TeamWaWa and their crazy adventures

Hello friends and family! With our month long intensives completed, we celebrated at an Australian bar, Ok Koalas, in the Xinbei district. For those of you familiar with Changzhou, it's near Wanda plaza. The owner, Craig, is an Aussie and does a good job of reminding us that we are true Westerner's. Hahaha! Oh how we missed the fried foods and good dressings. We had onion rings, chicken nuggets, salad, pasta and pizza. Ranch dressing, thousand island and caeser. We were in heaven! Thank you Craig for a great night. Thank you fellow teachers for your friendship. Enjoy the pictures.

Yesterday, Tues March 21st, we went to Wuxi. It's a 30 minute slow train ride from Changzhou. It started off bumpy.  We caught the bus to take us to the train station, but quickly realized we forgot our passports. The next stop got off and headed back home. Finally, on the train to Wuxi and figured since it's only one stop, we will stand instead of sitting. People in China are allowed to smoke on trains. So, picture a smokey cabin. Alright, we made it to Wuxi. Realizing it's a big city. We hadn't planned for it to be so large. We tried to tell a taxi driver where we wanted to go and he just shook his head. We told another driver who had a list of pictures and he pointed to 150... seriously? You want 150 to take us there? No way! We look at the metro train map and see its the 2nd stop off Line 2. What the heck is line 2? And where is Line 2? We've only taken the intercity slow train; not a Metro or subway train. Our feet were hurting..We had already walked ...

When we first thought about an overseas adventure, we never thought ESL was a big deal. English is our native tongue which we took for granted. Many other countries require students to learn English. They have mandatory tests they must pass. And so, enter the picture for ESL teaching. There are many options available to Chinese students. Their public schools teach English. There are international schools. And there are training centers. Shane English is a training center. In order to stay in business, Shane does a lot of marketing and recruitment events for students. The demos for the marketing/recruitment events are super fun. They are not part of a class or extra curricular. They are an extra event and the cost is minimal. The English teaching portion is 45 minutes. 15 minutes is spent on language drilling. The remaining time is games and activities. The biggest factor Shane highlights is our learning is fun! Some of the demos I've done also included themes like L...

It's March 2nd here. We are on our 3rd month in China. Where has time gone? Thinking back to the States, we've missed two nephews (Sam and Keegan) birthdays. We do miss our family back home. We are building a nice expat family here too. Soon we will learn how to use China Post and be able to send stuff back. Remember, the Chinese don't believe in cards! Money cards yes, birthday cards no. It's starting to warm up! A sign Spring is coming is the Plum blossoms. Hongmei park was beautiful.

When we first thought of moving to China, we had read ALOT of blogs and websites. Some were positive and others not so much. We hadn't been to Asia before and aren't big history buffs. This post is dedicated to spreading the word that the places in China we've seen are clean. Yes, we've seen people peeing outside. Yes, Chinese people spit in the streets. But, the sanitation workers are out there picking up trash and gum. Yes, they scrape the gum off the sidewalks! Trash bins are everywhere. The roads are washed too. #chinaisclean

As we walk almost everywhere, we've noticed there are a lot of nice cars in Changzhou. Interesting that so many can afford to 1) drive in China and 2) Own such nice cars. I mean...Come on... We had really nice jobs in the US and still didn't own some of these cars. #jealous And, we regularly see vehicles this nice and some nicer. Here's some pics during our walks.