The most embarrassing
We were headed home from church one Sunday on the subway with two other families that were going the same direction. The subway came in at the same time that we were going down the stairs to board and it created a wind tunnel up the stairwell. Being Sunday I was wearing a skirt and it was a very full skirt at that. I had a baby in one arm and the wind was so strong that it flung my skirt up around my waist with a lot of force. I only had one arm to hold it down and Mike and one of the ladies we were walking with were helping me hold it down and it was still flying up. Mike said that I turned pretty red. Oh well right. Everyone has legs. Can't let it worry you too much but I never wore that skirt to church again if I knew we would take the subway.
The funniest
One day coming home from church in Beijing we were having a hard time catching a Taxi, they just seemed to be scarce going the direction we wanted to go. Then Jada decided to imitate us and put her arm out to call a taxi. Just then a taxi going the opposite direction flipped an illegal u-turn in the center of the road and picked us up. We like to joke about it and say that Jada is so cute that the Taxi driver could not not stop.
The most frustrating
Two things come to mind that were really frustrating:
In May when we had originally planned to return to Canada we decided to stay another year. We had spent the year before trying to get on our feet and things were finally starting to look up. Having a footing in China, more knowledge about opportunities in Beijing, contacts and some experience we had a lot of confidence that Mike could find a better job with a pay raise to better our situation. We upgraded to a two bedroom apartment (rent prices had increased dramatically) and then all our confidence started to wane. A month later and many promising looking job opportunities evaporated into thin air. Mike decided to get an online teaching certificate so he could get into some of the top schools in Beijing but then he didn't get those jobs either so finally we started to consider the options we despised most, the OTHER English schools. Mike applied for New oriental and got called back that day. We had heard horror stories about having to commute all over the city and having really long hours. These were all questions that Mike addressed in the interview, and found out that this branch of New Oriental had less centers, and teachers stayed mostly in one or two spots. So we thought it would be ok. So Mike started working, and right after he started the director of studies at the first school disappeared, so Mike got no training on how they expected him to use their programs and power points. A couple of weeks later, the acting DOS asked Mike if he had had any training. No. Turns out Mike was not teaching how they wanted him to teach and students were complaining. Students would seem nice in the class, then go file complaints to the center and not want to go to his class anymore. So it was really their fault, but they did not take a lot of responsibility for it. They just told mike to change. He finally got some training and things went a little better, but because students at that center still would either cancel or not show up to his classes (Stupid popularity contests), They shuffled him to a different center that took an almost an hour and a half (two in traffic) to get to. They also never gave him as many hours as they said that they would give. Mike ended up going to two different centers on opposite sides of the city (never on the same day at least) to get by. Mike did really well at the second center (the one he liked better anyway and was a little closer) and the students really liked him there. Turns out there was a lot of deep problems in that first center so they ended up closing it for a time. Of course, just after we decided to come back to Canada, and bought our tickets they offered him full time employment. Go figure, eh?
The second, not really a story, but just something in general: The beggars and people selling socks and other knickknacks outside of the silk market. Both of these groups were VERY pushy, VERY demanding and they only targeted foreigners or Chinese walking with foreigners. Mostly just foreigners. Some of the beggars would go so far as to grab at your clothing and follow you about 50 meters. That or send their kids after you. We like to help where we can, but these are not true people in need. Most of the beggars made more money then Mike did! (he made about 1500 USD a month). The people selling socks would not take no for an answer either. If you did not want socks, they would offer something else like fake Rolex's. They would shove whatever it was in your face and say "Socks!" or "Watches". They would follow you into McDonald's or one of the other restaurants near the silk market and pester you while you ate. The only way to deal with either group was to ignore them.
The coolest
Hands down, the coolest thing in 2010 was being in China during Chinese New Year! I'm sure you remember reading about it earlier in our blog, so we won't say too much. But we had a lot of fun with friends, we ate a lot, we set off a lot of fireworks, and watching the COOLEST firework show you'll ever see. We watched it from the roof of a 30 story building, so some of the fireworks were exploding at eye level. We had a lot of good laughs that evening - many of which came from a party game called "who wants to be famous". You send one person out of the room and everyone decides why that person is famous. The people in the room are the news reporters at the famous persons news conference about being famous. From the questions that the famous person is asked, they have to figure out why they are famous. Some of the best answers were things like "I was just sitting around and it came to me" (He was famous for inventing a human fart powered car) and "I'm just that good" (he was famous for knowing 20 languages, and can simultaneously translate into 5ish languages). Good times with friends!
