This week is the “Golden Week Holiday”. It started on the 1^st of October, and stretches to the 7^th. For elementary schoolteachers like myself, that means a whole week off. If you happen to work at an academy, or “Cram School” then you get 3 days off. It’s a nice time to spend with my family, but not friends. It’s a good time to re-acquaint ourselves with the city.

Golden Week is a holiday created in celebration of the creation of the Ruling Political Party of China. It used to be 5 days but it was expanded a few years ago to be a whole week. Like most major holidays in China this is a time when everyone goes back to their hometown to spend time with their family, for us this means that all of our friends have skipped town. The population of Beijing dropped to about ½ of what it usually has. The tourism industry does well, restaurants, shopping& hotels. Collared work (White and Blue) comes to a halt, the number of taxis is bare minimum, and the city feels empty, unless you’re in the shopping district.

While we get a week off, a few of my friends who are still at academies start work again tomorrow. I used to have this schedule, and do not envy them. Cram schools are at their busiest during holidays, as parents take any opportunity to force knowledge into their child’s head by enrolling them into 12~16 hours of class a day (An exaggeration, but not by much, some children have 6~12 hours a day on holidays), which as an educator I can say, these extra classes don’t usually help the student’s grades or learning, but if done right can help the child enjoy the subject, which will eventually help them. But academies are not in it for the education they want the money!

This week we have traveled around a bit. We discovered an electronics market, where we got phone numbers set up (on cheap old phones until we unlock our Canadian phones). It is easy to get to, now that the city has opened up Line 14 of the Subway. We have discovered that the kids have outgrown their old playgrounds that we used to take them to. We have taken the kids to see the Minion Movie (In 3 D), awesome by the way. We have had Italian, Korean, Chinese and North American Food for dinners.

While we are still in the school Dorm, we cannot actually look at apartments during Golden Week, because the real estate agents that can rent us out places are short staffed during the time and unable to show places until the owners are back from holiday. We are also unable to go the bank and set up a way to send money back to Canada until after the holiday because we have no translator to help us with this.

Our original Plan was to send money to our PayPal international from the Chinese Bank, and then send it to the Pay Pal Canada, and deposit it into the Bank back home. But this won’t work. It won’t work because I have a long name. The bank system in China has limited space for names to be put the account under. Since my name is long they removed the spaces in my name. so My name is a single long word. Well some of you know, that the name on the PayPal account has to match the bank account name, but pay pal needs 2 names…. So we are setting up the system to send money to our Credit Cards in Canada, and then we can pay back our bills from that.

Its late night and tomorrow we take the kids to the arcade (Or Maybe down town we will see) Good Night

Settling back into life in China has for the most part been fairly easy. Not without its problems, but smaller problems than we had been facing with our first attempt at Canada. We’ve had technology difficulties, housing difficulties and linguistic difficulties. For the most part, things have gone smoothly.

Before leaving Canada, we had set up what is called a VPN. A VPN, or Virtual Private Network is needed to connect to Western websites such as Google, Facebook, or YouTube. However, when we arrived, our VPN was not working. It took me a week to get it running, with the help of 3 different customer service reps.

We have yet to find a place that has heard of region locking on phones, let alone how to unlock them. We would prefer to keep our Canadian phones and use them here instead of buying new phones for China. I have no idea who came up with the stupid idea of region locking anything, but you see it in DVD players, as well as video games.

We are currently living in the School Dormitory, which has been nice. We want to find our own apartment soon though, we have no space to play or help the kids with their homework. The kitchen is also shared, and so a bit awkward to cook in. So we have been eating out at cheap restaurants or friends’ houses every night.

While Joshua and I have bounced back to the language fairly well, Irish and Samantha are still struggling, and Sammy has needed a lot of help from her “Form Teacher.” Since we are at a private school, each subject has a new teacher, and the “Form Teacher” is the main teacher that helps them with the language, and assists the Specialty Teachers. Sammy has done well in her English based subjects, and her Maths-through-Chinese. But her other subjects she is struggling with a bit, but she enjoys it.

Joshua on the other hand has come home reciting Chinese Poetry and telling us about story-books they read to him (In Chinese) in class. His English-based Subject Teachers have loved having him back, and his Chinese-based-subject teachers have said the same.

Irish however, has no interest in the language until we have to shop, and then she is constantly asking me how to say things. Which is fun, as my vocabulary is limited, and I speak Mandarin with a Korean Accent which completely baffles the people in Beijing. (I am working on my accent).

So far we have noticed, that we have more time with the kids, and have taken them window shopping down the street markets, to the mall playgrounds, to a dinosaur park (thanks to our friends Belle, Anne and their respective families. We have other family based weekend events planned with those families, as well as on our own.

I have an interview for some weekend work this weekend, which should help us financially as we pay off our debts in Canada and in China. Our plan is to be out of Debt completely by next September, and it looks like a very real possibility. Irish’s Paper work and Savings should begin about April or May 2016. Cross our fingers, and hope that I didn’t just jinx it…

Overall it has been really good for us to be back in China, but that doesn’t mean we don’t look forward to returning to Canada to see all of our friends and family again.

The Company I was working at here in Canada understandably needed a date that I was leaving, so I gave them my best guess. I told them I was leaving Canada on the 25th of August. So I finished work on the 21st. This week, I have been relaxing, trying to find things to keep my mind busy while waiting for My visa letter, We cannot go without that. I have been in contact with my School In China, addressing concerns about our re-emigration. Right Now all we can do is sit and wait, and this is the thing that drives my wife and I crazy.

Now to be fair, the lateness is not the school’s fault. When they sent us the requirements for a visa we had difficulty on our end. They were told that we needed a medical Check, but only from doctor that had been screened by the Chinese Embassy. That was were the problem arose. According to the Chinese Visa Center, Medical checks have not been needed since 2012. This information was not available online. I had to take a day off work to go to the Visa center to find this out as it is in downtown Vancouver. Then we had to have the school verify that it was still needed, so they had to talk to immigration there. After this we had to find a doctor to request the medical tests, which was no problem, but the tests could only half be done nearby, we had to travel to a different town to do the x-rays. (The local X-ray center won’t do any immigration requested tests.)So it took us longer than we had hoped to get the papers fed-exed to the school in China.

Work begins next week, and classes start the following Monday, September 7th. I am pretty sure we will be late for class. I’m not 100% sure of what classes I will be teaching, but I have asked so that I can spend some of this free time preparing classes. That is what the rest of the teachers will be doing next week., My being late should not be an excuse for being unprepared in my mind. I have Digital copies of the lower grades English and Science books from when I taught them last time I was working there. I would like to touch up my old lesson plans, but I want to focus on the classes I will actually teach.

We have worries about where we will stay for the first month or two, while we look for our own apartment. Coming late doesn’t give us any time to find a place of our own. Since The kids and I will be in class most of the day 5 days a week. That leaves only Irish to look most of the time to look. Unfortunately she cannot speak Chinese, and is really shy, almost cripplingly so. So we need to spend some time finding our place together.

I won’t lie, financial concerns for the first month are a big stress. But Once we have gotten past the first month, we should be fine financially. We have budgeted out enough for our expenses in China and enough to pay our debts in Canada. Irish and I have both learned a lot about family financial planning in the first 8 years of our marriage, and even though we both started off terrible with money, we are confident that we are going to be able to do all this. The hard part about finances is when you move to a new place where you don’t know the cost of things or the amount you will have coming in.

We will be fine, and when paperwork is finished we will be returning to Canada. Please be patient with us, and we will keep you all updated as we go.