The morning starts slowly as we recover from our big night at the opera.  Judy has lots of essay grading to complete.  Then she has to write comments for all her students.

I have to begin entering comments for my students.  Student reports will be distributed soon after the mid-term exams.  BHSFIC just started a web=based grade reporting system, so there are quirks that need to be worked out.  One of the quirks is that each student has a “Western” name, but their online identity is Chinese.  We can only identify them by referencing their student id# which takes a long time.  An alphabetized list won’t work

We leave around 5:30 to travel to Lili’s American Diner (LAD).  It’s a “hole in the wall” restaurant specializing in burgers and other assorted western foods.  We’re meeting a group from BISS.  Nationalities at dinner include, England, Canada, Korea, Australia, Israel, and of course, the US.

I didn’t mention this in yesterday’s blog, but Arvis, Kyra’s Latvian husband talked at dinner last night about the Ukraine problem.  He grew up in the soviet system in Latvia, and has many Russian friends.  For me, it was really interesting hearing about the difficulties he has experienced talking to his friends of many years who still live in Russia and how polarized politically they have become.

Dani, the BISS secondary principal rode with us to dinner last night, and talked about her new job.  She will be an administrator at an international school in Prague, Czechoslovakia.  She had to get the original copies of her university diplomas verified with an Australian government stamp, and then shipped to her new school.  She previously thought a Chines visa was tough to get, but it’s nothing like the “red tape” she’s experienced in the Czech Republic. 

We’re excited about today!  We’re going to the NCPA (National Center for the Performing Arts), or “The Egg”, for a performance of Verdi’s “La Traviata.”  It was organized by Judy’s principal at BISS, Kyra. There are six of us attending.  They’ve arranged two cars with drivers, and a fancy meal before the show, so it’s going to be fun.

I hurry home after my classes at BHSFIC, change clothes, and taxi to BISS.  We leave BISS at 4:00 pm, in our cars, travelling to the Raffles Hotel, one of the “Grand Hotels” in Beijing.  Traffic is heavy as we head into the center of Beijing.  The hotel is an experience unto itself.  The “High Tea” is still being served.  Check out the picture below.  I tried the pasta myself, but everyone else went with the tea.

“High Tea” at the Raffles Hotel in Beijing. L to R: Dani (secondary principal, Australian), Kyra (US), Arvis (Kyra’s husband, Latvian). not pictured: Antony (curriculum, Greece)

This dress was on display at the Raffles, along with several others as part of a display by the designer.

After dinner, the drivers picked us up and dropped us at “The Egg”.  Our seats are really on the 10^th row, center section, and we can hear and see very well.  The orchestra is tremendous, much better than the orchestra for “Swan Lake” we attended in January.  The singers are really good.  They’re singing the Italian, and a translation is projected overhead in English, and on the sides in Chinese.

The set was a technical wonder and had us talking during each intermission about how and why it was done.  There was a tilted scrim at the back of the stage.  The floor was covered with matte paintings that were pulled off the stage as the scene changed.  There was a camera above the floor, and the camera view of the floor was rear-projected onto the scrim from the back, to serve as the backdrop.  For me, it was confusing because as the stage filled with singers, we were viewing them from the front (as usual), and also a top view of them walking around was projected onto the back.  There’s probably no way this description make sense.  Even sitting in the hall, it took us some time to figure out how they were doing it.

The most serious problem occurred during the finale when the camera and scrim were tilted to include the pit orchestra, and then the audience.  It didn’t take long before people were waving at themselves and taking pictures, which were of course, flashing right back into all our eyes.  The musical moment at the end was lost because of all the visual distraction.   Even with that, it was a fun evening, and we came away visually and musically stimulated.

This is during the bows at the end of the show. Behind the performers you can see the scrim with the projection showing the back of the performers, the orchestra, and then the audience. The lights are from camera flashes.

