sir charles the knight and samantha "sam" the squire

as i mentioned, my parents are moving so i'm going through a ton of my old stuff right now. this has included tons of random stories i wrote in elementary school. we did so much creative writing back then, it's ridiculous. it's a shame that in high school we weren't required (or at least given the option) to take a creative writing class along with english lit and analysis--i feel like in high school we forgot how to write for fun. missed opportunity!

so here is my story about sir charles the knight and samantha "sam" the squire.  i'm pretty sure that if george r.r. martin (author of the "a song of ice and fire" series aka game of thrones) had read this epic tale he would have immediately asked me to collaborate with him on his books. it's got arya written all over it.

also, i love how crass the ending is.

"being a squire was the wrong choice to make." sure was, "sam".

the auditors are in the office this week, and i have to walk past them like 30 times a day. they all have dull, listless eyes...

for peg leg, whoever you may be

the leg is round

the peg is square

i wonder how it fits in there? 

thought i saw you once 

a limping shadow across the wall

ugh, it was just old man snacks

i just wanted to tell you

DON'T DESPAIR

life could be worse--

if you had 2 down there

she's 25 years old, never left her home

the title of the post is (in my head) to the tune of a tragically hip song that no one probably knows. anyways....

so it's officially the end of an era, my parents are moving! i feel like they've been talking about it forever and have postponed it like 10 times, but now that my parents have some potential buyers lined up to see the house next week it's real. how weird that in a few months time if i try to go back to my house i'll get thrown out to the curb by the new owners like a piece of trash. the thought of it makes me want to shake my fist, that's my house! but it's good for my parents--my dad is retiring and they're ready to move on from NOVA. i definitely feel that--while in a lot of ways NOVA is a great place to live and raise a family, it also kind of sucks.

since i need to move out stat, i have spent the past couple weeks digging through boxes from the attic and getting rid of things i don't need anymore- like my cupcake dolls and my crazy bones (why i needed a pencil bag full of crazy bones i will never know). i also found a lot of really funny stories i wrote in elementary school that really make me wonder what was going through my head at that time. some of them are so great, but that will be for another post.

i started thinking about at 8 years old what i thought my life would be like at 25 years old.  your sense of time and what's important is so warped when you're little. honestly, i probably thought i would have grandchildren by this point and be living the good life.

but i never, ever thought i would have lived in my parents house until i was 25 years old. whenever someone at work asks me where i live, i always sheepishly tell them that i live with my parents. because they're always like what's in annandale? annandale is such a random place for someone my age to live.  i actually don't really care that much, but it does probably make it seem like i am unqualified for my job. 

considering that i have had some kind of job for almost the entire time that i've lived with my parents, i must be an outlier compared to other people my age living at home right now. that's special :) 

but here i sit in my room, the same room i have occupied since i was 12 years old when i upgraded from another room in the house. at least i haven't been living in the same room my whole life, good god. who knows how much longer i'd be here if my parents weren't moving soon. 

living rent-free since graduating has surely been the biggest perk of living at home. and of course seeing my lovely parents everyday, except for that 6 month period when they were learning how to use facebook...those were the dark times. but i'm not sure if i would have had the financial luxury to quit my job and pack my bags for china if i hadn't lived at home. after a year of work in dalian, i brought home (like literally brought home, i had it on me all through my plane ride home and my layover in tokyo) 20,800 rmb. that sounds like a lot of money, and in china, it really is--it is more than enough to live there. however, converted to dollars, that is $3,300. i'd like to think that the reason that amount is so low is because i used some of my teaching money to travel to southeast asia, but i'm pretty sure i used a different pot of money for that. i was only making like $1,000 a month there from my company, and just making a little bit extra from private teaching gigs. i have 0 regrets from that year, but i may have felt differently if i hadn't been able to settle right back into my parent's house upon returning to the US, because finding a job when i came back wasn't easy.

