Cram session

Vikki's mother leaves March 5th and we're trying to check items off her list of things she wanted to do while she was here. Last night, we went and Vikki and her mother got a pedicure. Jay watched the children, though he did cheat and bring the laptop so Audriana could watch a movie. Before that, Janie spoiled him by taking us to a Brazilian Barbecue in town. It wasn't near as good as the one we are used to from our days in Changsha, but servers bringing meat to your trays anywhere is nice. We got there during the last part of the dinner rush and then stayed until almost 9:00. We just barely managed to make it to the place where we had planned to take Vikki's mom for the pedicure as it was closing...but then found another store across the street that was willing to do it, even though they would be closing in another forty-five minutes. We were surprised that it took until midnight! We had all the kids out with us, getting our nails done (except Jay, of course) until midnight!

We're thinking about taking a trip to the countryside on Monday and then a friend from the States, Rachel Rasmussen, is going to visit for a few days. While Rachel's here, we will probably take a trip downtown to see West Lake once or twice. Janie leaves Thursday morning while Jay is in class. Victoria has arranged for her father to take Janie and Vikki to the airport and help with the kids.

We'll miss you Grammy!

Everyone is well!

We ate a lot of oranges, drank orange juice, took Vitamin C tablets, and mostly tried to rest. I guess yesterday may have been the first day that everyone felt back to normal. Yea!

sick-o's

For like two days, the weather in Hangzhou reached an unexpected high in the seventies, pushing eighty degrees farenheit. Then, on Saturday the weather started changing back to it's usual winter self. I guess that may be what prompted our family to become ill. For the past two days, Vikki, Jay, and Audriana have had colds. Nothing too bad - and fortunately Grammy and Joseph have been unaffected.

Our desire to put a lot of hours into either searching for a new position for the upcoming school year or language training isn't going too well, but we have some direction on where we might like to go at the moment. There is a school in Jinhua, not too far from Hangzhou, that provides language instruction for teachers and that a friend is strongly recommending to us. Jay was surprised that Vikki apparently would even be more interested in the school there than staying in Hangzhou. It may not be possible to teach at the school in Jinhua. We've heard that there is not much turnover for teachers and that it is difficult to get in as it is a top tier school in all of China.

I guess at the moment, the school in Jinhua and trying to stay in Hangzhou may be the biggest propects as far as what we're thinking to do for the fall, but if anyone knows of schools in China that offer Chinese language instruction, we'd love to hear about it!

It just seems like it's been a while since I last posted an entry

Things are starting to heat up again here...

We have decided to try and implement a system of working on either language training or job search for the coming school year, or some combination of both. Jay is starting this week trying to put twenty hours a week into improving our current situation, whether we stay in Hangzhou or move to another city. Vikki will try to put ten hours a week mostly into language study, but will also probably help some with looking for an improved situation. This year we had planned to do ten hours of self-study a week on Chinese, and are just now trying to put that much time to use towards our purpose to be here - which at the moment is to learn the language.

Jay starts classes again next week. Currently he has twelve hours of teaching scheduled, though there's a rumor that four of those hours might dissipate. He'll have Mondays and Fridays off this semester which will help greatly if we decide to take any other side trips for the purpose of visiting schools.

Vikki's mother leaves early March. She has spoiled us so much since she has been here. She does all our laundry, has cooked several American dishes - tacos, hamburgers, spaghetti (yum!), and is a great help with taking care of the children. It will be hard for us to see her leave. Audriana will also miss her very much I'm afraid as her Grammy spends all her nights with her in her room.


(tacos with Grammy)
We've been scrubbing mold the last two days. We 'insulated' our windows in the house with plastic lining, thereby creating a bit of a greenhouse effect resulting in a lot more condensation. Quite a nice habitat for our moldy friends. We left for Shanghai without taking care of the problem and were gone for four days...that was a mistake! There is only one more balcony to do and it may be the least affected.

I'll have to try to think of some better things to say next time!