Vivi's First Blog!!

So the rest of this blog will be Vivi writing about her new job, I helped edit a little. People seem to be curious about her job so she's going to write a little so everyone can know what it is she does:

I work for an American company as the assistant to the boss. It is a small office but a very good location. I just need to take the train to get there and walk about 20 meters after I get off the train, very convenient. It is very different with America as Nicholas has said. He said it is kind of funny how much we care about transportation in China, all because most of the workers don't have a car in China.

Usually I get up at 7:45 am, work starts at 9:00 am. It takes 45 minutes to get there. I have been the first person in the office the past 2 weeks but not because I get there earlier than the start time, only because the other three workers come late. The boss is very nice and has a very relaxed attitude towards the work start time.

My job is mainly finding the best source for goods in China, which is not hard. It is the exhibition season in April, so I have been busy preparing things for the fairs. I worked over time 4 days straight last week and Nicholas thinks some of the tasks can wait to be completed the next day. I agree with him but I always want to finish as soon as possible.

That's all for now. Hope everyone is doing well.

Ocean Park Xiaomeisha

Friday, yesterday, the school went to Ocean Park in Xiaomeisha. It's like a mini-Sea World. This was a fun day, even though it rained the entire day. I was also exhausted by the end of it. The best part was a stroke of accidental brilliance. Accidental brilliance is when something happens, by accident, that other people would think you did on purpose and think you are brilliant for doing it.

The day started with everyone meeting at the kindergarten as normal. We had been told that if it was raining, we would go next week. Well, it was raining. We, the foreign teachers, did not want to teach and we were praying we'd still go. Luckily, the school decided to go anyways.

The school hired coach buses instead of opting to take the school buses, thank goodness. There was every parent or grandparent for each of my students except one boy, Simon. Simon is probably the smartest student but also is the cause of most the problems in the classroom. Since his parents had to work, he was my responsibility for the day.

We loaded up the bus and headed out in the rain. I was surprised to find it was only about 30 minutes away. We got there, took a big group picture in the front (I don't have a copy yet, I'll get one soon) and made our way in.

The first thing we saw was the polar bear. While I was looking forward to this, it just made me sad. It was poorly taken care of and in horrible conditions. It was in a box the half the size of the bus we were just in. There was nowhere large enough for it to swim and nothing for it to do, just a flat bottom. The polar bear was just walking back and forth, you could tell it wasn't happy and it needed more room to move around and feel comfortable. I like to think that it's only in that area for an hour or two a day for show and there's another place they keep it that's better suited for a polar bear.

Anyways, after that we made our way to the main stage area, where they have the big tank for the show. We sat here for about 45 minutes while the kids ate their snacks and shared. Evidently, on field trips, the kids don't get actual lunches but whatever they can pack in to a bag. Usually this consists of little cakes and candies and maybe some fruit. I ate some interesting Chinese things that some parents brought so overall I had 4 chicken wings, about 30 roma tomatoes, 3 swiss cake rolls, 8 sheets of seaweed, 1 cheese muffin, 4 dumplings, 2 hard boiled eggs and a box of soy milk, by far my least healthy lunch so far.

When the show started, it began with some synchronized swimmers which were interesting enough because they kept their show highly energetic and short. Then some special divers came out. They were more interesting but didn't do anything too grand. The best part of the show were the clown divers. I got a video of a minute of what they were doing but they were very entertaining, Sea World should steal their idea. I'm disappointed I missed filming their first minute because it was great.

After the clowns, they brought out the seals, then the sea lions, followed by the dolphins. Here some of the stuff was interesting but the only really good part was seeing how high the dolphins could leap out of the water, incredible. You can see in the pictures how high they're getting, at least 25 feet it seemed.

After the show, we made our way through the little aquarium they had and eventually over to a ride for younger kids. The ride took about 20 minutes and was very slow and not interesting. One of the kids fell asleep during the ride. I took a picture of her, Iris, because she's just too cute.

We walked around the park for about an hour then got back on the bus and headed back to the school. I tried to sleep on the bus but my entire class began singing English songs and pointing out everything that it's raining on, including each individual car and tree. I guess I should be happy that the parents were so happy the kids were using English and enjoying it but I really just wanted a nap. We got back to the school and we were allowed to go home early. It was a great Friday.

