News

Not much to mention this week. The week has just flown by so quickly. I guess it is because we spend so much of our day at school here. We get up around 6.30am and by 7, Kane is out the door riding his bike to work and I catch the bus to school at 7.30. It is around a 25 minute bus journey and so I am there by 7.50am (around the time I used to get up in the morning when back at WPS!) School starts at 8.30am, but the kids start coming into the room from 8.15. Then we work until 3.30pm, Monday we have a Elementary meeting as well and so we can catch the 5.00 bus home which takes around 40-45minutes, Tuesday I get to catch the 4.00 bus home and this one take30-35minutes, Wednesday I do an after school club of Sharks Swimming and have to catch the 5.00 bus and Thursday I do Yoga and catch the 5.00 bus, luckily Friday I can go home on the 4.00 bus. So 3 out of 5 night I'm not home until quarter to six and 2 nights home at twenty to five. Long days make the week definitely go quick. It still feels like last Monday!

Kane asked Luke to be in our bridal party today and so now everyone knows, thank you Luke, Ty, Becky and Narelle. It is still all up in the air about what we will be doing next year, but on Friday our pay went up another $500+ per month via the US/AU currency conversion. Kane is thinking about changing the date of our wedding from the 12th until the following week, which'll be the 19th of December, as this means less time off from work. But my Great-Grandmother has told my Mum, "Do not let her change the date, it's bad luck". I definitely want thing to go smooth, so I'll try to heed that advice Grandma :)

Have a great week everyone,

Kelly
xxx

Kane's addition to the F1

We were lucky enough to go to the Shanghai Grand Prix this weekend which was pretty amazing. There was certainly plenty of power and an unbelievable amount of noise at the race. We got to the track via a bus at about 11:00 or so. We had a nice spot on a grass hill where we could see the back straight and a big sweeping bend. I also had a couple of beers which was nice. Anyway back to the races- we watched the formula 2, the porsches and then the main event. It is amazing just how much noise and power that these cars produce. I used ear plugs which I was happy to buy. It was amazing to see that people could actually sleep when the race began- Kelly being one of them. I was not impressed and I threw some things at her- deservedly I believe. God only knows how many laps she slept for. It must have been the beer that she had before the race.

Love from the hairy chested love god!

More Cars

Lap 1 of the Shanghai Formula 1 2008

This one may not work unless you have a VLC media player. I couldn't get the format to change and my camera is a bit dodgy. It's about a minute if you want to try, and have your speakers turned right up!

Out and About

I feel like I need to write this like a meeting agenda! So here goes:

Item 1

Christmas Holidays

We have booked our flight to Malaysia. We expected it to be a lot cheaper than it actually ended up being. I think it was around AU$1250 return for both of us in the end just from China to Malaysia. We are then paying an extra AU$500 to fly from Kuala Lumpur to Kota Kinabalu on the Borneo island of Malaysia and then to fly to Penang island which is way up near the Thailand border on the Malaysian Peninsula. We are going to try and book all our accommodation through online agencies such as Agoda and Wotif, to try and get some cheaper deals at nicer places. In Kota Kinabalu you can go to Turtle Island which is a National Park that you stay over night at and watch the turtles come up and lay eggs, watch them hatch and see what the Malaysian people are doing to try and encourage more turtles to survive. Then we might try to climb to the top of Mt Kinabalu, the highest mountain in Malaysia. There is also an Orangutan Sanctuary and Rain forest walks, hot springs and canopy walks. So it will be a very busy and fun 3 days. After that we will go to Penang. We might stay one night there and have a look around, but a few people from school haven't said many good things about it. We are really only going there as it was the closest we could get to Langkawi from Kota Kinabalu (I love saying that name). We will catch a water ferry I think. I've been told it takes about 1.5 hours. Then at the end of our journey, we will catch the train back to Kuala Lumpur.

So next job... book the Phillipines Holiday. It is only 2 weeks after we get back from Malaysia.

Item 2

New Find in Suzhou

We have found a funky new street here in Suzhou. It is called Ping Jiang Lu. It has been done up with cool little coffee shops and tea shops as well as a bookshop called the Bookworm. It is housed in a 700 year old builing on a bridge. Here we are having drinks with Ron and Erin the other night.

Item 3

Currency Conversions

OMG! Have you seen how much the US/AU dollar is at the moment. Like $3000 difference to the pay check each month, yeah baby! :) Which brings us to our next issue. Do we stay an extra year to clear our mortgage debt? It's a gamble, because it may go up again and then we are stuck here. We have got a verbal agreement from our Head to have 10 days off for our wedding, so that may not be an issue. We'd have from the 5th of December off to the 20th with leave without pay plus a few weekend days and then it just joins into the Christmas break. The problem will be being able to get time off from my school in Wodonga and being away from everyone even longer. Kane said the other day, he almost wishes the dollar would go back up so it wasn't even an option to stay. I will keep you posted. I miss my job back home, I miss my house, I miss my garden, I miss my cat (I love you Leo), I miss my family, I miss my friends, I miss netball (It's like I don't even have to think about exercise - I just do it), I miss my car, I miss shopping, I miss the clean air, I miss heaps of stuff. But having a mortgage paid off and being able to save all that extra money or only have one of us working when we have kids or bring able to buy another house is so tempting. It'd only be another 22 months, but like $160,000 tax free if the dollars stays under 70 cents. What would you do?

