Monday, November 4th
I know....it's been a few days since I posted. Sorry!! Where did we leave off....Friday...let's see....on Friday, I had a few classes and then Lynne (from Beijing from BCC) came and we had a little talk about how things were going. I am getting some textbooks for my class to use, so that's really good. It'll give me some more direction! Plus, the school wanted me to teach some more classes to 2nd and 3rd graders so I said okay. It's more money so that's always good! haha. It's 8 extra classes a week but it's more of oral English work and not so strict with the lesson planning....I'll embellish more on that later. After our meeting, we went to the high school's Halloween which was pretty funny. I forgot how crazy and sometimes obnoxious high school students can be! It was fun though because there were some performances, they bobbed for apples, did musical chairs, and carved pumpkins. Pretty much like a kid party, but with high school students. They seemed to enjoy it though so all was good! After that, I ran around like a mad woman looking for my keys that I thought I had lost. Here's the story: I have a clutch that has all of my keys in it (room, classroom, elevator,) and my flashdrive. I had it on Thursday night but couldn't find it anywhere after leaving my classroom for the night. I ripped apart my classroom and bedroom looking for it, had to ask the security guard for a new key for my room and elevator, and it was just a huge hassle. Plus, my room key had actually broken so it wasn't working so the guard gave me his key which I CAN NOT LOSE since it's the only one left haha. Long story long, I ended up finding my key right before I was leaving on Friday afternoon for the city. I decided to check my classroom one more time and behold, I had put it on this little shelf under my desk, thinking that it was a safe spot that nobody would take it (there were some parents in my room so I didn't want them to take it by accident). The worst part it, I clearly remember putting it there thinking that it was safe and deciding it was my new clutch place. WHAT A DUMMY! I literally had people making me new keys, letting me borrow their keys...it was a huge ordeal. So then, I had to go back and tell everybody. How embarrassing. I'm living up to the stupid American girl stereotype! Gotta laugh at myself though cause I was running all around and sweating like crazy cause I "lost" my keys, forgot my money in my room, and was pretty much just a huge mess. Needless to say, when I got to my hotel room in the city, I took a long rest.
So Friday, I got into the city and went out with my friend Rich and just walked around for awhile. Pretty laid back night. He's from northern England so he has this weird British/Scottish accent that's really cool. I pulled another good one and said I wish I had an accent....I got the "what a dummy" look haha. Oh well. Saturday, I hung around my hotel room for awhile and just relaxed. It's nice to be able to hang out and sleep in! I love weekends now! Around 3, I met up with some friends at a coffee house and met a girl from Canada from Jasmine who is super nice. The girl Chelsey from Michigan was there with her husband too so it was really great to talk to them for awhile! Mom, Dad.....she wants her parents to ship some things to your house so I can bring them back for her...hope it's okay cause I told her it was! More info to follow. After coffee, we went to this Canadian guys bar (Caseys) and watched some guy do this burger challenge. It's this hugeeeeee burger that you have to eat within 12 minutes with all the toppings and fries. The guy was doing pretty well and then about 10 min in.....brace yourself, it's gross....he puked all over. I actually didn't see it cause I wasn't looking at him at the moment but I saw the huge pile of napkins. It was so nasty! He did get an A for effort though haha. The deal with the challenge is Casey pays for the burger if you eat it all under the time limit, otherwise, you're stuck with the 160 Kuai bill, which doesn't seem bad when you convert it to USD, but that's SOOOO expensive here. I'm going to have a hard time paying American prices for things now that I can buy things for so cheap here! I feel myself converting!! We left after a little while and went to another foreigners bar called Lenore's where there is always a ton of people. I met some more Americans there which was super great! They also work at a Yucai school, but a different campus. There's a guy from Ohio, a guy from Illinois, and a girl from Wisconsin. They're super nice and I hope to meet up with them again soon! After there, we went to this other foreigner place called Pure Color and danced! It was so much fun! I met up with Jasmine there and met MORE people! I swear, I've become quite the social butterfly here! Who would have thought?! We stayed out for awhile longer and then I went back to my hotel. LONG DAY!!
