Finding Beautiful Routine

Any of you who have ever tried to have an extended conversation over Facebook with me have probably discovered how unfortunately inconsistent I (Leigha) am with online communication. This blog is no exception, as Christian and I both struggle to keep conversations going in a timely manner when not face-to-face. And so we find ourselves again realizing that far too much time and life has passed since we published an update!

The last time we wrote, we had just landed in China and settled into our two weeks of hotel quarantine in the southern city of Guangzhou. On October 25 we were allowed to fly up to Chengdu (成都), where we will be based at the very least until July 2022. We then had to quarantine another 8 days in our apartment in the city and report our temperatures twice a day. After that week, we were permitted to go straight to and from school for a week (but not anywhere else), before finally being promoted to “limited exposure” for another week, during which we stepped into our in-person teaching positions fulltime, and after which we were considered ‘normal’ and free to roam about the city to our heart’s content.

Since then, we have gradually built up a working routine for our time here, built around school. A normal work week for us begins with early rising, getting to school around 6:30am, preparing for the day and having occasional PD meetings or responsibilities greeting the students as they arrive at 7:45.

I teach Pre-Calculus every other day, followed by Character Development for 6^th graders every day, followed by an early lunch at 11am. After lunch I teach a 7^th grade English class, then monitor a high school study hall until 3:15. During the second quarter (which ended mid-January), I coached middle school girls’ volleyball a few days a week, and this quarter I have several professional development groups that meet after school – I’m learning a lot!

Christian teaches Character Development for 7^th graders, and then after lunch has the bulk of his classes – Geography for both 6^th and 7^th graders. He is now coaching middle school boys’ basketball, which he finds both new and enjoyable. We also both have a short period (think ‘homeroom’-type) with a small group of 6^th graders with whom we are able to build deeper connections. 

We usually aim to get home from school between 5:30 and 6 in the evening, although there have been many days that we don’t get back until more like 7pm. Somewhere in the midst of the day, we also study Chinese (we have lessons twice a week for about an hour), a piece we enjoy but realize we can always put more work into! As new teachers with little formal training, we have been spending what sometimes feels like exorbitant amounts of time preparing lessons and gathering materials, but we are grateful to feel very well supported and guided by our school administration. Through all this busy-ness we have been able to maintain a solid, beautiful routine that has allowed us to learn, although we always are aware that there is more for us to explore!

All of these things keep us busy during the day, but also keep us very involved with our teaching and our students. We have loved getting into the community at our school, getting to know the other middle school teachers on our hallway, and building relationships with students who are in a unique time in their own life along with everything that is going on in the world right now! 

The various travel restrictions that have come along with COVID have drastically changed the international community in 成都 and our school – even though there have been only 14 local cases of COVID since our arrival in October! (This is a thriving city of about 16 million people who have enjoyed travel mostly inside Sichuan province because of the strict protocols and quarantines placed on incoming travelers – although it was a pain to cooped up for a month, the benefits of travel and no COVID stress have been worth it for us!)

Chinese New Year was mid-February this year, which meant that our school had a two-week break that ended on February 22. This was a wonderful opportunity for us to relax a bit and get ahead in lesson planning. Because of preventative COVID restrictions, we were highly encouraged not to travel outside of 成都 during the break; however, 成都 covers a huge area, much larger than I would generally think of as the “city”! We were able to travel about an hour from our apartment by subway to an ancient water irrigation system – DuJiangYan (都江堰) – and explore the mountain for a day. We were also blessed to have nearly a week with “good air days” – days the Air Quality Index (AQI) was in the clear zone – that we were able to use for long bike rides, exploring some massive parks in our area. Although we live relatively close to the small ‘inner ring’ of the city, it takes barely 30 minutes on a bike ride to find ourselves in the middle of what feels like ‘nowhere’ in the countryside!

[A short photo gallery should load below with pictures from our trip to DuJiangYan. Click them to see enlarged versions. Though the air wasn’t the best that day – hence Leigha’s attempt to imitate Bane – we found some beautiful landscapes and enjoyed walking/hiking!]

Overall, we have been doing well! We are still very centered around school and the work we do, but we enjoy what we are doing and working with our students. We are also looking forward to several school-related ‘adventure-type’ trips that we will be chaperoning later in the spring and summer, one near Chengdu and the other in the more mountainous, western region of our province.

[Note from Christian: I was happy to let Leigha write this one since we’ve got a lot going on, though I think she’s written the greater part our recent updates. In any case, since it’s been so long since our last update, I wanted to write at least a short note to let you know I’m still alive and kicking! This has been a bit of a whirlwind 6 months, but it has been good through and through, and we’re enormously grateful to be where we are. As Leigha mentioned, growing and learning has been a big theme of these months – besides school, also including learning lots about setting up a home more officially, traveling and surviving in a big city, navigating various life details from China, and more! You might think we learned such things last year, but that was a rather different experience, and especially after being away from China for 9 months, life in 成都 is plenty novel!

We will do our best to be more regular in writing. I imagine there are many small pieces of life here that could use more in-depth reflection and about which you might enjoy reading!

In faith, hope, and love,
Leigha and Christian]