Item 4

Baby Showers

Do we have these back home? They are big here. We had one on Sunday last. Our friend Felicity (Aussie from Benella/Myrtleford) is due in 2 weeks. So we had her baby shower at the Shereton in SND. It is quite a quite expensive brunch. We all get her gifts and she came home with so much stuff. Poor dear though, she is still working. Here you only get 3 months off. This starts from the delivery of the baby. So you have to work right up to the week before delivery and have to come back so soon afterwards. Only one month is paid leave. I refuse to do that to my body. I want to be able to take 6 weeks off beforehand and enjoy every minute (If I can) of it with family and friends. I think it is so barbaric in this day and age. Even the Chinese staff get 6 months paid leave!

Item 5

New Love

I have fallen in love with creamy soda. Yum, it's an AW brand from the states. I go to Casa Zoe just to get a drink of it now. At 16RMB, its the same price as a beer.

Item 6

The F1 Grandprix

We are going to the F1 Grandprix on Sunday. I have never been to a big car or bike race before, So it'll be interesting I think. I will definitely need some ear plugs. We are in the grass section, sitting near the big hairpin bend, on the left of the course. I will post picture and share more after the event.

I think that's about it for me.

Bye everyone,

Kelly

Suzhou smells so sweet

Above is the sweet smelling plants that has perfumed Suzhou at the moment. It grows on a tree, but I am not sure what its name is. It has a vanillaery smell and the trees are all over town, so it must be a Suzhou speciality.It's smell is masking the rotting food and other China smells quite well. I picked this on the way home from the restaurant today.

This past week has gone so slow and so fast all at the same time. It's been busy and relaxing and I'm kicking myself that my camera has not been charged as we've done some fun things.

I have been feeling homesick lately, I think more so because Kane has started thinking about wanting to stay for an extra year in China. So I decided I wanted a pet. We went down to pet street and brought 3 fish, some plants and rocks and bought them home. Pet street is a sad street, so many different animals in cages. Kane though for a few days about getting snake, so cheap here less than $100 with cage and all. Thankfully Mum talked him out of it. So I got my new pets home and they looked all squashed in the bowl. The bowl that housed my fighting fish last year that died in the winter cold. Over night 1 fish died, one progressively died in the morning. I needed a bowl that allowed more oxygen in, so I got 1 for $10 at Auchan (like Kmart/Coles), by the time I got home, all dead! So I threw them all over the balcony for the birds! SO now I had a bowl, rocks and plants and ceramic pagoda, but no fish.

We did 2 big bike rides, 1 down town, we had a good look around and were gone for 2 and a bit hours and the other ride was around the lake. It too was a few hours. My bum was quite good in recovery, but I think Kane is frustrated I can't ride faster on my pedal pusher compared with his stallion!

We had brought tickets to go to Shanghai. The fast train in only $5 (first class) and only takes 34 minutes. After leaving Suzhou at 7.57, we spent 12.5 hours walking around and found a really cool area called TaiKangLu. It is really funky, arty and has lots of cafes, restaurants and bars there. I got some yummy oolong/ginseng tea that has a sweet after taste, I really liked it. Kane was disappointed he didn't have his camera and I am disappointed I didn't have mine charged. Next we went searching for Decathlon, a mega sports store, it was an expedition to get there! Never rely on Chinese business cards or maps, they are not to scale, 3 hours later.... we were again looking for another cool area we'd heard about. Finally found, it was way too expensive for us and so we headed back to the train station to go back to Suzhou. We got home around 9.30pm.

We went out for brekkie twice this past week. A place called Simon's. We took Mum there for Mothers Day. They have since renovated and revamped the Menu. A big brekkie and refills of coffee for under $5. Better than Macca's.

Yesterday I again ventured out, got some almonds at Bar street, walked to Walking street to check out some silk that I might use in my wedding dress and then onto Pet st again. You can see I am using the English description names and that if how most foreigners (laowei in Chinese) refer to them. I again tried to get a pet! This time I chose a particularly fat fish that I've named Sue and and a rather scrawny fighting fish called Jo. Put together, they become SuZhou (SuJo - our city). Of course they can not live together, so Sue has the big bowl, that was never used to house my 3 dead friends, and Jo is living in the small vase in the bathroom with some plants as company. There they are:

Today we also went out to the driving range. I hit a golf ball off the ground - Yay! Kane was hitting some monsters 250m or so the signs says, he has really good at it. I personally think it's because he has bigger muscles than me :) We got nearly 40-50 balls for only $4. It was great fun. Then we went to our favourite restraint Zen for dim sum with the people we'd golfed with. Again we had a great time. After we all came back to our apartment for coffee and cake. I made Mama's carrot cake and I pulled out the nescafe coffee sticks. The cake was a huge success, while Kane still thinks it's missing Mama's secret ingredient ;) I think it's pretty close.

So back to school tomorrow and we'll slog through to the 19th of December now, it sounds so far away.

Bye everyone, I hope you feel better soon Jenny,

KK