the thing is that when i left for china, i didn't really even think about the consequences of quitting a job (aka having to find a new job when i returned). or maybe i did, i just didn't really care. i'm not really one to let such a "minor" detail get in the way of my big plans. when i returned, i realized that i had underestimated how hard finding a job was, especially when i only had 1 1/2 years of real work under my belt, the economy still wasn't that great, and i wanted an upgrade in job responsibilities and salary from my previous job at united way. i had already worked 2 temp jobs before landing my final temp job at pta, which by the grace of all things good turned into a real job after 3 months and met all of my requirements. i think i got the job 10% because i worked my butt off and 90% because i got really lucky with timing. whatever, i'll take it. all together it took me 9 months from returning to the US to getting an offer letter in my hand from pta and it was probably some of the most frustrating months of my life (even more frustrating than the dark times). the whole temp and application/interview process thing wore me out. i got so desperate that at one point i interviewed at a place called JC tumbles. everything must have went well because JC tumbles invited me back for a 2nd round interview, at which point i said JC tumbles you have got to be kidding me and passed on the opportunity. i wonder if the 2nd round interview would have been more physical, like i would have to prove that i could do a backward somersault while cloroxing the mat. oh well, i'll never know, for my own morale, i couldn't do it. (for the record i wouldn't mind doing somersaults all day and may have worked there for a while if i had gotten it on the first go-round, i just didn't want to oblige them by partaking in their little ego-boosting interview game).

so i got really lucky with pta and i don't know what i would have done if it hadn't worked out. for one, the temp at pta was the only temp job i had applied to in weeks--i had sworn off applying to any more temps because i was getting nervous about how long i was going to have to jump around until i  found something and wanted something permanent. the only reason i applied for it was because i thought the pta might be up my ally....so it was a total fluke that i even ended up getting this job in the first place. for two, unlike the other 2 temps, the pta temp was indefinite--there wasn't really a set project that i was coming in and doing and i was kind of building my own work. so after a few months...i realized it didn't really feel like a temp at all and i had ownership of a lot of pieces of work. to think about having to start over and do that again at another job made me feel mentally exhausted, i'm not sure how much longer i could have played the job game before i gave up and called JC tumbles to see if that 2nd round interview was still on the table. 

it's really hard and much more stressful to find a job when you don't one to begin with. i'd much rather be in the position where i was currently at a job and trying to switch. but that doesn't even work for some young people--recently i came into contact with the word "permatern". it is someone who seems to permanently work for free or a stipend because they can't secure a paid position. these are smart people who are doing these jobs, how pathetic. i'm way too lazy to look up the exact statistics right now but obviously there is a huge gap between the number of young people in the job market and the number of (good) jobs that actually exist. and i feel like a lot of these jobs are never coming back. it kind of makes me think that going more towards a welfare state is a step in the right direction. if someone takes all the steps they're supposed to, and still can't make it (or make it in a timely manner), what are they supposed to do? do we say tough luck and let them fail at a chance of having a good life? i think some people just don't like the idea that their hard-earned money would be going towards supporting someone else. well, i also think about it this way-- if i was struggling financially and had no one to support me, i would be much more inclined to engage in alternative activities to bring home the bacon...and those would likely be illicit activities if you didn't catch my drift. impoverished areas are always the most dangerous ones, and poverty is a cycle. i'd rather pay a little out for social welfare to ensure that my country was a good place to live than sit inside clutching my piggy bank tight to my chest because i was afraid of going outside. 

point of the story--maybe i would be a drug lord right now if my parents had not been around to house me. i learned some pretty good bartering skills in china :)

so it's another one of my classic rambling posts. i'm writing a book right now, and i'm going to need to hire a really good editor. sigh...

n. korea, are you there?

going to n. korea any time soon? well as of today, thanks to google, "everything from Pyongyang’s subway stops to the country’s several city-sized gulags, as well as its monuments, hotels, hospitals and department stores" is on google maps.

according to the washington post, "North Korea was the last country virtually unmapped by Google." before today, n. korea appeared as a white space on google maps, as if it didn't even really exist. they must have very good paper maps there.

