It's great to be home!

I arrived in Toronto, last Thurs. at 9:30 p.m. I have been busy shopping, visiting and not sleeping ever since. It's 5:10 a.m. now. I've been awake since 3:30 as I have been every day since I arrived. Today I managed to stay in bed until 4:45 but that was it. I am making turkey soup already today and then decided to do this since I can actually view my blog from here. We celebrated Christmas on the 22nd since Mike was here. He had to leave on the 23rd to go to a linguistics conference in Hong Kong. My family is having a large gathering on the 30th in St. Jacob's. My brothers, their spouses and children, and my family (minus Mike) will be there. It will be great to see everyone.
I've joined Facebook, finally after a number of invites from people. I'm not sure what the advantage of it is but maybe after I explore it a little more and maybe after I return from China at which time I will discontinue this blog maybe I'll think differently. I'm here until Jan. 3rd at which time I go on my first non-stop flight to Shanghai. I'm not sure if that is a good thing or not. I'll let you know.

Christmas has come to Shanghai

Hi All, if anyone is still tuning in, I've already had a few Christmas celebrations here, my meager decorations are added to my apartment, I've been to a few bazaars, and last night was the Canadian Christmas Dinner at the Four Seasons Hotel. It was very fancy had loads of prizes, none of which I won and was very festive. This Thurs. I am cooking a turkey dinner, after work, to show our Chinese teacher what Christmas is like at home. Moira and I are doing this, we bought a very small turkey will prepare the trimmings and enjoy Christmas dinner along with Sarah who has the patience of Job trying to teach the two of us how to speak Chinese. I do know, Shengdan quai le, ie Merry Christmas. Tomorrow is our class Christmas Party, next Mon. is an ECE celebration. We are going carolling in the school neighbourhood.

On Sat. I went on a school trip to "leather city" which is actually a four floor shopping mall that sells only leather and furs. I picked up a couple of Christmas presents there for Richard and Doug.

My mind is always on preparing for leaving here which is a very different feeling than last year at this time when I had just gotten over a period of adjusting to being here. In many ways I wish I was staying longer. I feel like I am just now beginning to understand the culture on another level, just beginning to speak the little Chinese I do know, have so much more I want to explore, so many places I want to travel to. That said, I am tired of travelling and tired of the food and definitely tired of working.

I have no pictures to post today because I am at work and all my pictures are on my own computer at home. The few new ones I have are people pictures rather than the scenery I usually post. I'll add them in next time.