So that's where all the orgasms went.

Now before you go getting all fired up over the title, hear me out:

After a complaint to Green-thumbed Sammy Dingee about the tiny flies all over the soil and plants in the garden, she offered some comfort by reassuring me that, ‘Oh, they are probably eating some orgasms in the soil’. Hmmm…organisms?

Thanks to a reminder from my perceptive niece, Aislinn, I must correct my last post as this will no longer be my last few months in China…more like my last 12. An epiphany struck me like a dump truck on Sunday afternoon. It had been a gorgeous weekend and we had been to the beach an hour away the day before. I was outside cleaning, pruning and watering my house plants and setting up my little corner for guests to enjoy the sunshine when I realized, ‘I’m going to miss my plants…and my corner, and my family here, and the school, and the trips, and, and, and…” I thought maybe a good sleep would cure these feelings of uncertainty, but Monday just provided more logical reasons to stay put for another year. It was the first time I made a pro-con list that actually helped me make a decision. I still decided to torture everyone around me with desperate pleas for guidance, but the longer the day went on, the more I realized that the decision to stay another year was the right one.

I reported my decision to my principal at 10:30 on Monday night, two hours before the 12am deadline and I am so relieved to have just made a decision that quickly for once in my indecisive life. Another year means the ’big’ increase in salary next year which means more savings and another year of experience under my belt for the next big move. While New Zealand would (and still could) be a great experience, and my God the thought of another year of Chinese men when I could be landing squat in the middle of the Men’s World Rugby Championships is heart wrenching, I am very much looking forward to having stable employment at a job I love and the luxury of many more trips in and around SE Asia for another year. Plus we’ve got a great crew of people here that are very much like a big family and our China parents Ross and Mariya Henderson may also be returning to us !

Back to our garden, today I got to bury a beautiful songbird; yet another victim of our notoriously sky-like glass-lined stairwell. The birds think they’re heading home and BAM – right into the glass. There have been more casualties than I would like to see, but today’s was one of the prettiest birds I have ever seen. We will have to get some sort of posters or stickers on the glass to keep this from happening. It kills my soul.




We have beautiful flowers in bloom in the Grade 8 bed. And the lettuces, carrots, and tomatoes are still going strong. I am apprehensive to feed these greens to anyone except for the cleaners who seem impervious to suggestions that they cease watering the plants with filthy fish water. Obvious reasons for this request include:
o Fish live in water. If you take the water away from the fish, they will die.
o Fish poop in water. Fish poop is gross. Poopy fish water being put on our plants
that we want to eat is also gross.

One bonus for the fish this week is the pump which finally got installed. Fish Group #3 are swimming around with great fervor although they are still quite skiddish of the kids when they lean over to look at them.



Farmer Jamie with his crop:



Two of my grade 8 students trying radish:



Yae Eun does not like:

After an amazingly wonderful and refreshing 2 week break for the Chinese New Year, we are back at it for our second and final semester at ISNS. I am confident that with this being my last few months in China, the time will fly. There are still a few trips, long weekends, birthdays, and various other events planned for the next few months that we are all looking forward to. I can recall this time last year being very tedious. It just seemed to drag on and on with ugly gray skies looming behind dirty gray buildings. I was ready to go home in April…a bit early seeing as how I had a flight booked back to NB for the 11th of July!

Things are a lot better this year. We’ve got a real sense of family established here on campus. A lot of the ‘young’ crew that I get around with are all on the same floor and we’ve all got cute little daily activities and hobbies together. A few of the girls get up (almost) every morning and workout at 6 am. We had been doing P90X and just started the ‘Insanity’ workout Monday morning. Getting up when it is still dark to workout used to be something you couldn’t have even bribed me to do with the promise of Bailey’s in a coffee afterward, but we really enjoy our little routine and it is more motivating to get up when I know that there are other people relying on me to be there.

The school year is much more enjoyable this year as well and structured in a more ‘normal’ fashion. It was hard to come back after a month off last year when I had been traveling predominantly by myself and all my friends and acquaintances had been on group trips. I certainly did not have the same bonds with my co-workers last year as I do this year. Despite the fact that I was friends with the same people, we now have much more in common and have shared more experiences in travel and work and leisure so it makes life here much more enjoyable.

