Back in the Swing of Things

I feel like I'm readjusted to teaching, and living at school, and things have been going well. While I might not be a good teacher yet, I'm a ton better than I was last semester, and I feel like classes are going more smoothly. As is normal, I have a ton of grading and worksheet making to do, but I've still had enough time to hang out with friends, and we're planning on playing some flag football this weekend (partially to rediscover how to throw a football and all that, but mostly just because it's gonna be lots of fun). 

This semester I've decided that rather than only tutoring the weakest kids in my class, I'm going to make every single kid in my class meet with me once a week so I can make sure they're not going off in the wrong direction, and just to give them a chance for some practice by themselves. During meals, I have 6-7 kids come and have little practice sessions. Last night was the group with the strongest (and hardest working) kids in my class, and it was awesome. These kids tend not to get much attention in my class because they quickly master the material, and are paying attention, so it was great to get some time to practice with them, and it was awesome how much English they've got down. It's made my entire week a lot better. 

I'm a football coach!!

I just got a package full of all the flag football materials that I'll be using to try and make a flag football team here at my school. By far the people who are most excited by this development are other fellows up here, although the kids do seem interested. It'll be fun to see how it goes, especially given my lack of football knowledge. If it goes well, we might be able to get an NFL player out here, and that would be the coolest thing ever! Imagine a three hundred pound, muscled, NFL player walking around the town where Tim and I are the tallest people, and I'm one of the heaviest people around for miles.

I've Made it Through the First Week! (again)

I've finally made it back after a long time away, and just finished up the first week. It's been pretty busy with preparing stuff for the semester, and just trying to get everything running smoothly in class, but it's been good. At the end of last semester, I was a little burned out on teaching, but I got pumped about it again over break, and now I'm coming back to school to realize that my kids didn't spend the entire vacation getting pumped about learning.... I was pleasantly surprised, however, by how much they remembered from first semester. We just got done with review, so I'm excited to start actually teaching new material next week.

Things I came back to:
1. a messy room (I was somehow expecting it to get clean over break....no such luck)
2. two packages from my family! my bookshelf is now full of chocolate, green chili, coffee, and other delectable treats!
3. the smell of burning trash
4. a letter from one of my cousins! it was awesome!
5. my lovely squat toilet   (I actually missed squatting while on vacation. having a throne is definitely better when you've got food poisoning, but on a day to day basis I'm a fan of a nice squatter)

Work Work Work

Vacation is not yet over, but sadly I'm already working away. There's a ton of stuff I want to have done before I go back to school (unit plans, reading passages, worksheets for review, plan for first week, new investment, management, and homework plans.....) and I've parked myself in a hostel in Kunming and am just working away on it all. It's boring, but the more I get done, the better the coming semester will be.

Vacation was really relaxing, and I got to see a lot of cool stuff, but not really that interesting. Most of my time was spent on a very touristy route, so here's my vacation in 30 seconds:
1. got an epic sunburn.
2. western food always available--weird.
3. Vietnam=scooters, Thailand=cars
4. I love vietnamese coffee, avacado shakes, vietnamese sandwiches, and pad thai
5. gained weight
6. rented a scooter while on an island (that had no cars)=awesome
7. rode on way too many buses

I'm looking forward to getting back to teaching. Vacation was nice, but I definitely missed having some purpose in my day to day life other than trying to enjoy myself.

And He's Back!

I'm back! I've been on a small island in Thailand, and apparently there was some problem with the satellite connection so the island was internetless for a while, but the internet is fixed! (just in time for me to leave).
Vacation has been great, but here's something I wrote on one of the many long bus journeys I've been on about how the semester ended.

So, I've been away from school for a while now, and I think I've finally stopped stressing about class, and have started getting a little exciited about going back. Not excited enough to go back early or anything, just excited to start thinking about what I'm going to do differently and better next semester. I finally got to see my final grades for my class, and I'm pleased. My kids did well. Out of the ten normal class (our school has two advanced classes that only have the strongest students) my class got the fourth highest average on the final which is a pretty big jump from the midterm where we were second to last. Test scores are incredibly important in China (something I'll write more about) so seeing that kind of improvement is gratifying.

