Spring 2017

Good morning/afternoon/evening internetland.

As is usual with my blogging, it's been awhile since I wrote an entry so let me fill you in on the happenings of my life in China.

The biggest event this spring is one you undoubtedly heard about as I was constantly emailing updates: Nicole is coming to Canada! Yay!
We're planning a really extended stay landing early July and not leaving again until the very end of August. We hope to see lots of you during that time.  I've already got a calendar that's filling up so if you'd like to meet up with us in Ontario please let me know!
My classes have, generally, been going about the same.  There's been more frustration in this job
compared to my last as students at this school may be approximately the same level as my last school but their motivation is near zero.  It's not just me having this problem.  Actually, from what I've seen, I've been able to manage it better than some but it's still incredibly disheartening to try to teach to a room full of students who have zero interest.  I'm used to this on some level but I've had really good success of bringing students around.  The main difference at this school is that the school management actually tells the students that the foreign classes aren't really important.  This means we can't really encourage them since they don't care and they also have no fear of failing since it doesn't matter.  The teachers had a meeting and basically told this school this system is awful.  Either make the class mandatory and important or not important but optional.  This thing where they MUST go to class but it doesn't matter if they do anything once there is just idiotic.
To make matters worse, they had an English test... a chinese English test (meaning memorizing words and grammar with no actual application) and if they got a high enough mark on it they were allowed to stop going to our classes so we lost our best students in each class.  Management claimed that these students were supposed to then go to a higher level English class... except no such class actually existed.
I still have reasonable success with getting students to want to come to class but all these needless obstacles are really frustrating.  I seriously considered switching schools next year but the other benefits of this job are just too hard to give up at this time.  Therefor a signed for another year.  It means I keep living close to Nicole, I have a good apartment, and I have an insane number of holidays.
I've started teaching some kids on the weekend.  They are incredibly high level students around 12 years old.  They are all essentially fluent.  It's a big challenge as I've never taught anything like it before. It's basically just teaching like you'd do in Canada.  But I've enjoyed being able to actually do creative projects with them.  I've brought out activities that I had tried years ago with college students but realized it was way too hard for them.  The kids have loved these things.
I see Nicole fairly often however it's usually just in evenings.  When we do get a whole day free we often go out exploring, usually on the motorcycle.  One day a few weeks ago we set out to go up some of the mountains near here and had... a less than successful day.

We went to a mountain we've been to before but it had a big gate across the road and no one was allowed in. Many cars were being turned around. Then we went on another road for a long while until we hit another gate with a guard who wouldn't let anyone with wheels through. Even a guy on a bicycle was refused. Finally we said screw it and went to the reservoir... Which had a gate and guards turning everyone away because "a man is killing people in the mountains". Turns out some guy murdered an acquaintance two days ago and they think he's hiding there so "200 police" are there hunting him. We were allowed in anyway once my gf signed her name. We saw five police napping and nothing else. 

This is how China is.  Sometimes things are great and you can explore places easily and then suddenly you just can't because... well, no one ever has a good reason.  There's going to be a BRICS summit (look it up if you're interested) here in September which has caused a massive headache for everyone living in the city.  Pretty much everything is under construction.  Many of the trees near where I live have been uprooted and SLIGHTLY bigger trees planted in their place.  This combined with the subway construction has pretty much brought the city to a standstill.  After September is should be quite nice but for now it's awful.  People who live anywhere near the main buildings for the event will have to move out for that week or so.  I've already had police come by my place twice to register me even though they all of us on file anyway.  Suffice to say I'm happy I won't be here in the summer.

One, more successful, day of exploring we came by a strawberry field.  You could pay more to pick your own or just buy already picked ones.  Yes, you read that right.  Picking your own actually cost more.  This seemed bizarre but Nicole guessed it's because "people will pick everything and destroy the plants, they'll also eat many while they pick".  OK, makes sense I guess.  So I bought a large basket.  This inspired me to make smoothies which meant I needed a freezer.  I then also ordered 25kg of strawberries. My freezer is now completely full although I'm going through them fairly quickly.

This upcoming weekend is a holiday.  It's been quite hot here for the past while now so Nicole and I are hoping to go on a longer motorcycle trip to some of the surrounding areas.  Hopefully weather, and traffic, permit it.
I'll leave it at that for now.  I've included captions in pictures for more ideas of what I've been up to.
They can be found here
https://goo.gl/photos/LYwvzjeJYeENUrnV8

As always please keep in touch! See you all soon, can't wait for you to meet Nicole.
Josh