SATURDAY, 11/15/14

Judy is eager for a weekend to recover from her bout with nausea on Wednesday & Thursday.  I get the chance to travel back across town to my school for Parent/Teacher conferences.  When there is a government holiday, the government many times also declares official make-up days.  This goes for schools as well as business, etc.  Today is an official makeup day for one of the 4 days we missed due to the APEC conference.

The decision at our school was to use today for 11^th grade parent meetings, and 12^th grade classes.  Tomorrow is 10^th grade parent meetings (I don’t teach any 10^th or 12 graders).  This morning is “drop in” conferences for parents and students.  I’m pretty sure I won’t have any parents come by, and sure enough, no visitors.  I arrived, set-up in my room, and began working on several different projects.  I worked undisturbed until lunch, ate lunch in the faculty lunchroom, went back to my classroom and finished up my projects, heading home around 1:00 pm.  The afternoon was set aside for “scheduled” conferences.  With nothing scheduled, I was free to clear out.

Back at the apartment, Judy managed to make it to nearby Capita Mall to buy a baby gift.  One of her best friends here in Beijing (Anna, New Zealand) had her baby while we were gone to Shanghai.  Judy and several of the other close friends go by later in the afternoon (Anna lives in UHN, also) to visit the new mom and cuddle the baby.  They have a great visit!

Alex

Anna on the left, Lara (kindergarten, Australia) on the right.

Shannon getting in on the fun.

SUNDAY, 11/16/14

Our focus for today is to figure out what to cook to take over to Anna’s on Tuesday.  One of the BISS faculty put together a schedule for meal delivery for everyone living in UHN.  We cook some around here, but never for anyone else.  Anna is vegetarian, but her husband (Javi, Spain) isn’t, so we’re trying to figure out what to cook that will work for both.  Judy finds a recipe for a “cheesy potato soup.”  We’ll set aside bacon bits in a separate dish for Javi.

We spend the afternoon chasing the ingredients at the grocery store, and the local “wet market”.  Back at the apartment, we clean all the vegetables and start putting together the ingredients.  The best part of this project is that we’re going to test it.  We, of course, need to make sure it’s eatable.  I’ll also have to cook it myself on Tuesday, while Judy’s at school, so I need the practice.  It’s a success, and we stuff ourselves!