One of the best times
When we moved to our new apartment, we had a house warming party. We decided to serve smoothies, because some friends had given us some smoothie syrups. We had classic flavours like strawberry, mango and such. Then we decided to have a guess the flavour game. We made a Chocolate Marshmallow Grape flavoured smoothie (Dad Innes' favourite Peters Drive In milkshake flavour). People loved the flavour combination, but no one got close to guessing all three. People were guessing things like Tootsie roll, maraschino cherry, chocolate covered grapes, cherry and grape, Tootsie roll and grape. People thought it was great fun to try to guess this flavour. We didn't have anyone guess all three correctly, so we put the names of everyone who got two right into a hat and drew the name of the winner.
The scariest
The cultural habits and runnings of the government in China is quite different from here. Being from Canada Mike and I have grown to expect that law are pretty set and that most people and especially businesses will follow the processes as required by the government (such as applying for licences, visas and those kind of things) and what you expect to happen will happen. Not so in China, the laws are very bendable and frequently changing. Often you can argue your way out of penalties and if you know the right person you can totally by pass the processes set up by law and get what ever you want done whether you are qualified or not. From what we observed the people seemed to be in a mindset of what can I do to go around the law rather then just follow it, just because it was often both easier and cheaper that way. Very different from what we are used to. I am not putting down Chinese culture, that is just the way it is there and in a lot of the world for that matter. This all leads up to one of our scariest experiences this year. The English school that Mike was working for sent us on a high-speed train up to Shenyang to do some visa work (apparently they were not licenced to hirer foreigners in Beijing so they had us go up there to do it-something we had not been aware of). We get there and someone who works for the school up there met us and took us to first the police station to register us in that city (even though we didn't live there) and then to apply for the visa. We did not like the whole situation and no one had said a thing before that and we had just put a ton of unexpected money into getting these visas including flying back to Canada and waiting two months to get a letter we needed to apply for the visa there and we were needing to use our credit card now to pay for the train tickets and the visas on the china end of it because we were bankrupt. We were always being treated like money grew on trees for us by the Chinese. Not only that but we had one month upon getting back to China to apply for the residence card and the school waited until the last few days to send us so we were really on edge. When we got to there we had just barely enough time before they closed (we had missed our train in Beijing so we were rushed for time). The lady who had took us there wanted us to not say anything and just let them assume we didn't speak Chinese (very suspicious and this made us feel very worried about what was really going on here). She took over. They told here it could not be done because they did not have there licence for the upcoming year yet. We were so scared, absolutely broke in a foreign country and now no visas. After phone calls and deliberating she got in contact with a 'friend' in the government who pulled some strings and got them to grant us the visas anyways with a promise that she would bring in the licence as soon as they got it. She even used Jada to get sympathy saying, don't make this baby come out in the cold again. That is actually a good argument that works with the Chinese culture. The officer in Canada would not even bat an eye at that.
2010 was another roller coaster year and an adventure. We still have the adventure bug, that will probably always be the case but now we are looking to get more settled, not as in find a place to call home and stay there for the rest of our lives but get established in a career that will keep us in connection with China and hopefully have the opportunity to live and work there again. That is our hope and dreams for the future, we will see what happens. It is much better to get a job here and have them send you over (much better benefits and wage) then to find a job, even with a foreign company, while living in China. We plan on being in Canada for the next 5 years or so, we will see what the future brings. 2011 is looking up for probable good year already. We have been in Canada for almost 2 months and on the job hunt but there were not even any calls for interviews until recently, it was really discouraging. But within the first week of January Mike has a promising second interview with Telus, a scheduled second interview with TD Bank, and the government is asking for some information to schedule a phone interview in either January or February for a immigration officer position were his first post would be in Ottawa while he trained and up to 5 years. The immigration officer position would not start until may so mike and I are hoping that he can get the bank job and that way he could be in a career that also has the possibility to take us were we want to go while he goes through the interview and hiring process for the government. The government is his dream job and we have high hopes in that direction. And if he does not get hired for this job increased experience in banking can help him as he continues to apply for the government as well as being a good career itself. These are just our hopes. Nothing is for sure but we feel good about things right now. Thing have not always gone as planned or in the time frame that we wanted but we have always seen blessings along the road. We have faith things will turn out for the best.
Happy New Year!
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