On Sunday, I met up with Chelsey and she took me to this place called Wu Ai Market. It's a super cool wholesale market where you can get things for really cheap. It's great because Chelsey speaks Chinese so I was all set! We dropped all my bags that I had with me at a small store where she knows the owner which was great because they were quite heavy! We went into the market and did some shopping around. However, I can't say what I got because they are mostly Christmas gifts! Sorry! I'll be going back next weekend as well to search around because the place is sooo big! There are 5 buildings and each building has 5 floors and there are literally thousands of little shops where you can find pretty much anything. If anybody comes to visit (hint, hint) we will definitely have to go there! We walked around for awhile and then Joy was coming to pick me up to go back to school so Chelsey and I parted ways. We are going to hang out again this weekend though so I'm excited for that! It's so funny talking to another Michigander! I took the subway back to where Joy was coming to pick me up and then we drove back to school. After that, it was a pretty uneventful evening and I went to bed super early. I think I was sleeping by 9:30...at the latest. Sorry to everybody for when I miss your Skype calls! The time difference is such a bummer! And now it's 13 hours so that's even worse! Oh well....guess we will get in touch when it's meant to be.
So now it's the end of Monday. Classes today were pretty uneventful. The kids took FOREVER to do this fruit craft that I had them do. Guess having them cut out 8 tiny things though is asking for trouble. Oh well...they finally got it done during the last class of the day. Just had to rearrange some other plans for the rest of the week. Also, during dinner, a student asked me what the meat was that we were eating and I didn't know so I asked Hannah and guess what she told me.....liver!! EWWWWWWW. I knew it tasted a little funny but just mixed it up with a bunch of rice whenever I ate it but gross! I will never eat it again now. As soon as she said "I don't know the English name but it is an organ" I was like ohhhhh no that's not good. At least it wasn't donkey or something that crazy though. Oh well....that's 1 thing I won't eat again. After my classes were done with them, I had my first class with the 3rd graders. They were really smart and fun to talk to! One little boy came up to me and asked if I thought he was a boy or a girl....his name is Jackson....he said people always get him confused with a girl. He goes "but I am not a girl. I like girls." haha. I think I'm going to have fun with these kids. We had about a 90 minute class with a 10 minute break in between. It'll be fun to work with them since their English is actually pretty good! I'm excited...we will see how the 2nd graders are tomorrow. Soo....that pretty sums up the last 4 days of my life. I just went back to my room afterwards, did a few things to plan for tomorrow, and now am back in my room, ready for bed! Holy cow, It's almost 11! I better get to sleep! Hope you guys enjoyed my novel and will (hopefully) write tomorrow!
Wednesday, November 6
Hello! Not much to report here! Just the same thing...teaching some kids! My extra classes have been going pretty well. They're still in the beginning stages now so we have to figure out some technical things but I think it'll be pretty good. I may only do them this semester though because I'm sure I'll want to start doing more things once it gets nicer out and don't want to be stuck at school all of the time! The extra money will be nice but it's not like I spend it on anything here anyways! There's a kid in the 2nd grade class whose English name is Lambert...as in Adam Lambert. I love the kids names here. And today with my 3rd graders, I had them listen to some Lady Gaga and they knew it! So funny! Only 2 more days to go until the weekend though so that's something to look forward to! I want to do some last minute shopping before I go back home!! Yes!! 10 days! Seems like it's not been long at all since I've been home! Time really has flown by. Yes, you all were right. Nothing much else to report though....I changed the layout of this blog a little bit....you're welcome, MOM! Goodnight for now!
I know....it's been a few days since I posted. Sorry!! Where did we leave off....Friday...let's see....on Friday, I had a few classes and then Lynne (from Beijing from BCC) came and we had a little talk about how things were going. I am getting some textbooks for my class to use, so that's really good. It'll give me some more direction! Plus, the school wanted me to teach some more classes to 2nd and 3rd graders so I said okay. It's more money so that's always good! haha. It's 8 extra classes a week but it's more of oral English work and not so strict with the lesson planning....I'll embellish more on that later. After our meeting, we went to the high school's Halloween which was pretty funny. I forgot how crazy and sometimes obnoxious high school students can be! It was fun though because there were some performances, they bobbed for apples, did musical chairs, and carved pumpkins. Pretty much like a kid party, but with high school students. They seemed to enjoy it though so all was good! After that, I ran around like a mad woman looking for my keys that I thought I had lost. Here's the story: I have a clutch that has all of my keys in it (room, classroom, elevator,) and my flashdrive. I had it on Thursday night but couldn't find it anywhere after leaving my classroom for the night. I ripped apart my classroom and bedroom looking for it, had to ask the security guard for a new key for my room and elevator, and it was just a huge hassle. Plus, my room key had actually broken so it wasn't working so the guard gave me his key which I CAN NOT LOSE since it's the only one left haha. Long story long, I ended up finding my key right before I was leaving on Friday afternoon for the city. I decided to check my classroom one more time and behold, I had put it on this little shelf under my desk, thinking that it was a safe spot that nobody would take it (there were some parents in my room so I didn't want them to take it by accident). The worst part it, I clearly remember putting it there thinking that it was safe and deciding it was my new clutch place. WHAT A DUMMY! I literally had people making me new keys, letting me borrow their keys...it was a huge ordeal. So then, I had to go back and tell everybody. How embarrassing. I'm living up to the stupid American girl stereotype! Gotta laugh at myself though cause I was running all around and sweating like crazy cause I "lost" my keys, forgot my money in my room, and was pretty much just a huge mess. Needless to say, when I got to my hotel room in the city, I took a long rest.