Back to work at BHSFIC for me today.  As I’m signing in at the office at school, the clerk tries to tell me I won’t have classes next week because of mid-term exams.  Huh?  The calendar I have indicates the tests are Tuesday and Wednesday, but Thu. & Fri. were supposed to be regular class days.  I’m told the schedule shifted to Wednesday & Thursday & Friday for the 11^th graders.  They may want me to help proctor some tests, but it will be last-minute if I’m needed.

Heading home on a busy Thursday evening

She also mentions I need to talk to someone about the schedule for the next several weeks.  I check in with the administrators, and they are adjusting the schedule to double up on the AP classes through the remainder of April.  Combine that schedule with a govt. holiday in May, and the AP testing schedule at the beginning of May, it looks like my next 11^th grade music class is May 15.  That’s over a month away.  I’m still needed to teach the 10^th grade music elective, and probably cover some other classes where teachers are double scheduled with 10 and 11^th classes.  My schedule for the next month has suddenly gotten very weird.

When Judy came home last night, she mentioned the BISS HR dept. needed a correction on the paperwork she turned in on Monday to renew her visa for working in China.  Our temporary residence permit (updated when we returned from Phuket) had a wrong date.  One of the blanks is titled “Leaving”, and is meant to show when we’re departing China.  The clerk at the police station used the date on our apartment fapiao (tax form, proving the landlord was paying tax on the property).  Since the tax is paid monthly, the ending date on the fapiao was March 27, and that’s what’s now on our residence permit.  It should be July 27^th.  My job today is to get this corrected and get the residence permit and Judy’s passport back to BISS, so they can get the work done on her visa (which takes a month).

Before anything can happen, BISS has to give Judy the fapiao for this month.  She texts me she has it, so I grab my passport, residence permit (mine is also incorrect), and our apartment lease.  I take the train to BISS, walk from the station to the school, get the paperwork, walk back to the station, and take the train to a station near the police office.  At the police station, I attempt to show the clerk the problem, shoving our passport/visa and lease in front of them pointing to the date, and then showing them the mistake on the residence permit.  They try to ask me a few questions, which I, of course, can’t understand.  Eventually I get the corrected paperwork, and head back to the train and BISS.  When I finally get everything back to Judy, I’m feeling like I deserve a special lunch to celebrate.  Judy can’t get loose, so I treat myself to a really tasty lunch of stir-fried green beans and gungbao (not sure about that spelling) chicken at the small chinese restaurant near BISS.  Yum!

Trees at BISS

Since I’m still near BISS, I stop in at Gome, looking for a small desk fan for Judy’s upstairs classroom.  They have one that is perfect.  I make the purchase (not as easy as it should have been, no one seemed too eager to sell anything).  I take it back to Judy’s classroom and put it together, just in time to make sure it’s going to fit the situation. 

Back home, Lilly is finishing cleaning, so I head over for my afternoon swim session.  This has been a productive day, although most of the work was created by a mistake on a form that shouldn’t have occurred.

Today’s big news is we received our first package from the states.  There were a few things we needed, so Courtney collected them for us, put them in a small box and shipped them to us.  We thought it was about time to figure out how to get a package delivered.  This was a very important lesson for us to learn.  IT’S WAY TOO HARD TO MAKE THIS WORK OUT!

The cost for shipping seemed pretty expensive for a small box.  Then, when it arrived, the shipper emailed us, telling us we needed a detailed list of what was in the box, including value/prices.  Saying it was “odds and ends” wasn’t good enough.  Judy spent quite a bit of time filling out all the forms correctly.  A few days later, the shipper contacted Judy again, saying she couldn’t read the forms we had scanned, and could she please redo it?

A few days later we received a note saying our dollar total for the items in the box didn’t match the total Courtney listed, and which did we want to use?  We went with Courtney’s total, and waited for the delivery.  By this time, we were on our way to Hong Kong.  It was being delivered to BISS, so someone would be there to sign for it.  Yesterday, Judy was told she needed to pay an additional $70 tax on the items in the box (some kind of a luxury tax).  She left the money at the front desk this morning, and the package finally arrived.  Whew, that was work!