I have digressed so I will try to remain focus on the topic of the blog itself, le garden!



I was amazed with how much the garden had grown over the break. I was not sure if anyone was going to be around to keep it watered, but there must have been help from somewhere, whether it was mother nature or a green-loving maintenance person, because the lettuce, radish, carrots and tomatoes (still no fruit) took off like rockets!






I’ve been told that an advertisement in the local entertainment and event magazine ‘That’s’ promoting the school has included ‘An organic garden developed and maintained by students’ as a selling point for the school. Despite reported grammatical and spelling errors, it’s exciting to know that our garden has become a highlight of the school!

The Grade 3 teacher has approached me with a request for her students to plant some pea seeds in the garden, and just in time to meet her request, another row of dirt has been added along one of the walls.
It has been difficult at times to incorporate the garden into the Science units when we are talking about things like optics and heat and flight. I have been designated the Science Club Teacher for our Activity period this semester, so I hope to utilize that time and dedicate some time with these smaller groups of students to studying and maintaining the beds. I would also like to incorporate some actual cooking with the foods since so far, most of the greens have just been growing and not put to into anyone’s bellies.

Oh...and another stellar update: we have a rat infestation on 6th floor. Here's one of our little friends that got caught in a rainstorm one evening last year.
Can't wait to come across one of these little guys in my room.

An Update from the Grade 12s

I am slightly dreading what I will be met with upon my arrival at school tomorrow. If our school plants are looking as wilted and feeble as my home plants, it is not going to be a pleasant start to the week back after a two week holiday!

Here is the most recent photo of our garden - looking good!









GRADE 12 Blog UPDATES:

I hope our school garden will go well as we have planned and get all the materials needed. Most importantly, I have high expectations towards our little plants! I am really looking forward to see the fruits or flowers to bloom someday! I have so far sketched a plan about how our little garden should look like, and also planted 3 seeds of a type of flower in a recycled "paper" pot. I've learned a lot about planting, things that I usually wouldn't know, such as how much soil is needed, how to mix ratios of soil and fertilizer, what type of plants are suitable for certain types of weather, etc. To me, this is a very meaningful project, because it gets us learning more about the environment, and more importantly, knowing about the global concerns. It also triggers the little children's curiosity and they might develop an interest in farming! *----* Children nowadays don't even bother to learn about planting and farming as they live in urban areas where there isn't any greenery. Let's plant our earth green~ :D

Ji Su


Didi G12
Blog Update

A lot of things have happened in our school garden over the past month. The beds are ready, filled up with soil and the pond has been constructed and filled with water. We have planted a quite a number of plants on the beds and most of them have successfully sprouted. The pond has been filled with water plants, some rocks and best of all; fishes have inhabited it. As of now, everybody seems to still be enthusiastic about the garden and willing to take care of it. It is December now, so the temperature has significantly dropped. Growth of the plants seemed to have slowed down a bit, but hopefully they will do better in the spring. This garden seems to be going well and is bound to have a great future.


Blog Update:

In the past few months, our garden got more lively: we had out little pond with fish, stones and plants in it, three pots of big plants, and our seeds germinated and started growing! Everything is fun and exciting, except for the tragedy of our fish dying one by one. We had about nine initially, but there are only three left now. I'm looking forward to adding more facilities and fish inside the pond- we really need a filter and someone needs to clean the pond every single day so it's not dirty. Everyone, especially the little kids, love to look at the fish swimming around. The kids are always curious about our garden, and they always ask me 'what plant is this?, when will they grow?'. I feel very happy watching our (Jisu & I) garden bed having some leaves coming up. We planted flowers & radishes, although initially we tried sunflowers, but they failed us. We are praying that our radish will grow successfully because we tried to move some seeds away from each other. Overall, this garden project is an awesome idea and thank you Miss Dingee for coming up with this supreme idea! :D We enjoy this alot & this is actually the first time I touched soil with my bare hands lol

