Picture update

Izzie is standing up!

At the wedding dress store, waiting to see auntie Nicole

Street side lunch after the fitting

Izzie with the kindergarten principal

Project "delete mommy tummy" is on track

Princess Lexie, ready for school

Izzie can already get a sound out of the recorder!

Ah yes, downstairs traffic drama

At the mall

Playing piano together?

Guangzhou view

Guangzhou view 2

Wait.... What? It's May?

How on earth is it May already? So sorry I didn't get back to you guys earlier! 

Kings Day with Lieke

One thing that annoys me are is the frequent question from Chinese people, mostly strangers: "Oh, two girls.... You're still young, you're surely going to try for a boy now?" 

Uhm.... NO!!!!! Not going to happen! I'm very happy with my two beautiful kids, thank you very much.

One cab driver was even more stupid; he has two boys (already a bit older) and he thought about trying for a girl (he didn't mind the one child policy fine). Then he told me he decided against it as having a girl would worry him too much. "If my boys go out to play and come back half an hour late I don't worry. If I imagine my girl coming back half an hour late I'd be worried sick." Mmmm...... I commented that this was not very fair but he was too caught up in cultural issues. I was happy to get out of his cab!

Lexie and Izzie are starting to play together a bit now. In this picture Lexie is protecting Izzie from a scary snake. Iz didn't get what was going on and started to cry. 

In the next picture Lexie has created a bed for herself in the living room. She was super mad that it was nap time and made a big fuss before falling asleep, totally exhausted. It was time to go to the grandparents for dinner after a while, so Izzie and I tried to wake her up by playing the piano.

We played and played, even hammering the low notes (Izzie giggled her head off about those) but Lexie was KO. In the end we managed to wake her up by washing her face softly.

Trying to wake up sleeping beauty

The inevitable has happened: I'm teaching English at Lexie's kindergarten. (It is her kindergarten: she runs it!) In order to do that I had to be hired by the company that the kindergarten has signed a contract with. I went in two weeks ago and told them that the principal wanted me for the job (an hour, or even two each week, ahem). After the interview I got called back: "congratulations, you've made it to the second interview". WTF, I said, in somewhat politer terms. I start next Monday so you'd better hurry up.
Some phone calls later I got called in to sign the contract.
On Monday, the first lesson, all I got was five pictures to fill half an hours class with. WTF yet again. I asked the company for the teaching materials when I signed the contract. Days passed and I got a schedule that was perfectly un-understandable and an email urging me to "be on time for each class". I got there at the arranged time which was 15 minutes before class.

 

Having fun at Hommy's

Well, miss snooty other teacher arrived 3 minutes before class (she had another group), pushed the pics into my hands and dashed off. No music, no games..... The kindergarten teachers weren't happy either. After class we told the other teacher and the company that this sucks. She mumbled some further nonsense and ended in English (so the teachers couldn't listen in): "please be on time next class". Aaaaaaaaaaaah!!! How stupid can you be? I told the teachers and they were laughing too. I've taught 3 classes so far and from the 2nd one onwards it all went very well. One of the head teachers took Lexie into my class for a bit and I could see her thinking "what's going on here?". Hahaha, very cute :) I'm done teaching at 17.30 and Lexie eats dinner at 18.00. I get to take her home at 18.15 so that's nice.

Enjoying a riverside lolly

Clarinet practice at AISG

I did a few days of subbing at the American School and was lucky enough to have some time to practice in between lessons. So far I've subbed Music, English, Chinese, Social Studies, Spanish and Drama. For Music I did band, strings and choir. 

Giggles

A heart to heart with Mr. Turtle

With Andrea after the concert

The ladies with Jack (composer and conductor)

Yesterday I played my now yearly concert in the XingHai concert hall. It was with the orchestra of the Youth Palace. 

It was fun to play and my embouchure miraculously survived the dress rehearsal and the concert. 

With the (other) conductor and the director

Still here......

Hi remember me? My name is Joke and I used to update this blog a lot more.....

I've been very busy with the girls and subbing at the American School (AISG).

We've added yoga classes to our music school so to support the teacher and the group Haiwen and I go whenever we can. We have class on Tuesday night and Thursday afternoon.

Different views from our balcony

Izzie is doing great and she's entered the phase of separation anxiety. Good news developmental wise but not so much decibel wise....... She screams bloody murder when I'm as little as one step away. "Bloody murder" is putting it mildly still.

Snuggelz

Now I'm subbing yet again but I have some free time to write here.

Last week my work visa application got denied which is not nice. Our school has to get me a expert certificate but we probably can't get one as we don't have enough capital.

Grandma and miss Iz

So now I'm not allowed to work at our school...... or anywhere else for that matter. How annoying! We'll just make do for the time being. I'm looking at other ways to get a work visa now.

Together with grandma

Since my tourist visa is only valid for 30 days at a time I have to leave China every month. Luckily HongKong still counts as a foreign country ;)

At the end of my last entrance I got busy subbing. I had to combine a sub day and a HK run.