At the Marriot this afternoon I spotted a really nice looking Bentley.  It’s a big improvement over the pink one we talked about on October 26.  You can check back for that picture if you’re curious.

Spring Break is over and it’s back to work at BISS for Judy.  Most of our year has been a series of work weeks, spaced between travel.  We don’t have anything scheduled now until school ends.  We might make a weekend trip on a train somewhere close by, but no serious thought or planning has been applied yet.

I make a trip to Metro for groceries.  When Lilly arrives around 1:00 pm, I travel to the Marriott for swim time.  I’m hoping there isn’t a crowd at the pool.  Today is the last day of the official government holiday called the Qingming Festival.  Saturday and Sunday were also part of the holiday.  The common term for the holiday is the tomb-sweeping holiday.  Families are supposed to visit gravesites of relatives and clean them and deliver flowers.  Traffic is greatly reduced, as most businesses are closed. 

There is only one other person at the pool when I arrive.  It’s a huge relief, because when I arrived, there were 12 coach buses in the street in front of the hotel.  After swimming, I came downstairs and it was full of people wearing red windbreakers touting “Jackie Chan’s Peace, Friendship, and Love International Fan Tour.”  I googled the phrase and found a lot of info about a celebration and charity concert for Jackie Chan’s 60^th birthday.  I’ve attached the pdf flyer with a schedule of activities.  The people in the lobby were winners of a drawing from among 5000 applications submitted to the Jackie Chan Fan Club to participate in the tour.  Many of the voices I hear around the hotel lobby seem to be from the US.

Schedule_English_2014

I walk over to the nearby Flower Market to explore.  Leaving the Marriott, I notice police vehicles, and police officers standing around in the street, as well as a police wrecker designed to tow a vehicle.  As I walk by, they begin stopping traffic, including bicycles, apparently blocking the road and clearing an exit out of a gated area.  On the map, it shows there is a hospital in the area, as well as the embassy of Turkmenistan.  Several more heavily armed officers get out of police vans, and start walking the intersection moving people back.  2 minutes later, a convoy of vehicles roll out of the gated area.  It includes 8 to 10 black Audi sedans with blacked out windows, two mid-size coach busses full of people, two huge limos with flags flying on the front (I didn’t recognize the flags), several black SUVs full of security guys, and two Mercedes police vehicles with lights.  I wish I knew what that was all about.

Judy had a crown on one of her teeth come loose Friday afternoon.  She called the dentist, and they scheduled an appointment for her this afternoon.  We taxi together.  The last time she tried to find the dentist, she had a difficult time finding the building, and then the office inside the building was also hard to find.  It’s in the same building where I get my haircut, so I tag along to make sure she arrives without incident.

Once she’s settled in the office, I walk down the street to the Marriott to swim.  It’s been over a week since I last swam, and I’m not exactly looking forward to it.  This is “embassy row”, so as I walk by the French embassy, I notice a Chinese guy, in plainclothes, leaning up against the fence.  He seems to be watching the street pretty intently.  As I get closer, I hear a radio crackle, and see a walkie hanging on his hip.  At the gate for the French embassy, the Chinese military guard (there’s one or more at the entrance to each embassy) has a radio, and I can hear it’s the same channel as the plainclothes guy I passed as I approached.

Further down the street, near the American Embassy, I pass another Chinese passerby, intently watching an armored truck cruising the area.  He’s wearing a gray sweatsuit.  Across the street, I notice two other guys, also in gray sweatsuits, standing at either end of the American Embassy (as well as the Chinese military guard).  They outwardly look nonchalant, but with closer scrutiny, I can see they’re not taking their eyes off the street.  I’m obviously curious.  Maybe the new American Ambassador, Baucus, is out riding bikes, or is going for a neighborhood walk or run.  Or maybe the plainclothes guys are making sure no one tries to defect into one of the embassies (I’ve got a big imagination).