So Friday, I got into the city and went out with my friend Rich and just walked around for awhile. Pretty laid back night. He's from northern England so he has this weird British/Scottish accent that's really cool. I pulled another good one and said I wish I had an accent....I got the "what a dummy" look haha. Oh well. Saturday, I hung around my hotel room for awhile and just relaxed. It's nice to be able to hang out and sleep in! I love weekends now! Around 3, I met up with some friends at a coffee house and met a girl from Canada from Jasmine who is super nice. The girl Chelsey from Michigan was there with her husband too so it was really great to talk to them for awhile! Mom, Dad.....she wants her parents to ship some things to your house so I can bring them back for her...hope it's okay cause I told her it was! More info to follow. After coffee, we went to this Canadian guys bar (Caseys) and watched some guy do this burger challenge. It's this hugeeeeee burger that you have to eat within 12 minutes with all the toppings and fries. The guy was doing pretty well and then about 10 min in.....brace yourself, it's gross....he puked all over. I actually didn't see it cause I wasn't looking at him at the moment but I saw the huge pile of napkins. It was so nasty! He did get an A for effort though haha. The deal with the challenge is Casey pays for the burger if you eat it all under the time limit, otherwise, you're stuck with the 160 Kuai bill, which doesn't seem bad when you convert it to USD, but that's SOOOO expensive here. I'm going to have a hard time paying American prices for things now that I can buy things for so cheap here! I feel myself converting!! We left after a little while and went to another foreigners bar called Lenore's where there is always a ton of people. I met some more Americans there which was super great! They also work at a Yucai school, but a different campus. There's a guy from Ohio, a guy from Illinois, and a girl from Wisconsin. They're super nice and I hope to meet up with them again soon! After there, we went to this other foreigner place called Pure Color and danced! It was so much fun! I met up with Jasmine there and met MORE people! I swear, I've become quite the social butterfly here! Who would have thought?! We stayed out for awhile longer and then I went back to my hotel. LONG DAY!!
On Sunday, I met up with Chelsey and she took me to this place called Wu Ai Market. It's a super cool wholesale market where you can get things for really cheap. It's great because Chelsey speaks Chinese so I was all set! We dropped all my bags that I had with me at a small store where she knows the owner which was great because they were quite heavy! We went into the market and did some shopping around. However, I can't say what I got because they are mostly Christmas gifts! Sorry! I'll be going back next weekend as well to search around because the place is sooo big! There are 5 buildings and each building has 5 floors and there are literally thousands of little shops where you can find pretty much anything. If anybody comes to visit (hint, hint) we will definitely have to go there! We walked around for awhile and then Joy was coming to pick me up to go back to school so Chelsey and I parted ways. We are going to hang out again this weekend though so I'm excited for that! It's so funny talking to another Michigander! I took the subway back to where Joy was coming to pick me up and then we drove back to school. After that, it was a pretty uneventful evening and I went to bed super early. I think I was sleeping by 9:30...at the latest. Sorry to everybody for when I miss your Skype calls! The time difference is such a bummer! And now it's 13 hours so that's even worse! Oh well....guess we will get in touch when it's meant to be.
So now it's the end of Monday. Classes today were pretty uneventful. The kids took FOREVER to do this fruit craft that I had them do. Guess having them cut out 8 tiny things though is asking for trouble. Oh well...they finally got it done during the last class of the day. Just had to rearrange some other plans for the rest of the week. Also, during dinner, a student asked me what the meat was that we were eating and I didn't know so I asked Hannah and guess what she told me.....liver!! EWWWWWWW. I knew it tasted a little funny but just mixed it up with a bunch of rice whenever I ate it but gross! I will never eat it again now. As soon as she said "I don't know the English name but it is an organ" I was like ohhhhh no that's not good. At least it wasn't donkey or something that crazy though. Oh well....that's 1 thing I won't eat again. After my classes were done with them, I had my first class with the 3rd graders. They were really smart and fun to talk to! One little boy came up to me and asked if I thought he was a boy or a girl....his name is Jackson....he said people always get him confused with a girl. He goes "but I am not a girl. I like girls." haha. I think I'm going to have fun with these kids. We had about a 90 minute class with a 10 minute break in between. It'll be fun to work with them since their English is actually pretty good! I'm excited...we will see how the 2nd graders are tomorrow. Soo....that pretty sums up the last 4 days of my life. I just went back to my room afterwards, did a few things to plan for tomorrow, and now am back in my room, ready for bed! Holy cow, It's almost 11! I better get to sleep! Hope you guys enjoyed my novel and will (hopefully) write tomorrow!
