As some of you may have seen the photo album, we had the opportunity last Friday evening to attend our first Chinese wedding. A colleague of Ramsay's from OPEN magazine invited us. We took the subway to Mudu stop and got off to find the Royal Garden Hotel. The outside looked like the capital building in DC but with a lot fewer steps and a Greek style fountain with statues in it. Our friend, the bride, and her husband to be were waiting inside the marble lobby...

We've had a blast these past couple of days, what with Golden Week coming to a close and the school-wide three-day mini-olympics livening up everyone's spirits and giving me a few more days off. I did have to play dress up for the cameras a few times, once formally for a group photos of the hundreds of Chinese and foreign teachers here, and once in a track suit to march around the track and kick off the sporting events. But the added respite was worth being the u...

We've had a busy month this September, getting used to the flow of things here in Suzhou. my classes are going smoothly, both here at Suzhou Foreign Language School and at ACI, and the October issue of Open Magazine will have four articles of mine between its covers. A good amount of work, in sum. My class is an interesting one, as i have already mentioned. I've gotten to know the students better over the last few weeks since our previous post, and now I am a...

As the first week of teaching my new class winds to a close tomorrow, it is safe to say that we are all in for an adventure as the year progresses. My students are great, garrulous and laughing youths not without their problems but a challenging and engaging crew who will be learning a lot from me this year. Some of the brightest, as well as some of the most challenged, students are in my class, and they have been plagued with short-duration teachers over the cou...

Wrapped up the week with the preschoolers on friday. It was a lot of fun, and after getting to know them its hard to move on. We posted an album of pictures from the last day with them. Rather than write about it, I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.