so the great news is that you can now find directions to some of the most sought after tourist destinations asia has to offer. for example, the juche tower, dedicated to the Juche philosophy, the set of ideas that have made n. korea the vibrant place it is today, is an easy drive across the taedong river in Pyongyang. 

juche tower

don't think you will feel the n. korean spirit there? there's also the Victorious Fatherland Liberation Museum, and just south of pyongyang is the Sinchon Museum of American War Atrocities. you can learn about how during the korean war sinister looking american doctors stepped on babies while priests dropped pieces of hot metal on them, and how american soldiers put planks of wood across children and stood there until they went bye bye. ridiculous you say? think again, these exact incidents were meticulously captured in paintings.



yes, what was once a white blob on the map between china and s. korea is now chock-full of information, right at your finger tips. next time i go to dandong, china, i won't be afraid to cross the sino-korean friendship bridge into n. korea like i was last time.

since i was there, i thought it would be interesting to compare an aerial view of dandong, china (left) and the n. korean city of sinuiju (right), which are separated by the yalu river. china must really get a lot out of that friendship with n. korea...

not that dandong is totally off the hook either. there has been some weird stuff going down there lately...

but seriously, you can do guided tours of n. korea--it even has it's own wikitravel page. these were the best pointers they had on there:

"It is generally safest to at least appear to take everything they say seriously, even if it contradicts everything you were ever taught in history class or defies even the most basic human reasoning" 

 ----------------------------------

"Most, if not all, tour groups to the DPRK are asked to solemnly bow and lay flowers on one or two occasions in front of statues of Kim Il Sung when visiting monuments of national importance. If you're not prepared to do this, do not even try to enter North Korea."

------------------------------------

"Interestingly enough, North Korea has three amusement parks, two of which are abandoned due to mutual lack of interest and electricity. Sadly, the Kaeson Youth Fair has now closed, taking the infamous "Roller Coaster of Death" along with it.  Please note that power cuts may hit without warning in the middle of any activity. Whilst you might welcome this if the jukebox is starting to get to you, this is not a desirable outcome if you are in the middle of an amusement-park ride, particularly as these blackouts can last for hours at a time."

so what do you say, let's go to n. korea!!  *jumps in air and pumps fist*

fender bender

yesterday i got into a fender bender involving a 16 year old girl. i am ashamed.

i'm hoping for a no-fault verdict from the insurance companies--we were backing out of driveways that are precariously placed right across from each other in a small cul-de-sac (zach's house!). clearly, neither of us were looking, and we didn't stand a chance.

her car definitely got it worse than mine, and it was a new 2012 camry, although the car had already been in another accident because there was a huge scrape on the side :(  my bumper just had some of her paint on it. long live the almighty 2003 focus!!

after it happened the girl ran up to me and started yelling a little. it was such a minor fender bender and so stupid i couldn't bother getting worked up and pointing fingers. i said to her calmly-- look, i think this was both of our faults. luckily the girl's boyfriend agreed, which seemed to calm her down. i do remember being 16 though and getting into a more serious fender bender and it's pretty scary--mainly because you think your parents are going to flip out. so i kind of felt bad, i should know better to look in my mirror more closely.

after the incident her mom and sisters ran outside and started yelling in korean, so i was a little worried how that was going to play out. language barriers in these kinds of situations always make everything 50x worse. they all acted really weird about the whole thing though, like they didn't even come over to my car to inspect the damage they had done (we moved our cars back into our respective driveways following the collision), or take any pictures. every time something needed to be exchanged or communicated i had to walk over to them. maybe they were all afraid, i don't know.

that night, i ate korean food with zach and my parents. coincidence? yes. i didn't think about it until just now when i was writing this!

and again...

hmm so my chinese blog didn't really work out. moving on...this blog is just going to be whatever i want. that's the best.

i felt inspired to start blogging again after recently stumbling upon one of my co-worker's blogs. well, ex-coworker now, she is on medical disability leave and may not come back. 

