Book Week

We are relaxing at home today. James is getting his hair cut downstairs and Abigail and I are making fried rice for lunch. I meant to blog last weekend but was experiencing some technical difficulties. We were having some beautiful, sunny weather and spring appeared to have come to Suzhou so I took some pictures as we were walking to the dentist last Saturday. I love the purples and pinks on the trees.

Unfortunately, the spring-like weather did not last and we are back to cold and rainy :(

So this past week was "book week" for the primary school. They had a book fair, a reading contest and on Friday the kids were encouraged to dress up as their favourite book character. The kids went on a "character hunt" around the school based on clues. Various teachers were dressed up and signed the kids' sheets as they were found. Abigail really enjoyed it. She dressed up as Hermione Granger from the Harry Potter series. We are very big Potter fans at the Smith house. Here she is with her friend Tabitha (who, very obviously, is dressed as the Cat in the Hat)
Abigail has had a new teacher for the past 2 weeks. Her previous teacher had a baby girl a couple of days ago. I don't think she will be returning before the end of the year so she will finish the year with Ms.Milana, a young American who is new this year like us. She seems very nice. Tabitha was moved to the same class with Abby so the transition wasn't too tough. This is Abby with Ms.Milana - she was dressed as the paper bag princess ( from a Robert Munsch book).
The costumes were really great. It is quite common, as I'm sure you have heard, for visitors to China to have clothing custom made. It is very cheap and fast. You just take a picture, pick out your material and get measured. For many expats it is a necessity since many of us do not fit into Chinese sizes! Anyway, it is also very easy to have costumes made. Everyone goes to "wedding street" which is an area where you can find everything from wigs, crazy props and cheap make up to beautiful bridal gowns, cocktail dresses and evening gowns. Mark and I are going to a James Bond themed birthday party tonight so I went to wedding street with Abigail and some other teachers yesterday after school. I was assuming I could just wear something from my closet but was told otherwise! Anyway, I will post pictures tomorrow so you can see the whole get up.
So it looks like I will be taking another maternity leave position to finish out the school year. This time I will be teaching Primary PE! I'm really excited about it. I have over 6 years experience working in children's fitness programs so this will be very comfortable for me. I'm already doing the morning fitness program so am getting to know the kids in the primary school. I won't have Abigail, but I think that is for the best. So I will start in a couple of weeks and finish out the school year with that position.
Better run,.... is it weird that I'm cleaning the apartment for the babysitter??


lots of love from Suzhou!
........have fun at Disney Truros, kiss those boys for us!

presentations and pi day

Dad told me to "keep the blogs coming" so, here you go Dad.
It's Sunday night in Suzhou. We had beautiful weather this weekend. Sunny skies and warm weather. A welcome treat after 3 weeks of nothing but cold and rain.
For those of you who are not aware, Saturday was "pi day" that means the date was 3.14
(it is also my beloved sister in law's birthday). So anyway, a big deal in the math world that Mark lives in. Last year Mark decided to shave his facial hair into the pi symbol to show his students his passion for the subject and this year was no different. I wanted to show both years' pictures so you can compare.

Needless to say, his students and co-workers got a big kick out of it!
Mark led a professional development session for the staff at SSIS on Friday for the Apple Vanguard team (which he has decided to call the Apple Corps - get it?)
On Thursday, I was invited to come in to view Abigail's powerpoint presentation on her home country - the United States....ouch. All of second grade presented. They have been working very hard for over a month. I was quite impressed with how comfortable she was with the technology. The parents were to grade the presentations afterwards and include a comment. I, of course, gave her top marks but had to comment that I would like to see an equally impressive presentation on Canada next time!


That's Abigail's crazy friend Tabitha next to her.
I had a chance to wander a bit and have a look at the other kids' presentations. This is Abigail's classroom above. A lot of the children wore international costumes and brought traditional dishes for us to try. Here are some from Korea.

After we were done in the classroom, we were invited down to the gym. Each of the grade 2 classes had learned various games from all over the world and show the parents how to play and then we were invited to join in. Abigail's class learned a stick game from New Zealand. Mark had a chance to join us between classes so here he is learning from Abigail.
So that's about all for this week. We were at the dentist yesterday. It looks like James will be getting braces within the next couple of weeks. He's ok with it though. Abigail was at a sleepover party last night and went to bed early, I think she is coming down with a cold.
More to come next weekend. Lots of love until then.

