Chunjie Kuaile!

Chunjie Kauile!! Happy Chinese New Year! As you may or may not know, the Chinese go ALL out for Chinese New Year. This holiday is celebrated as if it were Christmas (from an American's point of view of what "Christmas" should look like). So with holidays comes time off, right? RIGHT!! So our school let out last Wednesday and will not resume school until fourteen days later, February 5, 2009. Being that when I have time off I usually have an 'itch' to go SOMEWHERE because c'mon, I'm in CHINA-I'm literally SO CLOSE to so many cool places on this side of the globe...so that's what I did, I went on a snowboarding adventure to the NanShan Quiksilver ski village right outside of Beijing/close to the Great Wall. As SOON as the bell rang on Wednesday, I hopped on a van with 8 other female teachers and 1 male teacher and we were on our way to take the 5 hour train to Beijing to then hit the slopes, literally, the next morning at 7 am. Boy was that the BEST TRIP EVER!! Not only was snowboarding awesome (you should really check out this park-its an awesome place to board, especially for not having real snow..shhh) but Beijing is just a really rad city anyway. It is FILLED with fun markets, Pete's TEX MEX (YUMM-which had DR. PEPPER-my first time since July 2008), an American hospital, and the list goes on. This trip was very fulfilling to say the least. Before coming to China, one of my 'sad moments' was the thought that I wouldn't be able to snowboard for TWO WHOLE YEARS because let's face it-China's not to 'hip' in some areas and I hadn't heard of any shredding going on on this side of the world. Well, I was wrong, and my heart was FULL of joy on January 22nd!! So here are a few pics of the trip. I taught 5 teachers how to snowboard on this trip (I would love to do this as a full-time seasonal job at some point on my life) and one of which is a proud 56 year old grandmaw! AWESOME, huh?

After we returned home we had big plans to re-do our living room/common area. It is STARK white and had this akward weird chinese-y wall and so we thought some paint and window treatments would do wonders...and we were RIGHT!! We headed straight for a store like Home Depot and also while we were in Beijing we picked up curtains from Ikea (the SECOND largest in the world) and a few other cool wall art pieces (see pics below of frames and flowers) that we thought might spice up the area. Below are pictures of the before/during/after our painting adventure. Enjoy!!

I hope you are all doing so very well. You can pr for our company as we are preparing to lose a few families which means we are in the process of recruiting (stateside) to fulfill SEVERAL teaching positions for the Fall of next year. If you are or anyone you know are interested, direct them to www.teachwithisc.com or send them my way via email or Facebook. Love you all so much!!! COME VISIT CHINA!!!




(weird chinese-y wall before)


(living room arrangement before)


(looking into the dining room before)


(and the painting begins...excuse our drying rack)


(Gloria comes to help us put on the first coat of paint)


(first coat drying for the night)




(our new curtains from Ikea to separate the dining room from the living room!!)


(new paint job and new lamps from Ikea)


(We covered the chinese-y wall with a few coats of paint and cool picture frames!)


(our new flower wall art and finished living room-well one wall at least!)




(NanShan Quiksilver ski village)


(Notice the TWO of MANY mountains covered in snow :) We take what we can get here!)



(maybe I was a little bit TOO excited to get back on a board!!)


(Gloria and Patti-the super buff grandmaw that learned to snowboard! Notice the ski lift goes over non snow-covered ground to take you to the top where there IS snow!!)


A few of the women on the trip!! It was -16 degrees here!!


Me, Gloria, Patti