about 2 weeks ago we got an email that said my co-worker was on indefinite leave and that there would be some restructuring because of this. one thing that happened was that my boss got a promotion, essentially taking this woman's position. upon hearing this i mainly just felt happy for my boss. the whole thing was really sudden, and i never knew this co-worker to be sick--in fact she always seemed very lively, so i just assumed that something strange was at play and it was her personal business. i didn't really work with her that much.

however i found out on friday that this co-worker is actually really sick, and according to her blog, has been for the past 4+ years. what started as breast cancer spread throughout her body, and now she has like 4 or 5 tumors in her brain. apparently she has been living for 17 months with the brain tumors, whereas most people only live 3 to 6 months.

i don't think i need to express how sad i felt reading this blog. i sort of read through it backwards- starting from now and going to the beginning. there would be like one post where the test results were good and the tumors were shrinking and then the next post would report that the tumors had doubled in size. she started experiencing seizures and has lost muscle control in a lot of her body, so she can't walk. there was one day at work she came in with a black eye which gave me kind of a weird impression of her...turns out she tripped over a cord at a gas pump and hit her head on the curb. in general, her appearance has changed a lot (in a bad way) because of side effects from the medicine. she doesn't really look like the same person anymore. did i mention she has 5 kids and a husband, all college aged and younger? yeah. at the first the blog was very hopeful, but by the end it seemed like a quiet, and somehow positive, resignation. she is happy just for little things each day (although i'm sure they haven't been with out their downs as well). 

on the positive side, i had a good impression from her at work and thought she was friendly and energetic. pta obviously treated her very well during this ordeal, and she said working helped to keep her going. for someone who has been wondering for 4+ years when their life was going to prematurely be taken from them, her outlook was amazing to me. 

so why did that inspire me to start blogging again...i don't know. i guess everyone has a story to tell, a perspective to share. i wouldn't want to sit around reading cancer blogs all day, but i think it was good for me to have read hers, it made me feel a little bit more well-rounded. 

i guess my basic thought is, if you have something to say, you should say it. blogging in china was easy, everyday life was so interesting and i was dying to write about it. here is a little more challenging 但是我要努力 (but i will strive) because i really don't think i'm that jaded. i'd like to write, so we'll see.

开始新工作

好久我没写博客文章。我很懒，也有点儿忙。上个星期在非赢利的工作我的新工作就开始了。虽然我非常高兴找到工作，但是还是临时的工作。我已经受不了临时的工作--没有人管你因为你不是公司和经理的投资--可能你离开很快，所以他们跟你没有关系。可是这个临时的工作很特别因为不是做项目，以前这个职位是真正的工作，然后那个雇员不干了。一雇员不干了经理就要雇佣新雇员。没有时间找长期的人选所以把短期的工作广告放在网络。一面试我就雇佣我。 我没有很多别的好选择，所以我收下了。尽管我的工资期望很低，我的工资很高。我希望后来我的职位成为长期的工作。祝我自己好运！

我家有没有鬼？

昨天晚上我正在看电视一下子我听到了响声。 起初，我想这个响声就是电视的问题。可是响声继续了所以我把电视的声音关了。听起来动物在电视后面。。。可能是一个蛇！我不知道了我应该做什么。当时我还在地毯等一下因为我很紧张。 我不会动我的身体。


然后在柜子里（电视在柜子上）我看到了一个小塑料的东西搬了但是没看到动物。我怕死了。一定是鬼！！我从地毯跳到沙发。我会听见我的心--我不要见一个鬼。好几秒过了。终于我的脑子回来了，我认识到了不会是鬼，呵呵。 我细心看了看。忽然我看见一个小眼睛。是老鼠的眼睛！它在柜子后面。因为我不喜欢老鼠在家里，我还在沙发上想想我应该做什么。老鼠很勇敢，它慢慢的出现。我把脚放在地上很快为了让它害怕。老鼠藏起来了。