Not ideal but I got it done; school until 15.00, cab to the train station, catch a train to Shenzhen (basically riding past the school again....) do a border run, take the metro for one stop into HK and than everything in reverse. I got home by 21.00. Haiwen had a HK day too so before we went home we met up at the train station and had a snack.

Instructions at the train station

Last week we had a lot of thunderstorms. Some great thunder and lightning to be heard and seen!

My chinese white board hand writing; I copied the teacher's notes

Yeah, that's pretty much all that has been going on. I've had a very sore throat and felt bad the last week. It's getting better now.
Waiting to be healthy again so I can get back to working out.
The combo of being sick and Izzie screaming as I'm not holding her hasn't been great exercise wise. I can do some stuff whilst holding her of course but rope skipping is out of the question ;)

Lexie

Some more sleep would be nice too, especially on AISG days: the alarm clock goes off at 5.50 and I leave the house at 6.15. Haiwen deemed my wake up music "too cheerful" this morning, hahaha. Well, he got to stay in bed so he gets no say in this matter.

Outdoor practice in HuangPu

I visited the kindergartens' website earlier and downloaded some pics.

Morning exercise at school

Art lesson at school

Bye, hope I'll get some time to keep you updated soon :)

TV recording

Hello, here are some pics from this morning's TV show recording.
The topic was divorce but we managed to keep it lively and positive :)

Make up room

Chinese style Joke ;)

In the studio

Recording away......

With the director

With Stuart and Deng Lu

:)

Spring....... hmmm........

Hello all! It is springtime in GZ which is not that great. Nope. No blue skies or lambs trotting around in meadows.... Nah-a. Not GZ style. Spring here is a combo of Dutch autumn and eternal fog. Some leaves are on the ground and some trees have pretty bright green leaves. It's drizzling almost all the time and the walls are starting to cry (aka condensate). Best case scenario is that we "only" have a few more weeks of this.

AISG on a grey day

I'm at AISG once again after I got a text at 20.30 last night. I was at the grandparents so I could check with them directly. I had just gotten there after a crazy day: Izzie wasn't feeling great so cuddles took up the largest part  of my morning (happily administered of course) then it was off to HuangPu for 3 hours of class, followed by a yoga class at 19.00. The yoga class took place in our music school. Since we have a small dance studio, we figured we may just as well use it! It was the first class so I needed to be there as the "boss" haha. I was too tired to be honest, but hey, gotta do what I gotta do.

It was nice to practice and I did feel a bit better after class. It was very funny: most of the twisting poses were very hard for me, while all the Asians were wrapped up as pretzels. When we went to the boat pose, in the variation were you grab your feet, I was the only one who could do it. I found it very easy while the rest needed straps to get into the pose a bit. Must be some structural difference in our bodies!

This week in GZ

On Friday night I played a gig for about 600 people. It went well and it was fun to do. The whole event was pretty "Chinese" in the sense that it started way too late, went on way too long and was waaay to loud. Luckily I was the first one on. After half an hour I couldn't take it anymore and I went home. My newly added Wechat friends kept uploading pics of the event and I was happy I saw them at home. Again I was pretty tired as I forgot to take my music stand home. It has been returned already ;) I will have to wait for my phone charger until next week because I left it in HuangPu yesterday. Scatterbrained much? We do have a spare at home.

Soprano saxophone gig!

I'll be back at AISG this Friday to do a music sub. Today I am on Chinese but the students just have to work on assignments. 

Busy times

Last Thursday we filmed a TV show for Guangdong TV. The theme was feminism because Women's Day is coming up. The discussion was very general and women's voting rights couldn't be discussed because director deemed that subject "politically sensitive". Well yeah, there goes the whole historical background. In the end we discussed the Disney film "Frozen". That was safe enough.

With the "crew" after filming the TV show

On Sunday and Monday I was at AISG (American International School Guangzhou) again. This time not for substituting but to be a clinician at the band event. The first day I taught saxophones and clarinets together. The second day only clarinets so that was the best day for me. On Sunday night we had a nice dinner together with all participants and teachers.

AISG band festival

AISG is a nice school but it is very far away from the city center. That's the only downside really. On Sunday morning I shared a cab with Michael and on Monday one of our orchestra colleagues gave us a ride. There were kids from 4 international schools is the area. I gave all the teachers a brochure of our music school, of course ;) The kids just have band lessons, not private lessons so I'd be happy to help out with that!

First rehearsal

Concert day in the gym

My new toy arrived on Monday: a soprano saxophone. I'm playing a small gig with it tomorrow night. Hahaha. Hope that 4 days will be enough to prepare ;) My arm is very tired, I can tell you that!

Trying out my new toy with Izzie

Right now I'm at AISG yet again. I'm watching students take tests. Not very exiting....... Next week I'll be doing a music substitute again on Friday. I'm doing a half day tomorrow too since I have to get ready for the gig in the evening. They asked for a whole day but there's only so much I can do!

Izzie playing with/eating some blocks