I can’t wait around to find out what might be going on.  The swimming pool is waiting.  After the swim, I head home.  Judy and I arrive about the same time.  It’s a gorgeous afternoon, so we walk around the apartment complex taking in the sights.  It’s spring in Beijing and things are beginning to bloom.

Today is going to be a “catch-up” day.  Judy has lots of class planning to do.  There is a grade report coming up, and that always requires posting comments on each student’s “wiki” (individual internet site).  For someone like Judy, who’s teaching Pre-K through grade 8, that’s a lot of kids, and a lot of individual comments.

For me, I have a lot of blog writing to do.  I really haven’t written since March 27.  That’s over a week of activities.  Also our iPhoto needs to be organized with all our new pictures from Hong Kong.  I have to make sure all our photos are downloaded from my phone, Judy’s phone, the iPad, and we also used our small digital Canon camera.  Then I need to get them into one “event”, and start getting rid of duplicates and the bad photos.  It a fun job, but it sure takes a lot of time.  When I’m finished with them, I want to be able to access them quickly, be able to tell what day the pictures were taken, and where we were when the photo was taken.

Later in the afternoon we go to a market we haven’t visited since the first week we were in Beijing.  When we visited the first time, we were overwhelmed with the move, and couldn’t take it all in.  There are lots of fruits, vegetable, nuts, and meats, as well as seafood.  It requires a short taxi ride, or a long walk, and wasn’t convenient, when there were closer markets we could access.  We buy some really nice fruit and nuts.  Unfortunately, we also found a bakery, so we came home with a large loaf of fresh bread, some cookies, and a couple of croissants.  It tastes great, but not so helpful on our weight-loss program.  Oh well.

Friday is an early day for me, relatively early.  I’m away by 8:15.  Judy is slowly moving around, but only has to be at the Hilton for her haircut at 10:00.  Friday is always a fun commute for me, since the trains are really crowded this time of day.  My advantage is I’m bigger than most, so the cramped conditions don’t affect me much.  I’m always surprised at how quiet it is in the mornings on such a crowded train car.  There is very little conversation.  Most are engrossed in their phones

Back home after school, I’m ready for the AC guy to arrive.  He finally shows up to recharge the unit with coolant.  It a job for “Spiderman.”  The apartment complex has a guy whose job consists of crawling out the window of the apartment to access the air-conditioning unit for repairs.  A reminder, we’re on the 25^th floor.  He did the same thing August 19, and now he’s back again to work on the same unit.  I’m trying to convince someone there must be a coolant leak on the unit if he’s back this soon.  Lilly, our ayi, translates and tells him he fixed it in August.  He tells me he hadn’t done this one in a long time.  I pulled out the iPad and showed him the video from August when he was doing the same thing.  He finishes the job, makes a few other minor adjustments, and tells me no charge for the coolant.  I’m going to post some pictures of the process that I took in August.  It looked the same today.

Check out the knot on his rope!

For dinner, Judy and I taxi over to the Marriott.  As a part of our Club Marriott membership, we have a free buffet for two at each of the Marriott properties in Beijing.  We celebrate spring break a little more tonight with a really good meal with tons of options.  Why do most of our celebrations revolve around food?

No school at BISS today for Judy.  The plan is for her to stay home to meet a repairman for the air conditioner in our bedroom.  It hasn’t worked since November, and we actually needed it a few times during the winter.  Our windows get full sun most of the day and there were days when it was really hot in the bedroom and our only option was an open window.  That’s not such a great option if the pollution level is really high.

As I’m traveling to school, I get a text from Lisa, our real estate agent telling me the AC is scheduled for Friday afternoon.  Now that Judy is released from waiting on the AC guy, she gets together with Shannon and they fill the afternoon with manicures and massages at Lily Nails, still enjoying spring break.

As I’m leaving school, I call Judy and the girls are ready to eat dinner, so I meet them at Enoterra at Sanlitun.  Thursday is half-price night.  This is bad news, and good news.  In an effort to make the most of the discount, we end up over-eating.  Surprise, Surprise!