Frances




BLOG UPDATE
A number of things have happened in our garden over the past month. To begin with, our class planted more plants in our garden. Sometimes, we went to the garden to plant during the class. We used shovel to dig the soil and planted.
Moreover, our class sprinkled the plants before the class started or during the class, therefore many plants such as tomatoes and zucchini grew bigger and taller. Especially my plants which are zucchini grew very fast and healthy, while, Andy’s zucchini was not growing and it died.
Furthermore, we decided to make a place to raise some fishes, therefore there were a lot of fishes in our garden. Also we put the pebbles and little plants to make more environmental for fishes. However, several fishes were died because of lack of oxygen, not enough water and little kids. Thus, we put more water using a hose.
To sum up, I think our garden becomes better and better. We have enough plants and fishes, even if, we need to promote the students and teachers to visit our garden. So they can give us good ideas about the garden.

By: Bo Whan

YES! We're still growing!

I must apologize! I know you have been on the edge of your seat(s?) awaiting an update on our garden since my last post years ago! We have been so busy here at school and I have honestly just been unmotivated to write about the garden. There have been some frustrations and set-backs, mostly regarding the fish...but we are growing!

From November 16, 2010 (too lazy to even post!?):

Dr. Pang was in town last week to check up on how things are going around the school and let me tell you…when the Dr. is in the house…shit gets did. He wasn’t on campus 20 minutes and they had water along the wall where he said they would be putting fish in the next few days (I am unsure how said fish will survive as there is no filter or drain in this little enclosed area), some sort of sculpture placed into the ‘water area’ and we were on our way to buy trees to give the garden some green while we are waiting for our plants to grow. Grades 6-8 were all involved in planting last week and we have already got some little seedlings sprouting after the weekend. I am really unsure as to how well some of these things are going to grow (i.e. the watermelon) but we can always dream of big melons. Hmmm…?

Carol and I visited the plant nursery up the street from the school with our tri-lingual secretary, Yolanda. We were informed that there were more trees at another location further up the street so Yolanda asked the workers if they would drive us there. Minutes later we were bopping along in the back of a tree delivery truck to some unknown location to buy trees. Not what I expected to be doing on a Thursday afternoon, but it proved successful. We returned with three trees which have really added to the garden.

Something that did not add to the garden was the dead bird I found lying mere inches away from our freshly transplanted tomato and basil plants on Sunday morning. Janna and I had hauled our butts out of bed bright and early to attend a yoga class and on the way back, I went over to the garden to water the plants which had been neglected the day before. This terrible teacher was having too much fun gallivanting around Hong Kong on Saturday to tend to the gardens. Oops. There is a large staircase that ascends from the 6th floor of the school down to the ground level which is enclosed by semi-circular glass. Birds assume it is a free-fly zone and ram into either side of the glass on the way through on a weekly basis. Luckily, the cleaners or SOMEONE notices dead bird carcasses before the dear children arrive for school most days. However, Jess O. told me once that her entire class saw one smack right into the glass and land with a thud on the ground in front of them once. Traumatizing to say the least.



Now we are almost half way through December and it has gotten to the point where I have demanded that the Grade 12s 'update' the blog for an assignment. I will be posting their comments regarding our progress and some photos of how we're doing.

As predicted, the fish project sank a bit. Pun intended. Except dead fish actually float for a while, so first it floated, and then it sank. Needless to say, there were a few mornings when I would arrive at school to have students run up to me exclaiming, 'Ms. Dingee! There are three more dead fish!!!!' They were placed in this area with no filtration system (i.e. no oxygen source) no food and no care (oh, that was my job?) for over a week until I finally asked if we could get some food for the poor things. They had started attacking each other so it was not a cool scene. I picked up some aquatic plants from a fish store down the street which the few remaining seem to enjoy. Well, they enjoy hiding from predators underneath them. We started with numerous fish, and we now have 4. Fish carcasses have been added to the compost, so at least they aren't completely going to waste. I have, however, become convinced that someone is playing with my mind and it's that damn cat Chairman Mao, I just know it! The cleaners claimed they found fish bones in the water the last time I had them clean it out. This cleaning episode also culminated in the extermination of 6 fish which I had to pluck out of the water the next morning before all the little kids could come and see their pets floating belly up :( Not a great start to my day.

