrilled.

Noémie and I spent a LONG time putting together audition tapes for the Guangzhou International Choir and are really hoping that we both make it in. (They sent us 3 pages of a very complicated Bach oratorio and gave us 48 hours to record ourselves singing it and send it back).

I am getting better at ordering everything online but I still get surprises in the bags. Last night I ordered us dinner from some place called “Mom Feeds Your Stomach”. Here are some of the options I came across:

I managed to find about 5 dishes that sounded good and had good reviews so I placed my order and crossed my fingers. It arrived about half an hour later… the flavour was good but everything had so many chilies in it that we were all sniffling and crying. It was pretty funny. We could hardly speak it was so spicy. One chicken dish had so many bones in it (they literally just chop the whole thing, bones and all, and throw it into the pan) that we gave up trying. We had a good laugh, then I told the kids to make a quesadilla and call it a night.

There was a monsoon in Taiwan this past week which definitely affected the weather here. It was raining so hard that the water was bouncing up and we were getting soaked no matter how covered our heads were. A “red” alert went out on Thursday, which actually had us wondering if we might be stuck at school because the busses might not be running, but fortunately we managed to make it home. People were even saying that the school might have to close. The ground is so saturated that everything was covered in an inch of water. Even the giant snails didn’t come out! There is more of this forecast this week.

My colleagues here are amazing and SO helpful. There is a lovely South-African couple names James and Sally who invited me over for a drink on Friday night after their hilarious autistic twins overheard me telling another teacher about my apartment cleaning/repair fiasco. Turns out their boys have no filter but can remember everything they hear and repeat it all when they get home, so Sally said that it sounded like I needed a G&T. I ended up staying all evening and we had a great visit. Every English (or French) speaker I meet gives me at least one piece of advice about a useful store, app, or person to talk to who can help me web together what we need to settle in here. One person knows a good place to get bread, another has a connection to a reliable VPN/internet provider, James took us on a 10-km (sweaty!!!) walk around Baiyun Mountain last week (which is just across the street), my Chinese colleague Jessie helps me translate websites and find cheaper Chinese alternatives to brand-name items I am familiar with (hello $50 oven/air fryer/toaster machine!).

Today is Sunday. I was going to take Kieran to a nearby city called Zhongshan where there is allegedly a mountain bike park, but the forecast there is calling for 25-30mm of rain so we decided to hold off. Instead I’ll be doing some lesson planning, hopefully finding an actual grocery store, and tonight we have been invited to dinner at the home of some other teachers. I’ll send this off before it gets any longer.