Education Fair, Thanksgiving and Hub Pages…

It has been ages since I have written anything on this site. As the years pass by, we begin to take everyday events for granted. What was once a picture and a story is now just another day in our life! It’s becoming more difficult to see what would be of interest to others. Many things that would have instigated a surprised response now pass by without barely a glance. The scooter going by with a family of four, the older guy I passed the other day on the street with two grandchildren facing backwards on his scooter, leaning over the backrest and each other, sound asleep and, of course, no helmets. It would have been a great picture but pretty difficult to shoot at 50 km/h.

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It is hard to believe that we will have been here for four years as of this coming February. Although we are still basically illiterate in a foreign land, it definitely feels like home and every time we go away we are happy to be back in our apartment when we return. My Chinese continues to improve and it is nice to be able to sort of have a conversation with my mechanic now instead of the charades and finger-pointing that took place four years ago. This week I tried to get the local pharmacy to order my glaucoma medication so I could save a trip to the local mall, where I know it is available. It was nice to be able to communicate with the girl and understand when I returned the next day that she was unable to find any of there suppliers that carried it. Four years ago, that would have been impossible. We now know this city of 10 million well enough to get around in a taxi and show others where things are.

My students continue to teach me one bad sentence every other day so my Chinese swearing is also improving. It is fun to be able to teach the Chinese Canadians on our staff stuff that they haven’t heard because 1) they left the country long ago and are not up to date with the latest slang or 2) they were born in Canada and don’t really know any contemporary Chinese double entendres, especially that of teenagers.

Yesterday was the first day of our annual Education Fair. Over fifty universities from Canada and the US descended on our campus to recruit students for next year. It is fun to see what we have all been working towards as one student after another is offered a spot at the university of their choice. It must be so exciting for these kids to head off to a new country with so many new experiences in store. This fair is a big deal. They have to get an offer from somewhere in order to start their visa process which takes several months to complete. As always, 99% of them will end up in a university somewhere. For some families, this amounts to their life’s savings, sending their son or daughter off to a foreign university. On the average, it will cost them about $50,000 per year to obtain their degree. I have kept in touch on Facebook with many of my students who are now going to university around the world from London to Edinburgh, from Switzerland to Paris, and from Halifax to Victoria. It is so much fun to hear them talk about their first big snowfall experience or what it’s like to live in Kamloops. And when they return to visit after a year abroad, they have changed so much!

Our campus continues to grow. The year I arrived, we had a school of 125 students and 12 Canadian teachers. This year we are up to 60 Canadian teachers and a further Chinese staff of about 100. The student population now exceeds 1300 with another 200 students enrolling at the beginning of the second semester (middle of February). We continue to hire teachers and another five will be arriving in February because of the increase in enrollment.

Last night, 14 of us headed over to the Aloha restaurant for a Thanksgiving dinner of turkey, all the trimmings and pumpkin pie. The restaurant is owned by an expat American. American Thanksgiving is better than no Thanksgiving! Our next big holiday will begin the middle of January and run for about five weeks. Nancy and I are off to Thailand to check out yet another potential retirement location, then Bali for a few nights and finally South Korea to visit my son, Pat, who is now living there and teaching English.

I will continue to use this site as a blog for family and friends to update and post pictures of our trips around and outside the country, as well as local get-togethers. However, I just joined HubPages a little over a week ago and have started to write up a storm there. So far, I have posted thirteen articles on a variety of topics. You can read them at http://stevelepoidevin.hubpages.com/

And finally, November 26 and 24 degrees Celsius in Wuhan. How nice is that? The bad news it is supposed to snow by the end of next week! That’s how fast our seasons change around here!