Wednesday, November 6
Hello! Not much to report here! Just the same thing...teaching some kids! My extra classes have been going pretty well. They're still in the beginning stages now so we have to figure out some technical things but I think it'll be pretty good. I may only do them this semester though because I'm sure I'll want to start doing more things once it gets nicer out and don't want to be stuck at school all of the time! The extra money will be nice but it's not like I spend it on anything here anyways! There's a kid in the 2nd grade class whose English name is Lambert...as in Adam Lambert. I love the kids names here. And today with my 3rd graders, I had them listen to some Lady Gaga and they knew it! So funny! Only 2 more days to go until the weekend though so that's something to look forward to! I want to do some last minute shopping before I go back home!! Yes!! 10 days! Seems like it's not been long at all since I've been home! Time really has flown by. Yes, you all were right. Nothing much else to report though....I changed the layout of this blog a little bit....you're welcome, MOM! Goodnight for now!
Saturday, November 9
It's the weekend! The end of the week was pretty uneventful. I had my extra class on Friday after school and the students were pretty good. It's frustrating though because the Chinese English teacher wanted the key to the classroom and said she would meet me there at 1:30 to let me and the students in the classroom and she wasn't there! So we stood outside of the classroom for about 10 minutes without her showing up.....I was mad! I ended up just having the kids come to our 1st grade classroom and holding the class there. It was kind of awkward because a few of my students came in with their parents because they had forgotten some things in their desks. I don't think the parents know that I'm teaching the extra classes and Hannah is very cautious about what the parents know about our classroom and what I do. It's strange to me, but whatever. So I had the class in our classroom (not my immersion room) and then that ended at 3. I took the school bus into the city at 4 and had a nice long chat with Joy. She's so funny to talk to and thinks I do the strangest things! Apparently, I make a lot of noises when I'm talking or trying to explain something so she's always wanting to know how I do them haha. So I got to my hotel, hung out for a little while, and then met up with some friends. Surprise! I met some more people. Always someone new to talk to haha. So I stayed out until a reasonable hour and then went back to my hotel! All day today, I've been pretty much a bum and not done anything. Some type of alarm started to go off around 12 and I freaked out thinking that the building was going to burn down! I grabbed some things and then went to walk out of my door but there were workers right outside and they told me everything was okay and that the alarm was just going off an accident. So...all was well! Minor freakout but everything ended up being okay : ) So now, I'm going to grab something to eat and then meet up with some friends! I'll fill you all in later about my evening!
It's the weekend! The end of the week was pretty uneventful. I had my extra class on Friday after school and the students were pretty good. It's frustrating though because the Chinese English teacher wanted the key to the classroom and said she would meet me there at 1:30 to let me and the students in the classroom and she wasn't there! So we stood outside of the classroom for about 10 minutes without her showing up.....I was mad! I ended up just having the kids come to our 1st grade classroom and holding the class there. It was kind of awkward because a few of my students came in with their parents because they had forgotten some things in their desks. I don't think the parents know that I'm teaching the extra classes and Hannah is very cautious about what the parents know about our classroom and what I do. It's strange to me, but whatever. So I had the class in our classroom (not my immersion room) and then that ended at 3. I took the school bus into the city at 4 and had a nice long chat with Joy. She's so funny to talk to and thinks I do the strangest things! Apparently, I make a lot of noises when I'm talking or trying to explain something so she's always wanting to know how I do them haha. So I got to my hotel, hung out for a little while, and then met up with some friends. Surprise! I met some more people. Always someone new to talk to haha. So I stayed out until a reasonable hour and then went back to my hotel! All day today, I've been pretty much a bum and not done anything. Some type of alarm started to go off around 12 and I freaked out thinking that the building was going to burn down! I grabbed some things and then went to walk out of my door but there were workers right outside and they told me everything was okay and that the alarm was just going off an accident. So...all was well! Minor freakout but everything ended up being okay : ) So now, I'm going to grab something to eat and then meet up with some friends! I'll fill you all in later about my evening!