我最后做决定了。我关电视关灯然后跑到楼上的卧室里！


我希望今天下班以后我爸爸抓老鼠。

人蛇

为了写我的上个博客文章，我用字典找怎么拼 “移民”。 查字典的时候，我也找到了这个单词： “人蛇”。 这个单词真有意思。。人的意思跟蛇的意思一起 就是人蛇。 中文实在很老的语言！可能有一天要改变那个单词。。呵呵

无聊

今天很无聊。其实，最近每天很无聊因为我不断找工作。

上星期我在三家公司面试了。我觉得我留了好印象。尽管我一定是最好的人选之一， 但是人力资源部还没联系我。既然他们很慢，我一定等他门，可是我急死了。


这个星期五我要去一个小学面试。在这个小学，学生学习英语和西班牙语。也许，这些学生的父母是移民到美国，他们的英语就一般，所以父母需要会说西班牙语的老师。我还不清楚这个职位的期望，但是我应该知道怎么说一点儿西班牙语。不过，自从我学中文，我忘记了很多西班牙语。太可惜了。。

我的新中文日记

大家好，欢迎你读我的中文日记。请原谅所有的我的写错了的语法。我知道我的日记有好几错误。我的日记的重点不但是要进步语法，而且是写对了的字。我的日记现在开始。。。！就像一个小种子成为大树，我要变成中国树 。哈哈

I'm back...

Hello again!

It's really weird to be using my blog again in the USA- the format is much more sophisticated. Blogger is blocked in China so I had to get to my blog through a VPN, and the blogging functions were very limited. Even putting up pictures was sometimes a challenge. So this is great, except I don't know how to use it now haha.

Well, I stopped blogging after I came back from China because this was my China blog...and I wasn't in China anymore :)

I've decided to start using the blog again as a daily diary in Chinese.  It's not going to be groundbreaking stuff- I just want to use it to improve my Chinese grammar and character recognition. I truly want to become fluent, which takes a bit more effort when you're not surrounded by the language everyday.  I don't really have a reason for becoming fluent except that I really like the language a lot, and the idea of being fluent in it is very appealing to me. I see my study of Chinese as an extension of my time in China, so I can still use my China blog for it. I'm also too lazy to create a new blog :)

I doubt it will be of must interest to anyone, but you can always put the text into google translate if you want. Also, if you are a Chinese-speaking person who happens to come across this blog, I wouldn't mind some corrections.

I miss pretty much everything about China and hope to go back one day for an extended amount of time (this time WITH zach!), even if it's only to travel.  There are still so many places I want to go there. I would also love to have a reunion with some of my students way on down the road but that's going to be tough. I think some of the Chinese teachers that I was friends with there could make it happen though.

Here is a picture of me bringing China home to my house in the form of a hot pot dinner. Yes, I went native while I was there :) Honestly, coming back home was a pretty big adjustment for me, even though I was only there for a year. Some of the other teachers in Dalian have been there for sooo long, I can't imagine how they could ever really come back. There's just nothing here that can really compare to what it feels like living in China. But I can at least try to keep that spirit alive with my hot pot and the language....

Good bye English blog!

perceptions of the japanese

since i've been back, a few people have asked me about the chinese people's perceptions of the japanese people. well, here is something that has been floating around QQ lately, the chinese version of AIM.

basically, the list goes through a bunch of positive words, and says when you put them all together, you get a chinese person, and then goes through a bunch of negative words, and says when you put them all together, you get a japanese person. ouch!

then it says to send this out to make chinese people proud...!

so...yeah, relations may still be a little strained.

home

so this post is going to be all about me because....

i am home!

i'm not going to lie, even though i was looking forward to coming home, it was really, really hard to leave china. the night before i was leaving i almost couldn't bear to finish packing up all my stuff because then i knew i would officially be leaving it all behind. i didn't have that much to pack but it took me forever.

