First Day of School

Man, getting to work early is the bomb diggity. It's pretty sweet because there's no one here clogging up the internet bandwidth! Today is a special day because it's the first day of school. All of the hectic-ness of this week is more or less done and starting on Monday I think we'll get into a groove as far as the schedule goes! This week has been good to get to know the staff in the WABX office. Yesterday we had our first coaches meeting! It was fun to finally put names to faces to sports and all of that.

When I got home, aunt Liz and the kids were a little frazzled to say the least. The first thing that happened when I walked in the door, still sweating profusely from my workout, was that Jeremy asked "did you hear about the flood?" Flood? It didn't rain today? Well, what happened was that a pipe burst underneath the sink, and apparently the ground floor of the house got COVERED in water! Oh Chinese workmanship... Aunt Liz had workers who got it fixed and cleaned up before I even got home though! But because of the mess it created, we went out to dinner, which was fantastic, and got home around 9 after grocery shopping. The kids got everything ready for their first day of school, and now the big day is here! It's the first day of school for the three of us, and we're ready to go! Jeremy's on the left side of the picture (he's in 8th grade), I'm in the center in my fancy WABX shirt, and Isabella is on the right (she's a Senior).

Jeremy and I walked to school and talked on the way and it was great. I'm at work now getting new pictures to put on the walls of our weightlifting gym and just doing more organizational stuff for our first day of Fall sports tryouts.

Anyway, you haven't seen the place I'm living at yet! Here's a tour:

It looks kinda like a walled compound. All the houses in Cathay View do.

Then you get into the courtyard through this gate.

This is what the house looks like from the courtyard! Beautiful traditional Chinese architecture huh? There's four floors all in all, and I'm on the top, which is kinda hard to see in this picture.

This is the courtyard too. We have a little outdoor eating area that can be used in fall and spring, but definitely NOT right now with the humidity and just general nastiness.

This is the living room, with Jeremy on his computer. 

Maybe after I get my room all cleaned up, I'll show you pictures of that too. And our neighborhood is great! It's got a bunch of really great spots for running, or sitting and relaxing. Gorgeous.

With school starting up and coaching two sports this season, it's pretty busy. I met with our cross country (XC) coaches yesterday, and they're both great. We have myself, Mike, and Corrie. Mike is from Iowa but he's been living abroad for a long time, and Corrie is from the States as well and she's been here a couple years. They both have a fair amount of running experience, but they're leaving most of the coaching to me, which is pretty exciting! With volleyball, yes I'm coaching but I'm not the one in charge of it, which means I can devote most of my time to XC! Can't wait.