Our Neighborhood

Post and pictures coming soon...

on two feet.

busy busy

stop for a quick rest...

yep off and running!

our apartment complex

our building

School Begins

We love Concordia!  Everyone has been so nice and welcoming.  Orientation was helpful and I have a great class.  Only 15 second graders!  They are all very sweet and I can already tell this will be one of my favorite years.  The school is wonderful, anything we need for our class, we can get.  I am excited about Adrian getting to come to such a great school (in a few years).  Gaylon is loving his class too.  We have been able to start using a lot of what we learned this summer at Columbia Teacher's College into our classes and the students love it. 

My classroom

Reading Workshop

Snack and Recess time!

Technology

Great classroom library- over 600 books!

Book shopping in Reader's Workshop

Writer's Workshop

Mr. A's 6th Grade Classroom

Concordia's Elementary School

Mom & Garrett in Shanghai

We were so lucky to have my Mom and Garrett come to visit and help us set everything up!  After at least 8 trips to IKEA, pushing through crowds at Carrefour, and other tedious errands we were able to have some fun.  Mom helped a lot with getting us set up, cooking for us, and helping Adrian with the transition with his nanny.  It eased my mind those first few days knowing that my mom was there with him.  Garrett was a big help putting furniture together and he was extremely helpful at IKEA!  We were also able to hang out with our old friends JJ & Michael and their little boy Cooper.  Adrian loves cooper and tries to do everything he does.  It is very cute. 

Dinner out

The boys at hot pot (my favorite)

Our good friends Michael, Cooper, and JJ

JJ ordering for us, I'm just pretending to know what it says!

Nana and Adrian at hot pot.

Pearl Tower

Touristy stuff

Apple store :)

Cooper & Adrian hanging out in the playroom together.

We're Here!

We're here!  Well actually we have been here for over a month and I am just now getting around to posting things.  It has been SO busy and it took us a bit of time to get our VPN set up so that I could actually get onto Blogger.  But good news with that is that we are also on Facebook.  :)

There is a lot of ground to cover so here goes..

Going Away Party
I have such amazing friends.  We had our going away party at Pluckers before we left and we had a great time.  A lot of our friends came to say goodbye and I am so glad we took the time to do that.  I am already missing everyone! 

All the girls from Live Oak came to say goodbye!  I love them. :)

The Leggs & us at Chuy's.  Adrian is going to miss Katelyn (we are too)!

The Flight
Um...not fun.  We were loaded down with so many bags, a baby, stroller, carseat... it was a very long 24 hours.  But there were some highlights.  One, the check in lady at American in Austin was so nice to us.  With our new rewards credit card we were able to check in at the first class counter and they are much more willing to work with you.  She was able to check our bags all the way to Shanghai even though we were switching airlines.  This took a while to figure it all out, but I was so thankful because I was picturing us (and Adrian) trying to load up all our things and drag it all across LAX to recheck at another terminal.  But we did not have to do that and we were able to enjoy our time at the AAdmirals Club instead!  That place is amazing!  No crowds, free snacks, a restaurant, showers, free wifi, and best of all a great playroom.  We had to switch to China Eastern for the flight to Shanghai (we did not buy the ticket, our school did).  I do not recommend them- horrible service.  Every meal was bad Chinese food.  We did pack Adrian plenty of food and thankfully my stepdad gave us some snacks (summer sausage and crackers).   I thought he was a bit crazy for buying them for us, but I am so glad he did.  That was basically what we ate for the entire 14 hour flight.  Adrian slept 6 hours straight at one point, and that helped a lot. Getting all of our things out of the Shanghai airport was another ordeal.  But it was an adventure and we did get to our hotel in one piece.

Adrian having fun in the LAX admirals club playroom.

In the Shanghai airport with all of our luggage. 

 On the long flight...

Adrian & me in the cab on the way to our hotel.  Unfortunately, there are not a lot of seat belts/car seats. 

In Shanghai (at the hotel)
We got into our hotel really late and it was not what we expected.  It was so small that with all of our luggage and the baby packnplay up.  There was really no place to walk.  We couldn't change anything with the hotel, they said we had to do it though expedia.  UGH...that meant calling through skype and we had to wait 2 days to get into our larger room.  But once we figured that out it was great.  We were able to adjust to the time change, see our friends JJ & Michael, meet Adrian's nanny, and do some shopping and ordering from IKEA before the craziness of new teacher orientation started.  Adrian took his first real walking steps.  It was exciting and stressful.  I forgot how many people are here! Everything takes 20 times longer than it would at home and I can't talk to anyone :(  Gaylon is a rockstar though!  His Mandarin is amazing and we could never do this without him.  He is taking very good care of us.  We moved into the house a week after arriving.  Adrian was over jet lag.  And our new place is great!  It is big (around 2,000 sqf), has real hardwood floors, washer and dryer, 3 balconies, English cable tv (only 3 channels), now we just have to make it look like a home.

Adrian with his new nanny (ayi). He likes her a lot and she is wonderful.

Empty house and all of our things unloaded in the middle of the floor.

Living room and Playroom areas.

Kitchen and our welcome gifts from the school.

Adrian in his packnplay in our big empty master bedroom. (furniture was delivered that afternoon)

Master Bath

Master bath again.

Hallway- room straight ahead is Adrian's, the room to the right is the guest, and the bathrooms are on the left.

guest/Adrian's bathroom

guest bedroom

There is so much more to write about.  My mom and brother came that next weekend, there was a typhoon, we started new teacher orientation, and we got furniture!  Oh and school started!  But that will have to wait until tomorrow. 

Start of the Blog...

Well I finally got a blog going. I am hoping that this will be an easy way to keep everyone up to date with what we are doing.  Especially since our facebook access will be very limited in China.  On this blog we can post pictures and videos so everyone can get a feel for what our life is like in Shanghai.

Gaylon and I will be teaching at Concordia International School in Shanghai, China.  I will have a classroom full of 2nd graders and Gaylon is teaching 6th grade Humanities (Language Arts and Ancient History).  And we are so excited to be moving back to Shanghai.  We miss our friends there and we will be living in a great little neighborhood called JinQiao.

  We are only two weeks out from the big plane trip and really that is what I am most worried about.  We are still waiting on our housing assignment, and I am getting anxious.  I really want to see our floor plan of the apartment so I can start planning. (you know me) So right now we are just trying to get an idea of what we will take and how we will get it there.  I am having nightmares of all the craziness that can happen with me, Gaylon, a 13mo old, a stroller, a car seat, 6 carry on bags, 9 suitcases, huge airports, and 24 hours of traveling!  It is all very exciting, but we just have to get there first!