this is the last picture of myself in dalian before i stepped into the airport. i had a few friends offer to see me off at the airport, but i declined. i thought, well, here i am, this crazy girl who came to china all on my own, and it would only be fitting to leave on my own too. maybe it's selfish, but i wanted the moment all to myself....and my cab driver, who had to listen to me crying in the backseat hahah. the last person i saw was my manager, april, who was also the first person i saw in china. she took the cab with me to an ATM to make sure that the driver wouldn't leave with all my stuff while i was withdrawing the rest of my money. i didn't think that this would be likely to happen but i let her come along anyhow. i didn't believe it at first, but now i can say with confidence that april is crazy. we had our ups and downs working together but in the end we were friends. we had a nice good bye- not sappy, very quick, and very happy.
the picture above is deceiving though because i honestly left china as happy as a clam, as you can see below.

"don't be said that it's over, be happy that it happened."

this picture is from my good bye party, my last night out in dalian. i really wasn't interested in a sad good bye with my friends, i just wanted to have fun together one last time, and it was definitely a good night. and yes, i am wearing a traditional chinese a dress and holding a chinese fan, because it was my party and i could do whatever i wanted!

then i had an 18 hour layover in tokyo which turned out to be the biggest tease of my entire life. if you are like me and love traveling, never go to a new country for this amount of time. i'm happy that i had the opportunity to see it (who knows if i will be back!) but it literally made my body ache when i had to leave. the people there fascinated me (their lifestyle and appearance seems sooo different from chinese people) and i was curious about their lives. at any rate, i saw the lights, i ate the melt-in-your-mouth-good sushi/sashimi, and i checked out their super cute diner style restaurants.
i also had a little bit of a culture shock in tokyo- i couldn't believe how polite people were. when i was using the subway, people actually stood aside to let the passengers get off before they got on. i thought what are you people doing, we need to get on that car!! when getting on such things in china, newly purchased eggs will crack all over the ground, someone will steal what you thought was going to be your seat, and an old woman who looks like a nice little grandma will nearly push you down. you will feel indignant for a while, and then you will get over it. what is politeness anyhow, things are more interesting when life's a free for all, and when people are polite in that kind of environment, you really appreciate it!

so, after a 4 hour flight to tokyo, 18 hours in tokyo, and a 12 hour flight to DC, i finally made it home. i almost missed my flight in tokyo out of my own stupidity (i had my phone still set on china time, which is an hour earlier than tokyo time) and i think i slept a total of like 5 hours. at any rate, the important thing is that i made it. zach and my mom, two people who i know really missed me a lot, came together to pick me up at the airport :)
i felt a little different being back in america- although i have already moved back in with my parents and continued my process of mooching off of them until the last minute possible, i definitely grew up a lot in china. i feel more ready to take flight with my life. i learned how to stand up for myself and fight battles in a system that's extremely hard to win in (and according to an email i just got from a manager about 20 minutes ago, apparently we did win a battle with the dalian education bureau), i learned what it means to be a leader and have hundreds of people counting on you, and i gained some perspective about everything i have that's fortunate in my life, and some things that are lacking. i think the most important thing i learned is that as a whole, people share more similarities than they do differences. even in a country like china where the culture is vastly different from our own, at an individual level, it's very easy to find people who share the same values as you.

on that note, ever since i got home i have been trying to think about what i will miss the most in china, and it finally came to me- the people. i really like the chinese people. now i am certainly biased because my western appearance afforded me some special treatment there, but i even liked the people i never made contact with, just from observing their habits and the way they carried themselves. many chinese people are modest in lifestyle and appearance, which i like. i'm not a fan of our lifestyle excesses because i think they detract from living (what i consider to be) a meaningful life and mask the things that are actually important. admittedly, these excesses also exist in china, and as people continue to find wealth i'm sure they will be exacerbated, but at least i experienced it before that happened.

