In a turn of events, I've taken it upon myself to author an actual and complete blogpost all by my lonesome, as it seems that Cullen does not share my zest for insomnolence and I feel we owe our dedicated reader an update (Mom, do you even check this anymore?).
The above photo was taken on a day last week when Tom and Doug, two of the other foreign teachers (who have been teaching at our school for almost 10 years now!), took us around town with the lovely Mrs. Chen (pictured, right). Mrs. Chen is a nationally celebrated calligrapher and, according to Doug, has her work displayed outside of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. It was truly an honor just to meet her, and we have the further honor of being her guests at a National Day celebration next week! She promised to take us sight seeing in Suzhou as well, and we will get to see her work on display.
We've been in Suzhou, Jiangsu province, for two and a half weeks now, and are enjoying it verily! We are two of six foreign teachers at the school, so it's like, bonus! Washer, refrigerator, modern appliances and built in safety net of sociability right at your fingertips (and it's not even in the contract!). We're not clear on why the school needs so many foreign teachers, as it seems they won't have nearly enough classes to fulfill our contracted teaching hours, but you'll hear no complaints on this end (unless they make good on their threat to make us teach IELTS prep, in which case you should expect lots of complaining in the future). Alas, as our classes do not begin until nearly mid-October, the only things I can find to complain about at the moment are our penury and the fact that Rock does not live/work here and cannot hold our hands this year. Pay day is this Tuesday, however, and Rock is fulfilling a lifelong dream of living the Kentucky high life, so I will grudgingly try to forgive her absence (it will not be easy).
The above photo was taken on a day last week when Tom and Doug, two of the other foreign teachers (who have been teaching at our school for almost 10 years now!), took us around town with the lovely Mrs. Chen (pictured, right). Mrs. Chen is a nationally celebrated calligrapher and, according to Doug, has her work displayed outside of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. It was truly an honor just to meet her, and we have the further honor of being her guests at a National Day celebration next week! She promised to take us sight seeing in Suzhou as well, and we will get to see her work on display.I know Cullen will follow this up with any even more detailed and thorough account of our stay so far, so I will now attempt to fall asleep before the sun rises. Love to you!
