Busy week

Well, anybody afraid that this is going to be another Lucas blog entry can rest assured that I will only be mentioning him once. Since that mention was in the previous sentence, you know the rest of the blog won't be quite as tedious as it usually is.

In September of 2006 Joan decided to do something she's wanted to do since she was a teenage girl: straighten her teeth. Her two front teeth were crooked, you see, twisted in place by quite a large amount. Nobody really noticed this, of course, but she knew about it and was very, very insecure about her smile as a result. Those of you who've seen my earlier (sadly non-digital) photos of her will know that it's rare to actually see her smiling in a photo (or, rather, when she did smile, it was always a closed-mouth Mona Lisa-style one). Which was actually quite a shame because when she's smiling (naturally, that is) her face lights up like a pinball game that's just hit the "free game" jackpot.

September of 2006 marked her decision to move away from this. She went to the dentist, got evaluated, got four teeth pulled and thus began a two-year (maximum!) process of adjusting her teeth. This week, on Wednesday, June 10, 2009, the work was finally completed. Yes, the two-year maximum process took just under three years. Three years of discomfort and three years of metal in the mouth. Sometimes sharp metal. Even with metal in her mouth, however, Joan already started to smile properly and naturally, wearing the braces almost as a badge of honour.

Finally, however, it's over. Above and to the left you can see what Joan's smile looked like on Tuesday and to the right you can see what it looked like Wednesday. Pretty big change over a day, isn't it?

Of course it's still not completely over. She has retainers she has to wear 24x7 (except when eating) for a year, then nights-only for another year. She's had to relearn how to talk because the retainers occupy quite a bit of space in the mouth, but they're visibly much less intrusive than were the braces before.

In other news, and the reason for my delay in posting any news at all, I have officially signed my new contract at my new workplace. I'm moving over to the Hubei Provincial Communication Technical College (or something approximately like that which I'll translate better when I get the energy) in under a month and will be starting teaching there September of this year.

The general run-down on the new place:

• The staff are friendlier and more communicative than my current school, not to mention better organized and better capable of communicating in English.
  
• The salary is a bit higher, but so are the teaching hours (the hourly remuneration is about the same).
• The students are going to be of much, much lower quality than the main campus (and possibly even slightly lower quality than the Sweathogs campus).
• The new apartment is a bit smaller, but much more nicely outfitted (it has an air conditioner/heater in each room, for example).

Also, again unlike my current school, they're willing to let me move in over the summer. One thing that I really didn't like about ISSWHU the first year I was there (albeit about the only thing at the time since I hadn't been introduced to the Sweathogs yet) was that they positively refused to allow us to move in over the summer. Instead I had to stow my possessions at a friend's apartment and live in Joan's apartment in Hanyang over the summer and then hastily move everything in while I was also planning lessons and getting oriented in the new location just before I started teaching. Why? They didn't want to be responsible for me or my behaviour over the summer before I started working for them.

So the move is a mixed bag that, in my opinion, slightly tilts toward the "plus" side of the scales when I measure them.

No other particularly interesting news to report otherwise. I mean it's damned hot, but I think I've been complaining about that loudly to anybody who'd listen since I first got to China. (How hot? Try 35C at 84% humidity.) I am going to really enjoy living in an apartment where I don't have a single room-sized air conditioner trying to cool down a sizable two-bedroom apartment.