*some chinese people playing cards together outside in the middle of winter*

a few things of note that have changed about me- i feel uncomfortable walking into a house and not removing my shoes, i prefer squat toilets in public places, i prefer using chopsticks over forks when eating small things that can be picked up quickly that way, i like eating communally with nothing but a bowl of rice to put my food on, i like wearing vests, i see the value in cleaning things, i don't like pushing to get on a bus but i will push to get off a bus, i like to drink hot water sometimes, i love the way chinese sounds, i don't mind public showers, and crossing streets with cars coming at me is no problem.

some things that have not changed- i still don't like karaoke, i don't spit or blow snot rockets on the ground, i don't want to clothe my child in puffy pants that expose their fronts and backs to the wind, i can't de-bone meat using my mouth, most chinese clothes are not attractive, and i think bargaining is tacky. on the other hand, i don't wish for these things to change, how will our world be interesting if there are no differences to make comparisons with.

anyhow, peace out dalian, you were a great choice, it's been real and i will never forget you!

photos from my last 2 days of school

i wasn't going to make another long post about my students, but i can't help myself, i have to put these pictures up! i didn't actually have school these last 2 days, i just went in to say good bye to the kids. both days were a little rushed- jumping from one classroom to another, but hey, that was kind of my life here anyhow. it was so nice to see the kids for the last time.

the first day of good byes was at zhongxin school with my 4th graders. my teacher friend jane was GREAT, she took me around to all of my classes, interrupting whatever normal lesson they were having at the time, and helped me take some pictures with them.

this class has a bunch of sweet hearts in it, some of my best little student friends in dalian. including...

...this little girl, alice!
actually, i didn't know alice very well until after this picture was taken. jane just happened to pull her up to the front to take a picture. after this day, she somehow got a hold of my QQ number and my cell phone number (i know at least one girl in that class has my cell number) and started chatting with me. at first i couldn't figure out who she was, because her english was so good on QQ, and i thought i knew all the kids in that class with good english. so i sent the class picture to her and she pointed herself out to me, and i realized that she was the little girl i had gotten a solo pic with :) she never spoke in my class, i never even knew her!!! i sent her our picture on QQ, she said,

alice 4:45:09 PM
it is me ,a shy girl
alice 4:46:02 PM
happy moment to me

a happy moment for me too!

now we chat online, and she occasionally sends me text messages. fun :)


another class with some cuties. this is the class my mom and dad visited when they came to dalian. in a letter i got from one boy in this class, ray, he said that he hoped to see my parents again :) what a considerate little boy.

this girl is so adorable all i can do is laugh

finally we came to my favorite class at this school (jane's fave class too). jane took me there last because she had planned for them to sing a song. the song was SO CUTE. i loved it so much. i really just wanted to sit and enjoy it but i knew i would be so sad if i didn't have some pictures and a little clip of them singing it.


jane doing her thing. she is a great, great teacher. from what i've seen, very few chinese teachers are this high-spirited and plan such fun activities with their classes. she's very out-going, confident, and thoughtful.

let's all wave our arms and sing

a video clip...


so happy i got a picture with this student. his name is tom, and he is the best, so i had to throw a v sign with him. he'd give me cute little notes just like the little girls would, haha. he also was the giver of the "i like you" egg from last semester. i like the chinese word for 'chubby' better than 'chubby', it's 小胖 (xiao pang), or little fat, so i will call him a xiao pang baby.
LUCKY!!!

i got a picture with their teacher too, she's great, i liked her the best out of all the homeroom teachers. she's very friendly and i like that she used a little clapper to get the kids to be quiet (most teachers just have a scary wooden stick). i've never seen her seriously angry at the students before. they don't change their homeroom teachers here in elementary school, so i can say that she raised a good class.


together with the class after their performance. it looks like xiao pang baby is giving me bunny ears.


the guards were really great at zhongxin school too, they were very friendly (i always said hello and good bye with them), and it seemed like they worked a lot harder than the guards at the other schools (carrying things up the stairs, doing repairs, etc.). they acted like huge goofballs before we took the picture, they changed their clothes and fixed their hair. but the guy on the right has no hair...haha.


jane and i left after the class visits and went out for lunch and shared a delicious meal together. i really like this picture. i think out of everyone i'll miss her the most when i go home.