Right now, I'm working on a reader full of passages for students to practice their reading skills. The curriculum really doesn't do a good job of teaching reading, so I applied for an internship with TFC to write something that will help. I don't know if anyone (other than me) is going to actually end up using it, but it's a fun project. The current passage is about a lion who lives at the zoo and who wants to be friends with a panda, but is worried that if he gets hungry he'll eat his friend. (He ends up eating the panda's brother to solve this problem. Sadly, his panda friend decides that she doesn't want to be friends with someone who would eat her brother....so the lion eats her too because he's still hungry)

I'm also working on figuring out how I'm going to review with my kids when we get back to school. I really hope that they studied over break, but if their study habits are similar to my own, they'll have forgotten all their English, and I'm going to have to restuff their heads with all the English that they've forgotten.

Hanoi (+Halong Bay)->Hue->Hoi An-->

Great news! My Uncle Mark got me a camera for Christmas!!! Pictures of Halong Bay will be up soon!

I've been traveling for about a week in Vietnam, and have spent time in Hanoi, Halong Bay (one of the most beautiful places I've ever been), Hue, and Hoi An. The thing that has struck me most has actually been the number of foreigners around. We're traveling on what has become informally known as the Banana Pancake Trail because of the industry that has sprung up to to provide tourists with Western tasting food and amenities (like delicious banana pancakes), and it definitely feels like we're always interacting with people associated with the tourist industry. Prices are relatively high--a bowl of noodles in a tourist area can cost up to $2.25, while it should cost a dollar, and candy bars, sodas, and beers all have inflated prices. Right now, I'm taking a twenty-four hour bus to Saigon, and I'd say 85% of the passengers are foreign, mostly European, with a couple of Chinese tourists mixed in. It's odd--I'm used to being the only strange foreign person on a bus. There are so many foeigners around and foreign food is everywhere so I keep feeling like I'm traveling in the States.

So far, Vietnam has been gorgeous, and pretty interesting. We went to a few museums in Hanoi, and a few other sites. The museums weren't that great, but I found them really interesting because everything was written to support the viewpoint of the Vietnamese Communist party. There were common references to "the enemy," "our patriotic sister....," and quite a bit of self-aggrandizing fluff at all the exhibits--even at the Woman's Museum. The biases of museums are fascinating. Like, at the air and space museum the Enola Gay is just displayed as a B-29, with no mention of dropping the bomb. 

Anyways...the museums weren't objectively great, but I enjoyed them a lot anyways.Halong Bay afterwards though was awesome. We stayed on a boat and cruised around this gorgeous rocky outcrops. The only thing that could have made it better would have been a little bit of sun, but the scenery was fantastic, and we did stuff like stopping at an island to check out these caves, going kayaking, and jumping off a boat.

Other than that, Vietnam has been a really lovely tourist trap, which I can totally deal with. I feel bad, but I've really been taking advantage of this trip of eat a lot of Western food. I mean, I've had a lot of pho and banh my and all that good stuff, but having a banana panckae with bacon (on the side) makes me absurdly happy. The baguettes and the coffee here are spectuacular., the people are friendly, and not worrying about class is really nice.

p.s. The bus ride is long, but the scenery is gorgous. To my left the ocean is this gorgous torquouis, the beacues are white and sandy, and the sky is amazingly clear. If I could get to my camera I'd totally be snappingn pictures right now.  

Traveling in Southeast Asia!

The school year ended, so I've been traveling in Vietnam. I haven't had internet, so I've been pretty out of contact. When I get a chance, I'm going to find a cafe with wifi and sit down, write about it, and upload some pictures.

Happy Chinese New Year everybody!!