Weekdays

The fountains outside our building.


Our apartment is the 3rd floor on the right, the balcony with all the laundry hanging out to dry. There is continual laundry going with 7 of us living in the apartment. Abbey and I live with our housemate and her daughter on one side, and in the other half of the apartment live two ayi's from the school. one married and one single. Our building is 8 stories. Most apartments in our city go up to 35.


The little bridge we walk across to get to and from school each day. It arcs over a koi pond with lovely water lillies.
The pool wraps around the building that our school is in. It's hard to get it all in so here are two angles. The pool is also inside the building as well.
Most of the townhomes in our complex are european style, which seemed strange to me when we first got here.
I should probably mention that our complex is not typical. This is top of the line, with only a few other places in the city that are comparable. It's a whole different world outside our gates.
This one is more Chinese style, and those are interspersed as well.


There are little bonzai type trees along our walkway.

This is the back side of the building our school is in. It's below the clock tower on the 3rd floor. I take the 3 yr olds out to play on the garden balcony above, or down to the playground area below.

And now for more of our everyday life...
We head out the door each morning at about 8 am. Our commute to work involves walking to the building next to us. We take the elevator up and go to the big shoe shelf and change into our Crocs. As you know, you don't wear your shoes indoors in China and at our school everyone has a pair of Crocs to wear inside. Abbey has tiny pink ones and I have flowery blue ones. I head into a brief meeting with our staff from 8:15 to about 8:30 and Abbey gets to play with a little friend. At 9:00 we have an opening circle with the whole school and then I teach language arts to a group of 7 kindergarteners until 10:00. I then do admin work until 2:30, taking a lunch break from 12:15-1:15. At lunch time I run home and hang up laundry, straighten up the house, eat lunch, and check my email. From 2:30-4:30 I get to teach Abbey's 3 year old class. We have snack, do art work or center time play, and go outside. We come back and have a closing circle with the whole school again and sing our "Good-bye, See Ya Later Alligator" song. I do prep work from 4:30-5:15 and Abbey plays. At 5:15 we head back home. Two days a week my assistant comes home and tutors Abbey with Chinese. It's not really a lesson, but she plays with her for 45 minutes speaking only Chinese. We have an ayi that comes to our home from 4:30-6:30 M-F, so when we come home she is there working. She does loads of ironing for me (what happens when you have no dryer), does basic cleaning, and cooks. She makes stir-fried chicken, rice, and veggies for us all the time. It costs about $3 a day and has so spoiled me that I don't know how I will ever be able to give up having this help. When we first came I felt wrong about paying such an incredibly low price, but that is how things work here and everyone I know has an ayi. After dinner and showers Abbey and I can have some special playtime before she goes to bed around 8. I usually stay up for a little more computer time but often end up going to bed as early as she does. And speaking of bed, I need to go right now. We are leaving early tomorrow to spend Thanksgiving Day at Hong Kong Disneyland!