New Pictures

I've posted many pictures and numerous videos on picasa site online, look on the right side of this page under About Me. They're some good ones and I'll post more because I had 7 students out sick Friday and a couple of them are my favorites. Enjoy.

Street Fooooooooooood!!!!

First things first, VIVI'S GOT A JOB!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

She'll be an assistant to Ernesto Tovar, the Chief Executive of Gambe Group, a trading company based in Miami, Fl. This means she'll be speaking English all day and all night now. That's kind of funny because English was the class Vivi hated most during all of her days in school, including college. Now, her boyfriend and boss only speak English, how ironic. We went out to a Cantonese restaurant Saturday night to celebrate and had some great beef and chicken. She has been so excited the entire weekend and she's looking forward to tomorrow morning.

Today we woke up to absolutely beautiful weather so we decided to head back to Dongmen to eat street food for lunch and enjoy the weather a little bit. My favorite taste is spicy tofu on a stick, it's great and it's only 1 RMB, about 15 cents. Vivi's favorite food are these cream puff things that have a little bit of seafood in them, although I can't taste the seafood at all. They're also very good. They drizzle this cream sauce over top and some green flakes, I have no idea what the flakes are. The other great options are the sticks of meat. There's a ton of different types to choose from. We had some spicy chicken and some beef meat balls this time, the chicken was excellent but the meat balls were just so-so.

By far the most popular item is a bowl of spicy noodles. Vivi had these today and I usually do but passed on them for the meat on a stick. The noodles are so good and so popular that the tables are all taken and people have to just stand around and eat their noodles standing on the sidewalk (you can see this in one of the pictures). The noodles are great and of course, cheap.

We walked around for a short time because it was just too crowded today, again, check out the pictures. We found a 2 RMB shop (their version of the $1 store) and I found some great toys and prizes for my students. I bought a police car that the boys will love and some of those toys that have water inside with balls and baskets that you press a button that shoots air inside and makes the balls float so you try to get the balls in the basket. I think the kids will love it. I'm going to tell them that all the kids who can sing the song on their own, read the book and know all of the new words and sentences at the end of the week will get one. This gives them a goal and a reason to try harder, for those you usually don't. Also, anytime they're acting up this week, I can pull out the toys to get them back on track.

That's all for now and Vivi's going to write a little something at the end of the week about her new job.

Saturday - The Toilet Restaurant

Today Vi and I decided to make our way back to Dongmen (walking street). There are a lot of shops there with great street food and last time we were there, we saw a restaurant called the Modern Toilet Restaurant and we decided we wanted to try it out.

The cool thing about this restaurant is that you either sit on a toilet for a chair or on a booth (nowhere near as fun as sitting on a toilet). Vi said it's a Taiwan restaurant so they had a bit of everything. I had spaghetti and salmon with a cream sauce while Vi had a Udon noodle bowl. We also had two little sides of fried potato wedges with cheese and bacon bits and a fried shrimp dumpling thing. It was all good. Another interesting part was the food was served in some form of a toilet. The funniest looking dishes were the one that the couple next to us got (that's the picture you see here) and the ice cream. Let's just say it looked less than appetizing in the dishes they were served in, but funny in a way.

I took just a couple quick pictures of the area and a short, 10 second video to give you an idea of what it's like. It was raining and it's cold so we didn't want to stay out very long. The video is just to show you how crowded it always is and how there's always people shouting with megaphones about special deals and prices to attract people in, it's very annoying. You can also see one of the McDonald's and KFCs in the area. I could actually see two other McDonald's and another KFC from where I was standing.

After Dongmen, we got back on the subway to go one stop to our place. We decided to go to Wal-Mart to pick up some extra food for the weekend. Since it's cold, Vi wanted to make traditional Guongdong soup for tonight...I hope I like it. While in Wal-Mart I thought it'd be interesting to get a short video to just show how crowded, loud and busy it always is. After I took the 10 second video, a plain clothed security officer approached me and told me to delete the picture and to not take anymore. Anyways, it's crazy inside that place. We bought a few things and just came back to the apartment to have a lazy end to our Saturday.