At about 5:30am the soft “beep beep beep” of Scott’s Casio watch enters our eardrums. Marissa turns over in annoyance as Scott lays for a few minutes and says morning prayers. The prayers revolve around being thankful he woke up again (trying to be thankful for being awake at 5:30am) and for strength to get out of this dang bed at such an early hour. 

Marissa will lay in bed a bit longer as Scott goes to the bathroom, takes out his teeth retainers, and uses the bathroom. He walks downstairs and begins making his breakfast: one egg, a bowl of oatmeal containing 1 banana, ¼ of a dragon fruit, 1 jackfruit pod, a handful of blueberries, and a spoonful of brown sugar. All of this is washed down with a cup of peppermint tea containing milk and honey:

In the past month, Marissa has not been eating breakfast, fasting until our 11:50am school lunch (hence why she lays in bed longer). 

As Scott makes breakfast, Marissa has now sat up in bed and is journaling about life, the school kids, her relationship with God, or how annoying her husband is.  

Or she is still sleeping. 

Scott throws on his gym clothes, packs his work clothes, and heads off to school on his bicycle.

When Marissa eventually gets out of bed, she usually listens to a church talk/devotional (or happy folk music) while she gets prettied up, dressed, and heads out the door. 

In case we haven’t shared yet, we ride bicycles to get around and we park our bikes on the basement floor of our apartment building.

Theft isn’t an issue here, so we simply set the bikes up against the wall right outside the elevator.

The ride to work is very beautiful. As we’ve mentioned, our town (Dapeng) is a subtropical area, so lots of green grass and palm trees. Here are some photos of our morning commute.

This is right outside our apartment:

Still in the complex:

Where the entrance road of our complex meets the main road:

Other random photos from the ride:

Our favorite part of the ride is this little greenway path that runs next to a stream:

Here is the road leading up to our school:

The entrance to our school:

And where we park our bikes at school. Covered parking never looked so nice:

These photos were taken at 6:30am, so there is MUCH less traffic seen here than when Marissa leaves at 7:30am. She dodges cars, mopeds, and bikes left and right— but she does alright and gets to school in one piece.  

Here is the hallway on the 1st floor of school:

And the lobby of the 1st floor (newly renovated)

At school, Scott will do a 30-45 minute workout before the first class. The school has a nice gym on the 7th floor:

Scott finishes his workout around 7:45 and this is when Marissa is arriving at school. 

We both spend the next 30 minutes prepping for the morning. First period starts at 8:20am.

Scott’s classroom is used for a home room class, so he prepares in the teacher office:

(Reed, Joy, and Kepler did not approve of this photo)

But because Marissa is lucky and doesn’t share her room, she gets to plan and stay in her room all day. 

Our school has a rotating schedule, so each class period occurs at a different time each day. For example, “Period 1” is at 8:20am on Mondays. But on Tuesday, “Period 1” is taught at 3:20pm (the last time slot for classes) and “Period 2” is at 8:20am. 

The logic here is teachers have the opportunity to teach students at different parts of the day in hopes the students aren’t, for example, always tired at 8am or always burnt out in the last period. 

Quite genuis actually.

Here is the breakdown:

Marissa teaches P3, P5, P6, and P7.

Scott is part time and only teaches P4 and P5. 

Marissa teaches:

-one middle school Drama class (7th & 8th grade)

-two high school Drama classes (grades 9-12),

-one High School AP Art History class. 

Scott teaches

-One 7th grade Geography

-One 8th grade Geography

He is teaching the same course content for both grades. His 7th grade class are gems. The 8th grade class is a challenge.

Because of their age, energy, and low English level, teaching in lecture form is challenging to the point its fairly pointless. So the content must be in the form of a game or activity. So Scott spends lots of time turning the content into games or activities. 

For example, instead of presenting powerpoint slides, he will print them out and tape them around the room and give the kids a worksheet to get up and find the answers. 

Here are the kids doing a walk around activity as they learn new landform vocab. If you notice, all the photos uses are Scott’s personal photos taken over the years:

They also play tons of Jeopardy!

This makes classes really fun, but, being his first year teaching, the constant planning is time consuming. So he is really working full time. Thankfully the part time pay he’s receiving is good!

He’s also very lucky to have Marissa to help though! She helps plan activities and is filled with ideas when Scott is burnt out. 

Here are some photos of the projects so far this year:

Even with lower English level students, Marissa is lucky because the nature of drama class is games and activities. However for AP Art History, it has to be a lecture—so that can be tough. Although, interestingly enough, the lower level speaking students ended up dropping her AP art history class, so now she teaches to only ONE student in that class. Crazy!

