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Yangzi River
It looks like we’ll be able to take a cruise down the Yangzi (Yangtze) River over Thanksgiving break! The four-day cruise lines up perfectly with our time off school, and we (with the help of my Chinese tutor) found a company that will provide us with a “4-star hotel” room on the boat, an English-speaking tour guide, meals, and our ticket to tour the Three Gorges Dam. All this without ripping us off too much. 
It should be a relaxing trip, and an experience that will soon be unavailable. The water level will be raised completely by 2009.
In more current news, we’re celebrating (??) National Day this week. Today was our last day of school, and we’ll head for the ISC teachers’ conference in Beijing on Wednesday. I’m looking forward to reconnecting with the other music teachers, as well as the Early’s & friends at other schools. Oh, and hopefully a trip to Outback Steakhouse…. yum!
new pictures
You can find more pictures from the World Cup game under At Home: World Cup game.
We’ve also posted some new pictures of the CDIS campus.
Enjoy!
Weekend Fun
After three straight weekends of school activities, Sarah and I finally have a chance to relax a little - and this perfectly coincides with an event in Chengdu: the Women’s World Cup! Even better than this, USA was in the group playing in Chengdu (other games happened all over China), so we got to watch the women’s team cream the Swedish team. Okay, it was only 2-0, but still - we won!
Our tickets to the game would have let us stay for the North Korea-Nigeria match, but Sarah and I instead celebrated the US win by going to some US restaurants for food: Swenson’s for some fish and chips and to a newly-opened Dairy Queen for a Georgia Mudslide Blizzard. I’m proud to be an American…
Open House, Request
Our first quarter at CDIS is a the half-way point; progress reports head home early next week. Last night we held an open house to give parents a chance to see their children’s classrooms. As many of our students are Korean, it was an interesting time attempting to dialogue with some parents when our only common language was Chinese. I would attempt a conversation or two in PuTongHua - but believe me, those conferences were much shorter than the others!
There’s a matter here that needs intercession: a Junior student, Stephen, is heading back to the States to be with a friend, Josh. Josh was recently relased from the hospital, having had multiple surgeries in the past months to remove cancer from his body; the doctors don’t believe there is anything else they can do. Being about the same age as Stephen, this is an especially difficult situation.
High School Trip
Our weekend with the high-schoolers was fun. A little wet, but a good time for the kids to get better acquainted outside of school.
We went about two hours outside of Chengdu to Yingchan Valley/Longmen Mountain. It’s a beautiful area, and it was nice to stick close to the city this time.
Some pictures have been posted, so enjoy!!
This weekend we’re heading off on a retreat with the high school students. It will be a quick trip, but should be a good chance to connect with the kids and allow them some “get-to-know-you” time outside of the classroom. I’m excited to go, as I have almost half the high school in choir. It will give me a chance to brush up on names & see them in a different setting.
I showed my choir students a clip of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Requiem yesterday. It was the “Hosanna” section - the same text as one of the pieces my kids are working on. It’s a fantastic recording, and gave them a good look at how posture and facial expressions are so important to a good sound. It was amazing the results I got! Their energy was up, which improved everything! I love having 23 voices!!!
In general school news:
Our total student-body count is up to 214, which is a huge answer to prayer from last year! The school budget has a surplus, even after calculating all the sports, music & class trips, end-of-the-year events and any other little things that got cut in past years. Thank you so much for joining us in lifting up our school & the administrators. HE is truly blessing!!
God and Imaginary Numbers
I just read a great article - you can find it here.
http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/?p=839
An excerpt is below:
Impossible, irrational, delusionary, absurd, untrustworthy, fictitious, imaginary: It is always easier to approach—or rather, ignore—mysteries of math by dismissing them as false or unintelligible. And how much more for mysteries of faith. So is God like an imaginary number, waiting to be discovered and accepted in a renaissance of faith? The simile is ridiculous, on its face. But, in a curious way, the ramblings of scientific history remind those who strive for reason just how vast reality is. The realization is at once unsettling and exhilarating: Truth is far richer than our minds—always confined by the here and now—can prove or even imagine.
Working Weekend #2
This past weekend was the second of three with extracurriculars going on at CDIS - we had kick-off overnight get-togethers for the HS boys and girls’ Book studies. The difference in the two groups is very obvious: one group goes to a teacher’s apartment, probably watches movies and stays up until the wee hours talking; the other gorges themselves at the new Mickey-D’s and shoot each other with plastic BB-guns. I’ll let you figure out which is which. I had to do little on my part, except get shot. The guys are going to be using Don’t Waste Your Life
In other events, there was just a rousing (a joke, trust me) instrumental version of “Auld Lang Syne” heard throughout the neighborhood; while walking in the market earlier today Sarah and I heard a pay-for-your-weight scale playing “Happy Birthday.” Do these people really know what songs they’re playing? My favorite is the Pre-school next to our apartment complex loudly playing Pink Floyd’s “We Don’t Need No Education.” Irony probably shouldn’t count if it crosses a language barrier, but it is still very funny.