Breakfast this morning:

Freshly made dumplings from this cart on the way to school:

Lee and I ate them in my classroom while we cooled off from our bike commute.

Delicious!

This weekend is a full of social events. This evening we had dinner at Foster Hewitt's, the expat bar nearby. I keep calling it J. Foster's, like the ice cream shops in Simsbury and Avon. They had no ice cream here, but Lee said the wings he ordered were the best he's ever eaten. We joined a friend of ours, Nancy, also a new teacher at KAS. She was here for a couple weeks then took a week off to fly home for her daughter's wedding. Crazy! It'll be a few more days before she's settled back into the routine.

Tomorrow we're joining the pre-k teacher for lunch. She's very excited to have another preschool teacher in the ranks of the faculty who understands what the little ones are like. She's fabulous with the children. The teachers in the youngest grades (pre-k through grade 1) are all Taiwanese. They teach in English but translate as needed so the kids get the English exposure but can also get instruction in Chinese so they don't get too frustrated.

Tomorrow night is the birthday of one of the KAS teachers and we're joining a group of colleagues for dinner and board games to celebrate. Then Sunday night we've been invited to another colleague's apartment for dinner. We may need to get back to work on Monday just to get some rest!

I feel like teaching overseas is like going to college. Everyone is thrown together in an exciting, unfamiliar environment and you form friendships very quickly because of that. You may not have become friends in "normal" circumstances but here you instantly have an awful lot in common.