Today, I arrived to find one of the bottom-feeders on the ground 5 feet away from the water and the water inside had almost completely drained out somehow! WHO IS DOING THIS TO ME?!

We have soil!

A group of us teachers have just returned from a glorious week-long trip to Thailand. The land of cheap buckets of...whatever you'd like, delicious food, and fantastic beachy fun. There were nine of us in tow as we traveled from Bangkok; highlights included floating market, Koh San Road at 3 am, being given a Michael Jackson groin thrust followed by the standard Thai greeting of two hands clasped together by a young child along the banks during a boat tour, 4 am wake-ups and bedtimes and throw in just one wrongly booked plane ticket which was remedied by Thai messages on the beach and lovely fresh-fruit cocktails.

Upon my return last week I was thrilled to see that the raised-beds had been built in the center of our area along with the concrete beds along the walls! It looked almost identical to the image we had provided. Kids were running into the class announcing 'the garden is here!' I'm not sure if they realize that this thing isn't going to plant itself yet or not.

I was nervous about our little sprouting seedlings the whole week I was away, which I had left in the fairly capable hands of one Gregory Sheppard who did not join us on the Thai-trip. When asked if he wanted me to show him 'what to do' to water the plants, he replied, 'Uhhhh...yeah, pour water on them?' 'Well...sort of, but you can't just go dumping water on these little seedlings...some need misty drops! MISTY DROPS!' Anyway, they mostly survived, some I dare say thrived in Greg's care, so I will be sure to repay him with a bottle of juice, or pop or something that mixes well with either of the two.

Since our return, I have met with Ms. Hao, the lady who is responsible for ordering all of the supplies and materials for both the International and Chinese Schools on campus. She seemed very open to all of my requests: organic soil, re-used tables/chairs for the art class to decorate, old plates and dishes for making mosaic art, a bench for seating, a small storage space with a roof, etc.

I had requested that we have some sand or small rocks placed at the bottom of the raised beds to help with drainage and after my conversation with Ms. Hao, I returned to my class to finish up some work. 20 minutes later, my friend Janna poked her head into my room on her way home and said 'Did you know that they're pouring sand into your flower beds?' Sure enough, workers were coming with bags of sand and raking it out along the bottoms of the beds! Sometimes when you want something done in China, all you have to do is snap your fingers! It reminds me of the billboard displayed along the road coming from the Hong Kong ferry into Shenzhen, something about how 'Time is Money, Efficiency is Life...' Ohhhhh China...

On Wednesday, Spencer from Grade 12 said he would go out and buy soil if we could start planting the next day. To his delight and my surprise, we could have as the first bags of rich (looking), dark soil were poured in during our Environmental Science class the next morning. I felt like a bit of a hypocrite, but I insisted that Daniel haul out his cellphone (which I had confiscated after he used it to calculate something a couple of weeks before) to capture the moment.


This week and next are going to be filled with projects, midterms, tests, and report card marking so we will see about getting started on our planting ventures. It seems like it would be a good time to start as the weather is finally dropping down to a 'not-so-ridiculously-sweltering' 25ish degree temperature average. Really starting to feel the autumn in the air. Or maybe that's just the CO2 emissions...

'Our Garden Project' - By the grade 12s

From the whole garden project, I expect something beautiful where we can rest, study or have fun with others. I hope the school garden will be a nice, quiet place what will last for many years. I contributed my garden plan for the school garden, like everybody from G12, and tried to grow up a plan. I learned that i’m fail at plant growing, my plant didn’t grow up, the seed is too shy to show of. :D I think the garden will give some “green” intro our life, we will have a place, where we will have some fun, I like it! ~ Daniel

I hope we can have a beautiful school garden and our plants will grow like they will. I planted Onion and I sketched a plan for our school garden. I have learned about the importance of our green earth and how we can save the earth by stop using too much natural resources, turning of the lights after you leave the room, etc. this is a valuable class because it teaches us the importance of trees and how it affects the world. also, a school garden is important for the other students to learn about planting small plants or even big trees. ~ Spencer