Saturday in Shanghai

Last Saturday we decided to take the train into Shanghai. We hadn't been since October when we went for the national holiday (golden week). We came back exhausted and overwhelmed and therefore have not been back. But this weekend we decided to give it another try. There is so much to see in Shanghai and I knew we had just reached the tip of the iceberg.
Mark got me a subscription to National Geographic Traveler for Christmas and my first issue had an article about Shanghai so I got some great ideas and looked some things up on line. We headed out at 7:30 am. A little earlier than necessary but they were the only tickets we could get.
Here are Abby and James on the bullet train. It gets to Shanghai in 30 minutes. That's pretty remarkable considering it takes over 2 hours in the car. Anyway, as you can see the seats are quite roomy (more so than airplane seats). Plenty of leg room and there is a lady that comes with coffee, tea and newspapers. This, of course, it the soft seat area of the train. The kids like to say we are riding "first class". The round trip to Shanghai in soft seats for a family of four costs around $35 US. So not bad.
Once we arrived in Shanghai we hopped on the subway. The train station and the subway station are connected so you just have to follow the signs. I wanted to see the area of Shanghai called the French Concession for this trip and had looked up a walking tour online. All we had to do was look for street signs and the tour walked us by various shops, restaurants and parks worth seeing. I liked this because I'm learning that exteriors can be very deceiving. There are a lot of places that I would not think to be special and not take a look based on how they look from the street. So this walking tour encouraged us to have a look and we were wonderfully surprised at what was there.
The first place we dipped into was the Old China Hand Reading Room. It was an old place where you could find used english and chinese books. Old furniture and a place to sit down and have a cup of tea. (also free wifi) We found an english coffee table book on Texas and had to laugh. The shop smelled like my old UST classrooms, which I love.

Our next stop was a small park. Very typical city park with a koi pond, old twisty trees and plenty of seniors chatting away. The older Chinese meet their friends for tai chi or do their exercises. The parks have set up senior-friendly exercise equipment for them. Chairs to sit on and perform light leg presses (get their legs and knees moving to avoid joint problems), these leg swinging things (very similar to a man-powered elliptical trainer), as well as pullies for their arm movements. I think it's great. Chinese seniors are very active. Claude was telling me last week that there is mandatory retirement in China at 55. Whether you can afford it or not. So they mostly take care of their grandchildren and socialize with their friends. I had to take a picture of these two men. They were having so much fun at the park together that morning.
We didn't see much else along this road other than a tea house. Really neat stuff but nothing we could carry with us for the rest of the day. So we headed for a famous area of the French Concession called Taikang Road. This area has been cleaned up and is now popular among young Chinese and expats. It is a main road with alley ways sprouting in different directions. There are many art galleries, cafes and boutiques. We took our time looking in various shops and stopped for lunch in a little cafe that is about the size of our bedroom.
This was one of my favorite shops. Thai products on the first floor, Vietnamese products on the second floor. I love these lamps. I want one. But I knew I didn't want to carry it around for the rest of the day. Another time I guess.
Before we had lunch we ducked into Woo Cashmere. A beautiful shop with high quality silk and cashmere. I tried on a grey cashmere shawl that was so incredibly soft but talked myself out of it. I did buy a silk scarf with blue and white patterned china on it. They had the same pattern in pink but Abigail wanted me to get the blue. It even has a tea pot on it!
As we headed back out after lunch, we ran into a man with a cameraman who wanted to ask Mark some questions. He was with the english news station that we never watch but probably should. Anyway, here he is interviewing Mark. He wanted to know how the global economic crisis was affecting us and our coworkers in Suzhou as well as friends and family back home. Not sure but I think the agenda was to send the message that China is minimally affected compared to the rest of the world.
After walking around some more James started to get antsy. Looking at art galleries and various shops is right up Abigail's alley but not so much James'. I had read about an art store where you could sit down at your own easel and creat your own masterpiece so we set off to find it. The area really is a labyrinth so we had a heck of a time finding this shop. It didn't look like anything from the front but the shop owner took us up these rickety, old stairs into the art studio and James and Abigail set to work.


While the kids painted Mark and I sat with some hot tea and warmed up. The kids really enjoyed it and we came home with two new pieces of artwork for the apartment! Here are some views of the alley we took from the upstairs studio.

So that was our day. We had dinner and headed back to the train station. We will most likely head back to Shanghai in April sometime. There are many other areas I would like to see.
I will blog again on Sunday, lots of stuff going on this week.
Hope everyone is well. Summer vacation is right around the corner, I can't believe it.
Sending all our love until next time!

Claude and Lynn's visit

Claude and Lynn arrived last Sunday. Claude was working in Fuzhou and met Lynn in Shanghai to spend 4 days with us and then Lynn returned to Fuzhou with him for another 2 weeks.
It was great to see them but unfortunately the March weather did not cooperate! On Monday we headed into old Suzhou to visit a really neat english bookstore/cafe that I knew Lynn would enjoy and came to find out after walking half a mile in the rain and cold (it's on a street where cars are not allowed) that it is closed on Mondays!! Ok, fine. So we thought since it was definitely inside weather we would head to the Suzhou museum. Which we came to find out is....closed on Mondays! Arghhh (as Garfield and James would say). We did step into an embroidery shop but were wet, cold and Lynn was jet lagged so we headed back for a rest.
On Tuesday it was still cold but the rain had stopped so we took off for the Humble Administrator's Garden which is one of the more famous gardens here in Suzhou. Here are some pictures.


On Wednesday Claude and Lynn came to have a look at the school. James and Abigail were very excited to be tour guides! We rode the staff bus home and played Kabuki on the wii and had a nice dinner. On Thursday Claude and Lynn were off again. So it was a short trip but as always, nice to spend time with them and exciting to have our first visitors. Soo....who's next??
Lots of love,
Karen (and the rest of the Smiths)