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We found a home

This news is coming to you via the blog rather after the fact! We did indeed, by God’s grace, find an apartment to live in for the year. It is just a 15 minute walk to the kids school. And from there, it is about 25 minutes to the university where Michelle and I are studying the French language. All in all, it worked out well. The landlady just recently had it painted totally in white, so she encouraged us to not get too creative with decorating, especially since we expect to be in this apartment only for one year. She doesn’t want to have to paint again.

But before we found this one, ooh boy, we looked at a lot of others. They all had their appeal. One had a nice balconey. One had a finished kitchen. One had lovely views. But they had drawbacks too. One was in view of a prison (did we want prisoners looking out their windows into our place?). One had single pane glass doors on the balconies (cold!). Another had a sink and counter so low it was too low for even Liberty to work on! Praise God, the place we have is just right.

Caen

Caen is a very nice city. The bus service is really good, and attached to the bus service is a rental bike service too. So we have gotten monthly subscriptions for the bus, and I signed up for the bike. Bikes are not as prevalent as I was expecting here, but life in general is ready to incorporate bikes, like this storage on a train for a bike.

Bike on a train

There is a lot of history in this region too. The landing beaches of Normandy are just down the road, and every where you go you can find a plaque, or a monument, or a statue commemorating the soldiers who fought in WWII as well as WWI. The city itself too retains an old “European” charm.

Local street

Street

merry go round downtown

cathedral

Spring is coming

Thank you for upholding us with prayers, encouraging emails and letters, and your support. In this post we want to include an update on Shane’s dad’s health and situation, as well as some notes about the past few months of teaching and life in NW China.

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Parties and Celebrations

Birthdays and holidays are perfect times to have guests over and get people together, and to share about hope, love, grace, and life. In November, Van turned 7 years old and wanted to have a big party at home. The whole family got involved to give Van a Lego-themed party and invited adults, students, kids from the community, and teachers. The kids and adults had a blast. We played games and ate local food prepared by good friends of ours who enthusiastically took over our kitchen and prepared a Muslim-friendly meal. We enjoyed seeing the joy on the kid’s faces as we laughed and played and celebrated life.

As an English teacher, Shane teaches language and oral English, and also about culture and values. Most students have never met a foreigner or interacted with someone from a different country or with a different worldview, so they are very curious to hear of a different way of thinking or doing things. Teaching opens doors to deep conversations with students and acts as a window into the lives of people living here. During Christmas, Shane wanted to really highlight Christmas and the impact of giving. With the help of Liberty and Van, he went out and bought 124 small gifts and, with Michelle, wrapped each one to give to each of his students. His students were truly touched. On the days of the Christmas parties in the classroom, Liberty, Van and Michelle dropped in on the classes to bring cookies and treats for celebrations. We all had a great time of eating together and playing games. Each classes surprised Shane on another class day with special music, singing, traditional dancing and a birthday cake in honor of Shane’s birthday (that means FOUR different cakes in one week!). Christmas with the students will definitely be a highlight of our past 10 months of living and teaching here.

Following Christmas, China celebrated its biggest holiday of the year: Lunar New Year. The New Year holiday is not just the Eve and the Day, but a 2 month holiday time when people travel back to their families for a big reunion.  For teachers, this meant Shane had 2 months holiday from classes. This in part is why Shane was able to return to Canada for 10 days

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settling in

Today marks the end of our 6th week here in Ili; the start of our 7th week! We have been busy settling in. We are grateful that just outside our apartment is a large public square within which all the neighbourhood kids gather and play. They have been very welcoming of Liberty and Van; Van just jumped right on in and started getting dirty with the other boys. Liberty enjoys talking with the small groups of other girls who, having gotten brave in a group, come over to Liberty to try their English. But Liberty also likes watching the boys do their crazy stunts, and when there is something they ca not do, such as climb a particular tree, she sort of wanders over there, then climbs the tree! “I am just trying to help them see how to do it,” she says when we ask her why she did that. 🙂

horse

How many times?

Here is a question for you: How many times in the last year have you needed to confirm with the local police your living arrangements? How many times in the last 5 years, you know what, let’s make that TEN years, have you had to visit the police for any reason pertaining to your person (I am not including crimes or emergencies)? Well, in the first 6 weeks we have been here we have had 2 visits by police to our apartment, 2 visits to the main police station, 2 visits to the campus police office, and one interview at the university Foreign Affairs Office with the Chief of Police, 2 assistant police officers, and the University Dept Chair, and the Faculty Head, and 2 other people (I have no idea who they were). You may recall us saying this part of the world can be tricky to get into, and to stay in… these police visit and interactions are all part of it.

Through it all we have had deep peace. Praise God. Near the end of the interview with the Chief of Police she began to relax and become more friendly. She thanked me (and by extension, our family) for choosing to come to her city to help teach the young people. She said to me, “Do you know what the greatest lesson you can teach them is? It is to help them appreciate all that is around them, and to help them learn to live as full a life as possible.” All I could respond with was, “Yes, I totally agree!”

Our HomeLiberty, Chopstick Master

Food as usual is delicious! So glad to have some spicy noodles again. And even better, because there are actual Russians in this city who have a bakery, we can actually buy loaves of bread! Remember, we usually only have flat nan-style bread. Do not get me wrong, nan is delicious too and comes in handy for making pizza. We Westerners love our bread but our style typically is not available in China. But, it is here! White bread, brown bread, and even rye!

We are thankful the apartment we have been assigned is more or less fully furnished. We do need to get beds for the kids, and we needed some curtains and rugs, but by and large it is fine. The building we are in is called The President’s Building… because this is where the President of the university stays when he is here! He stays on the 3rd floor, and we are on the 4th floor. When we look out the windows we see many trees, so that is a nice change from our Urumqi apartments which usually looked out on another building.

Schooling

I started teaching classes 2 days after we arrived. Currently I am teaching 8 hours a week, spread over 3 days (Tues, Thursday, Friday), with about 4 hours of prep each non-class day. All my classes are first year students, which means for most of them I am the first foreigner they have seen and interacted with! The other day I needed something from home, so Michelle and the kids interrupted their homeschool to bring the things to me. Well, it was like Justin Bieber came to the class when Van and Liberty walked in! All the students were oohing and aahing, pulling out their cell phones to take pictures, even rushing to the front with their arms outstretched to touch or grab Van, or Liberty!! Then Michelle came in! Oh my, some of the students almost fainted with delight at the sight of her blond hair and bright smile!

Homeschool is also back in swing. Michelle has been amazing keeping things on track and in order despite all the travel and upheavals of the past year. It has been interesting trying to explain to people here what we are doing. The previous foreign family actually sent their kids to a local school, so we assume everyone thinks all foreigners would do the same. It maybe worked for that other family, but we have chosen to not do that, and Liberty and Van are thriving.

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A home at last

A view of the moatNine or ten days. That is the average number of days it takes for us to find a place to call home when we go overseas. This time it was 9 days. Fortunately the guesthouse we stayed at had a large enough room for us to do well in and not go crazy. We queried at least 10 real estate agents, private posters, and forums, in our search.

The cheapest places were outside of town, something we at first thought would be fine. But after we rode a rented scooter out there we realized that the isolation would get to us. We would end up staying in the house rather than getting out; there was no place to walk to. So we looked in the city and eventually found a condo large enough for us, but still in our general price range.

We think it will work well. We can walk to many places, like a library, a pool, a shopping mall and grocery store, even the zoo! The newest coworking space is even in walking distance for me!

So in about an hour we will have hauled our 8 bags to the street to hail a red songtaew to take us to the new home. Thank God, and thank you for praying.