after lunch i went back into the school to say good bye to jane and see her off. many exciting things were happening, the kids were decorating for their school party the next day. the little girl ran out to say hello, but it was actually good bye!




the second day of good byes was at the small school, hutan, with my 6th graders. they invited me to come to their holiday party, and i was very happy to go.

i wasn't exactly sure what the holiday party was going to be like- but for some reason i imagined the whole school would be together in the lobby area just mingling and having a few performances. angela, my friend there, said the party started at 8am and ended at 11am. it seemed really long for a party, and really early, so i told her i'd be there at 9am.

unfortunately, the party set-up was different than i imagined (the parties were in individual classrooms), i arrived a little late and the party ended at 10am rather than 11. it was my first official day that i could sleep in and it was so hard to get up....but i was so angry with myself. i should have gotten there earlier.

at any rate, i got to enjoy a little bit of their holiday parties. i had 4 class parties to go to, and i made it to 3 of them. when i walked into the 4th class, the teacher was totally mean and said the class party was over. it was like 10am on the dot, she could have at least let the kids do a 2 minute performance so i could enjoy their party too. basically, i walked in there, the kids gave me a bunch of presents, and then i had to walk out. it seemed rude, and that class had been the most adamant about me attending the party. i let them down a little :(

a happy boy with his snacks

they had decorated the rooms really nicely. the board says happy new years

angela always told me about how this boy was a little star at their school- he is acting on a tv show after school right now. his name is tony but for some reason he spells it tonny. they put a wig on him so he would look like the actual singer of the song, but i don't know who the singer is. he's got a great voice and stage presence :) i hope he will be a big star.



heres' a video of him singing, and angela fixing his hair!

this was my first time hearing the erhu, and i really liked it. he's really good! it looks like a cool instrument, simple, but produces a variety of sound.
his video


so many wonderful, talented students. if i don't see at least 1 of them again in the future, my life will be incomplete.

i got rock star treatment these last 2 days of school, which i should be embarrassed about, and i am a little, but actually i'm really not because it was so enjoyable and i really appreciated it. i am thankful to angela and jane for the opportunity to enjoy teaching at their schools :)

snow

it snowed!


i had been eating dinner with my student's family that night and we had no idea that it was snowing outside. when we got to the door we were all shocked. it was a nice restaurant, i feel like the staff could have informed us...


if you think the roads in china are crazy on a normal day, you should take a look at them when it snows. the rules, which are barely followed anyhow, are completely abandoned. people were facing all different directions on both sides of the road and they were all yelling at each other. i was delighted!

my student's family has a nice car, but it must not be anywhere close to 4 wheel drive because it was not driving very well in the snow. the fact that no one was moving when we were trying to go up a hill didn't help either, so we got stuck. my student, his dad and i had to get out of the car and push it up the hill while the mom drove. i really wanted to take pictures of the madness but the parents seemed to be freaking out a little so i restrained myself and concentrated on the car. at one point my student and i were cracking up though, their car looked like it was about to die and no one was heeding a fully operational stop light nearby.

everything turned out fine and we made it home all in one piece. i would have felt terrible if something had happened to their car since the only reason they were out that night was to take me out to dinner. we saw another car that was totaled, yikes.

the next morning the dalian workers were out in full force shoveling the snow! there really wasn't that much snow, i don't quite understand what they were shoveling. just leave it alone!

letters

this semester i had about 20 of my classes write me a letter, and i responded to every letter that i received by the following class. it wasn't very hard but it was very time consuming. i never really spent that much time making my lessons or anything like that (games that require little to no preparation are key) so i was happy to do some work for them. i got some extremely nice letters back- they will definitely be my best souvenirs from china.

i'd say this stack is about 900 letters.

johnson, one of my favorite students, wrote an awesome song/poem at the end of his letter. it's a little abstract and has a good style, i like it. he's only 10 years old, what a clever little boy. i think this would be a stellar poem for a 10 year old native english speaker!