I expect the school garden is very gigantic and pretty. The school garden should be very huge. Therefore the students feel that they are surrounding by environment. This makes the students to feel comfortable. Moreover, they could study much better. Also I expect the school garden has a number of colorful flowers and the plants that we can eat. Thus, the students could eat after the plants grow. I hope someone will take care of the school garden during school days and during holiday or vacation. So the plants could get enough water to grow. I hope everyone in our school like the school garden. Because it is ISNS’s school garden and our classes contributed a lot to design it. I hope the little kid won’t harm the plants. There are numerous of benefits for school garden. At first, it gives students the responsibility to care about something. The students could learn about nature and plants. I have contributed to design the school garden. Some of my ideas are included in the design of school garden. I have learned much stuff during school garden project. I learn how to make the garden, benefit of it, and what plants could live in Shenzhen. It is a valuable project because I could learn about plants. In addition, I could learn about the relationship between plants and weather. ~ Bo Whan

I hope our school garden will go well as we have planned and get all the materials needed. Most importantly, I have high expectations towards our little plants! I am really looking forward to see the fruits or flowers to bloom someday! I have so far sketched a plan about how our little garden should look like, and also planted 3 seeds of a type of flower in a recycled "paper" pot. I've learned a lot about planting, things that I usually wouldn't know, such as how much soil is needed, how to mix ratios of soil and fertilizer, what type of plants are suitable for certain types of weather, etc. To me, this is a very meaningful project, because it gets us learning more about the environment, and more importantly, knowing about the global concerns. It also triggers the little children's curiosity and they might develop an interest in farming! *----* Children nowadays don't even bother to learn about planting and farming as they live in urban areas where there isn't any greenery. Let's plant our earth green~ :D ~ Frances


I am Jisu, I am grade in 12. This year in ISNS, Grade 12 have new course, environment science. In this class, we are doing really cool project, “making school garden!” Not only Grade.12, but also Grade 6, 7, and 8 are making together. Our final purpose is a harvest our vegetables. We designed our school garden. We chose what vegetables are easy to adapt in Shenzhen’s weather, what materials we should to use to minimized the pollution, and the process to use water. The last step of the design is finished by Ms. Chapman who is the art teacher of ISNS. ISNS students finished planting seeds. I planted radishes; my radishes are growing in the small pot which is made of paper. Now we are waiting for stuffs what we need for the school garden. We will make really perfect the school garden! By this project, making the school garden, we learn the importance of farming, and how difficult to get one vegetable. Therefore, the students never waste food! I want our school garden will be started as soon as possible! After started, students who involved the school garden must keep watching the garden in rest time and lunchtime as well as the class time! If ISNS newspaper will start, I hope we mention about the school garden, so many students know about the garden more.

Andy G12
Environmental Science
Blog Entry – School Garden

We (Grade 12 and other members of ISNS) are currently doing a project to build a school garden. This is apparently my first time in building a garden, which means it is a whole new experience. I have high expectations for this particular garden and have contributed my time, ideas and designs in order to make this project come to life. I hope that the garden will grow and flourish so that this project may succeed. I wish to see the through the garden’s construction from naught to finish. There is something important that I have learned from working on this project. I have learned that gathering ideas from different people is essential in teamwork, which will result in a better final product. I know that everyone involved will put their best efforts into the creation of the school garden as I have seen it in class. I’m glad to say that I feel great when everyone else on the team feel enthusiastic about this project. We are doing something that has never been done before on school grounds. A school garden will make the school more green and interesting to look at when you point your vision at it, which is also why this project presents itself as a valuable one. It will also enable us to learn more about plants and vegetations more up close and personal.

Getting Down and Dirty with...Dirt

Here are some pictures of the Grade 7 class inspecting a soil sample. I asked them to really 'examine' the dirt. They had to explain what the soil looked, smelled, felt, sounded, moved and tasted like. Their assignment after this was to create some sort of interesting, funny poem/drawing featuring the characteristics and importance of dirt. I am interested to see what they produce today!




P.S. No, I did not actually make my students eat dirt. They did however get bonus points for doing so. ;)