Done and dusted (Marcus)

If you take a look at Courtney's bag of late, you'd realise what has been on our minds recently...or this might be a direct result of 99.9% of Chinese people assuming we're American. For the record, NO WE ARE NOT AMERICAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


I guess it was quite hard watching the Olympics and not feeling patriotic when the Chinese were whipped into a rabid frenzy of excitement over all their games achievements. Well done to them but we truly didn't share that joy. By the end of the games we were somewhat sick to death of seeing the Chinese team period. Every channel that broadcasted the games here was unfortunately only in Chinese, so we really missed out on commentary. It's not normally such a big thing, but we missed all the little backstories, he did this, she did that, he's going for his 3rd world record etc etc.

On top of that the only stuff they showed was Chinese events. Fair enough - in Australia all we see are Australian events(predominantly anyway). Diving, Table Tennis, Volleyball and Gymnastics..I am surprised they didn't invade my dreams. It was hard to tell which channels were broadcasting live, which were replays. The replays were a waste of time as you just know, China won that particular event. I did find a good way of looking at the countdown to an Aussie event on news.com.au then channel surfing until I saw what appeared to be that particular event - ie swimming.

Anyhow the real point of this post is to report that we have successfully negotiated our departure from the school and will be finishing up here on the 26th September. After a brief holiday in Shanghai - where we will be meeting with Mum whose coming over - we will hopefully bring her back to Wuxi for a few days - show her around - show her all the things we have been calling home for the past 6 months, then it's back home to the world of good indian, mexican, japanese and vietnamese cuisine.

We decided to teach for a further month which assists the school in finding new teachers. They wanted us to teach until November, where there are mid-semester exams, but we firmly stated we would only remain here one more month. It's time to go.

Courtney is again sick with some kind of flu where I am positive deep down she's really just a factory for phlegm. I don't think I have ever seen anyone blow their nose as often as her over the past few months. I am sure her sickness's are environment related. She was sick on the holiday with almost the same illness, and voila, she's got it again, some two weeks later. Being sick here is one way to get you down, and I feel for her. She's currently having a middle of the day nap as she barely slept last night, being unable to breathe properly and constantly coughing.

When we get home however, I think our lungs may just explode - what's that, fresh air?!?! It will be comparable to quitting smoking at any rate - there'll be much goodness to cough up; been there, done that.