I’m sitting around listening to my kids trying to play this “Minecraft” and talk to each other. Some of the things are quite funny, but I realized that if I asked these questions when I was a kid it would probably give my parents heart attacks….

“Can we burn the cloud? I want to burn the cloud.”

“What happens if I walk into the Lava?”

“I want to make the world, the world of death.”

“I’m going to go drown myself now.”

“Come back people zombie!”

“Can you go kill that dog please?”

“Sammy has Lava on one hand and water on the other!”

“Sounds like TNT”

Quotes like this make me wonder, what kind of whacko designed this game? I sometimes just sit and listen to the kids playing, it can be quite amusing. Then I wonder, what kinds of things did my brothers and I say, while playing outside that made my parents shake their heads and think “30 years ago we would never say such nonsense….” Usually I remember that my youth was filled with Dungeons and Dragons, and similar quotes probably could have been heard from us downstairs as we rolled dice and threw fireballs at evil orcs and zombies….

I’d love to hear crazy quote kids have made in your lives (No context needed, they are more humorous that way.)

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.