Her middle school drama class is preparing to perform “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” and the high school class is getting ready to do an improv comedy show next month! 

During period 2, Scott attends Spanish class with our friend and colleague Miguel. He is from Spain. How ironic that we moved to China and Scott is learning Spanish?

Here is Scott and the Spanish teacher on Halloween:

And of course the true Ken and Barbie:

Are you Kenough?

Our last period ends at 4:10pm. The school allows us to leave the campus at 4:30pm. We never actually leave at 4:30pm because we are either grading papers or planning. It’s usually around 5:30ish we get on our bikes to leave.

Except on Mondays.

On Mondays we each have an ECA (extra curricular activity) to run. The school requires each teacher to coordinate one ECA class per week. 

Marissa teaches an indoor fitness class and Scott runs an Ultimate Frisbee ECA. 

Marissa’s class is indoors (in her classroom) and she shows Zumba, combat exercises, or yoga videos. It’s simple prep, but fun! 

Scott’s eca class is out on the soccer field. For the first half he creates some kind of activity around frisbees (for example, throw the frisbees into the hula hoop or hit the cone off the chair for points). The second half they play the sport Ultimate. 

Here’s the soccer field:

These ECA’s are from 4:15-5:30pm on Monday.

Monday or not, about 5:30pm we get on our bicycles and ride home. 

Although we rarely ride home together. Marissa is much better at packing up and calling it a day. 

Scott just works and works trying to stay afloat on lesson plans, so he leaves a bit later. He’s also not as productive.

But around 6-6:30pm we are each home. 

After arriving home, and before anything, Scott opens an orange flavored sugar-free seltzer and sits in this chair reflecting on his day. 

He does this EVERY SINGLE DAY. 

For dinner we do one of three things: make something at home, order delivery, or eat out. 

We eat out once a week (or so) because we just wanna be home after a long day.

But it’s honestly not in either of our nature to eat out much. 

Unless it’s Chipotle, and if you hadn’t guessed yet, there is no Chipotle in China.

Although, ordering delivery here is essentially free. So, we do that once or twice a week for dinners and for groceries too! Not kidding, it’s about one US dollar to have food delivered to our doorstep (same goes for groceries), plus the price of the food of course. 

It’s so fast too. Our bike ride home is about 12 minutes. If you order food at work then bike ride home, it arrives shortly after we arrive. 

Recently we were pondering how Chinese food was kind of the original delivery food in the USA. Seeing how widespread and cheap it is here in China, we wonder if China brought the tradition to the USA. 

One thing to keep in mind is that everything is delivered on a scooter. So if your order is too much for one scooter, like us buying multiple 12L bottles of drinking water, you must make two different orders. 

These are the scooter delivery men:

You see them EVERYWHERE.

How many can you count in this one photo:

As far as WHAT we eat here goes…Can you guess?? Of course dumplings, noodles, and rice. Haha. 

Here is Marissa in action, making us dinner in our little kitchen

There’s a few western restaurants in our town (KFC and McDonald’s), but the food is different than what we know. We personally think that homemade or the Chinese food is better than the western KFC stuff anyway. 

KFC and McDonald’s also have some weird stuff—Like bread with peanut butter and cheese on top, or at least that’s what it looks like!

McDonalds:

KFC:

Anyway, after dinner, we have about an hour before sleep, which is crazy to think as we are writing this. 

We only have one free hour per evening? 

I guess no matter where you live, life draws you into a super busy schedule. 

I digress. 

We spend that last hour doing something we enjoy. 

Marissa has started crocheting. 

And Scott has been playing Minecraft on the computer. 

Ironically both of these hobbies were inspired upon us during our trip to North Carolina last month.

Marissa has also been learning to draw caricatures. We have this loose idea to travel around with Marissa’s sister to festivals. Marissa would draw caricatures as her sister (Jessica) gives henna tattoos. 

Kanye? Ye? Is that you?

But it’s a loose idea for now.  

And if Scott doesnt play minecraft, he might watch an episode of the TV show Alone, practice Spanish, or as many of us do, blow time away scrolling social media learning that Monica is drinking a whiskey sour at a bar called ‘Hip-e Dip-e’ and is fully capable of clinking her glass with friends as she simultaneously records a video in hopes someone reaches out to tell her she is enough. 

And after our one hour of leisure time, we lay down on our hard chinese bed, read a bit, journal some, say a nightly prayer, kiss, turn separate directions, and fall asleep.

zzzzZZzzzZ

Thanks for reading! That’s it for this post.

And here’s some random photos of a Chinese desserts: 

Hotdog eclairs

Doctored up shave ice (ignore my spelling mistake below, spent too much time living in the desert):

A non chocolate hotdog: