Dawn's Blog

'Twas three days before Christmas and here in my room
I was learning to write the Chinese word for "food"

When out on our door we heard a faint knock
And voices so many it must be a flock.

English we heard so we had no fear
We opened the door to the holiday cheer.

And what, to our wondering ears should we hear
but a choir of carolers, but sadly, no reindeer.

A jolly good bunch, they were all very cute
Of various ages and languages too!

We dressed in a hurry, I put on my hat
to go with the group to another friend's flat.


We sang there and then we went on to another
and stopped where fudge had been made by a mother.

This poem has no reason, except to tell
that Christmas is great no matter where you dwell.

My rhyming is slowing; oh, look! there's an isthmus!
I hope you all have an incredible Christmas!

First, I would like to send a Happy Birthday to my sister Julie. She's an awesome sister and she deserves a good birthday. 

Besides being Julie's birthday, December 18th marks another important event: Christmas is exactly one week away. And things are beginning to look a lot like Christmas, even in China. I went to our village grocery store yesterday and was shocked/immensely pleased to see all of the employees wearing red and white Santa hats. Judging by their facial expressions, I would say that I was much more excited about it than they were. I even got the courage to try out my Chinese and told one of the girls that I liked her hat.

Our Christmas Tree! (with fake presents)

In other Christmas events, the school had a Christmas program this past week, where I participated in my first real choir. And it was a lot of fun. The choir was made up of teachers, students, some people who work with the foster home, and pretty much anyone who was willing to join (which is why they accepted me). We sang Jingle Bells, Oh Come All Ye Faithful, Silent Night, and Hark! The Herald Angels Sing. And despite having me in the choir, I think we sounded pretty good.

I think the students are enjoying the Christmas festivities. Most of the classes have decorated their classrooms, and the teachers have been showing Christmas movies (in English, of course) and talking about Christmas traditions and what they mean. I have been incorporating Christmas song lyrics into my phonics classes ("Let's find all the short vowels in Jingle Bells!") and I plan to watch Charlie Brown's Christmas with them as a treat after they take their final tests next week.

I think that is enough for today's edition of Dawn's Blog. More Christmas news to come in the future. I hope you are all having a lovely Advent season!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone. I felt like this was a good time to write a blog.  It feels a bit strange to celebrate a holiday without most of the traditions that I have associated with it for the past 24 years. But the good thing is that I have some new and different activities to take their place and good friends to celebrate it with. 

I continued our family tradition of holiday running by doing a 5K this morning. Not a real one, just one I mapped out on Google maps. The 25 degree weather made it quite refreshing.

Tomorrow the school is having our Thanksgiving Dinner, and we are doing our best to make it a genuine American Thanksgiving Dinner.  We are feeding not only the students, but all of the other foreigners here as well, so its quite a task. Some of the teachers are making multiple pumpkin pies, and I am in charge of the 150 deviled eggs. We hard-boiled them today and will have the students help us finish them in the morning. I really really hope they turn out well. We're going to have a lot of disappointed people if they don't.

One great thing about Thanksgiving is that the most important part of it doesn't depend on where you are or who you are with. I don't even need to put a tree in my house or hide fake eggs to celebrate (although I do plan to trace my hand and make it into a turkey).  So, in true Thanksgiving tradition, I would like to share a few of the things that I am thankful for this year.

Things I am seriously thankful for:

God's love that never gives up on me
My family who have always been there for me
My friends back home and here in China
The beauty of creation
Being financially stable
The opportunity to be here
My health
And about 1000 other things

Things that are not as serious but I am no less thankful for:

My warm, cozy bed (I can't believe I once thought it was uncomfortable!)
Heat in my apartment
Peanut Butter
Good books (for that matter, anything written in English)
My bike
Jenny Lou's (A grocery store in Beijing that sells all the Western foods we can't get anywhere else (like cheese and cereal))

I hope you all have a great Thanksgiving!

Goodness, it has been a long time since I blogged. I've been busy lately and there hasn't been a whole lot to blog about. Last week was our halloween party/talent show. I was a penguin. A couple of my friends here rewrote the words to Miley Cyrus' song "Party in the USA" so that it reflected our experiences coming to China, and we sang that.

I'm actually becoming quite the musical performer here. I have also joined the Christmas choir (I was informed that I should sing soprano) and our first practice is this week. Also, I have recently volunteered to teach the students how to square dance. I plan on this being awesome. Who knew my square dancing skills would actually be useful? And to top it all off, I spent a lot of time today thinking of and singing songs with the word "mountain" in them, which brings me to my next story.

Last night I decided last minute to go with some people today to go hiking around a mountain. It was a good decision. It was a beautiful, warm day. I knew that China had some beautiful land, but I hadn't seen that yet. We had a nicely diverse group - five Americans and four Chinese. We did some hiking, did some climbing stairs, had a picnic lunch, did some people watching, did some more hiking, took a lot of pictures, hit a dead end and had to hike back the way we came, fell asleep as soon as we got back in the van, and had Korean barbecue on the way home.

While we were hiking, we heard a man singing some traditional chinese music, I mean really belting it. So we asked our Chinese friends what he was singing, and apparently it was a traditional mountain song. So this got me to thinking about our "mountain" songs, which brings me back to what I was saying before (please see poll to vote on your favorite mountain song!)






At one point during our hike we heard some small dogs barking and looked up and there were three poodles barking at a woman's feet. She was wearing exteremely furry boots which apparently looked like animals to the poodles.  It might have been one of the funniest things I have ever seen. Every time this poor woman started to walk away from them, the dogs would run and bark at her boots, and the dogs' owner couldn't do anything to stop them.

Yesterday was my birthday. If you missed it, then you should feel bad. But don't worry, I'm still accepting gifts.

My 24th birthday turned out to be a very good one. Mostly because Chinese birthday cakes are delicious. Also because I have awesome family and friends.

 I started off the day with a 12 mile (each way) bike ride to the nearest Dairy Queen (not kidding). One of the guys here was also celebrating his 17th birthday on the same day and had been wanting to take this trip for a while, so he had planned to do it with his dad, brother, and friend, and they graciously invited me as well to celebrate my birthday with them. We got lost a few times, but the oreo cheesecake blizzard was totally worth it. Also, my bike is a piece of junk, and with about 3 miles left in the trip, one of my pedals fell completely off. But we all made it back ok.

No horses, tractors, or bugles allowed!

Then I came home to a lunch of fajitas made by my wonderful roommate, Lydia.

In the afternoon, I went on a little trip with my friend Jan (who is fluent in Chinese) to get my bike fixed and get a shampoo/scalp massage in the village. I've never had a scalp massage before and it was actually kind of funny more than anything.

After we had finished dinner (which consisted of PB & J and Easy Mac, thanks Julie), my roommate informed me that all of our friends where coming over for my birthday party in 20 minutes. We had a grand time of Chinese checkers and speed scrabble and card games of various types.

This is a picture of the front of my fridge. This is the logo of Haier brand, which makes the "high-quality" home appliances here in China. It makes me chuckle just a bit every time I see it.  I really wish I could have been at the marketing meeting where they came up with this logo.  It has the trademarks of most marketing strategies: smiling people, bright colors, ice cream, and a lack of clothing. But what exactly is this picture trying to convey?  Maybe a poll is in order.

Last week I found out that I'm going to be teaching phonics.  Which basically means I'll be trying to get the students to properly pronounce short "i"s (they tend to say "eets" instead of "its") and teaching things like the 8 vowel rules. Doesn't sound that interesting, but I'm actually quite excited. I've been learning a lot about linguistics, which I really didn't know much about before. I know about all kinds of stuff now like the International Phonetic Alphabet, voiced and unvoiced phonemes, and the history of the cot-caught merger.

The students are arriving today and tomorrow and we have opening ceremonies on Wednesday. I'm pretty excited to finally have students and feel like I'm accomplishing something after 2 weeks of training.

In other news, things are generally going great. This weekend I took a trip into Beijing to do some shopping (needed some more teachery clothes) and made cookies with my roommate. Baking has been a bit of a difficulty because we generally can't read the labels on things at the store and some things (like butter) they just plain don't have around here.

Also, I've been working on my Chinese, which is fun.

Here's some of the pictures I have taken thus far.
This one is at the Beijing airport.

Our kitchen

Our dining area (yes, that is a bowl of fruit)

My bedroom

The view out my living room window. Looks like Indiana.

I'm here! I'm in China!

Sorry I'm a little late on the update, I've been here for almost a week now. I arrived last Thursday afternoon (early morning for most of you) without my luggage. The trip here was quite eventful. My flight from Dayton took off about 10 minutes late, which made my 45 minute layover in DC even shorter. By the time I got off the plane in DC my flight to Beijing was already boarding. I had to take the underground shuttle and by the time I got to the right terminal they were paging me, so I literally ran to the gate and was the very last person to board the plane. But I made it :) And I needed the exercise.

My luggage was not so lucky. As I had suspected might happen, it did not make it on the plane but the airline brought it to my apartment the next day.

Things are going well. We've been doing a lot of teacher training and yesterday I got to present a lesson plan to the other teachers, which went pretty well. I got a cell phone and was given a bike whose tires I plan to inflate by the end of the day.  The other teachers (foreign and chinese) are all really nice and I think we will all get along beautifully.

I plan to put up some pictures of my apartment and neighborhood in my next post, so get excited.

Yup, that's right. I'm leaving tomorrow, and I should be in China by Thursday. My last few days at home have been great, and I'm really wishing I had a bit more time to spend with my family and friends here. Highlights of my time at home include:

• Several hours of six-handed Euchre
• Touring Sechler's Pickle Plant with with my parents (complete with pickled peppers, pickle products, and pickle paraphernalia)
• Hanging out with my cousins
• Last-minute luggage shopping
• Volleyball/swimming/eating pandas with the Decatur crew
• Eating imaginary food made by Taylor (my 3-year-old niece)

Anyway, I will miss you all very much. For reals. Thank you to everyone who has been so supportive of me and helped me get ready for my next adventure. Just to name a few . . . Mom and Dad, Julie & family, Kevin (you're going to get me a really nice birthday gift), Ashley, Laura, Ashleigh, Hank, Andrew, all my Grandparents, Aunts, Uncles, the ACTS! small group (you guys are awesome) , the youth group at DFUMC (thanks for the cake!), all of my Americorps friends, and a whole bunch of other people who are too numerous to mention.  Its good to know that I have so many people supporting me.

After 10 long months, my AmeriCorps term is coming to an end. We have one final week to finish up paperwork, clean and pack, and go on a short camping trip. At the end of the week I will be driving home to spend a few days (not nearly long enough) with my family and friends, and then I am off to Beijing! 


Yesterday afternoon our AmeriCorps team went out the high ropes course we have here on campus and did the Dream Catcher. The goal of the Dream Catcher is to climb a 30 foot pole and then jump off and try to catch your "dreams" ( a piece of pvc pipe) that are hanging several feet out from the pole.  It was a lot of fun.

With my departure for China coming ever closer, I've had several people ask me if I am nervous or scared about it. I usually answer with something vague, like, "A little I guess, but not really."  I haven't really spent much time thinking about whether or not I should be nervous about my trip.

On the other hand, I have been thinking a lot about fear in general. A few weeks ago one of my friends was telling me about a friend of hers whose biggest fear in life was that she would not be able to take care of herself, either physically or financially. The thing she was most afraid of was that she would have to rely on someone else to take care of her. I thought about it for a bit, and realized that this was probably not a good fear to have, because there is a pretty good chance that this will happen to her sooner or later  in life, and there probably won't be much she can do about it.

And that got me to thinking about people's fears in general, and what they can tell us about ourselves. So I asked some of my other friends what their biggest fears were. I heard things like, "Marrying the wrong person", "Never figuring out what I'm supposed to do with my life", and "Losing the people I care most about".   I think these are all pretty normal, healthy fears for people (especially us single people without a career plan). They show that we value having love and meaning in our lives.  But it got me to thinking how much our fears can reveal about what is in our hearts.

If someone fears that he/she will lose their independence, then that person must place a high value on independence (duh). And if this is the thing they fear most in the world, then maybe this is the thing they also value most in the world.

So I guess what I'm saying is, if we want to know what things we truly value and are truly our greatest desires (not just what we tell other people when they ask), a good place to look is at our fears. 

What are your fears? Do they line up with what you claim to value most in life? And if they don't, why not?





And what is my greatest fear? Bears. 

Here's some of the stuff I've done in the past month:

Gave Blood

I did this yesterday. It was my first time. I tried once before but they wouldn't let me because my blood pressure was too low. This time I made sure I ate lots of salt and got really stressed out just before going to the blood drive, and apparently this worked. I was a little nervous because I don't enjoy needles (who does, really?) and have had trouble with dizzyness other times they stick stuff into me. I still can't decide if the dizzyness thing is totally psychological or really the result of the stuff they're putting in (or taking out, in this case) of me, or maybe a combination which has classically conditioned me to become faint when a needle penetrates my skin.  Anyway, I got a bit dizzy a couple times, but really not too bad. And I got a free T-shirt.

Climbed a Mountain

Well, maybe not quite as intense as it sounds. More like "walked up a mountain".   I went with a couple friends to Stone Mountain. According to Wikipedia, Stone Mountain is "a quartz monzonite dome monadnock" that stands 825 feet above the surrounding area. Basically it is a huge piece of granite sticking out of the ground. And it has a huge carving of Confederate leaders on it. Anyway, we went up the mountain, saw a 4-D movie, and watched the Lasershow Spectactular.







Watched World Cup Soccer

First I cheered for the US. When they got out, I cheered for Germany. Still cheering for Germany. Go for the Bronze!



Here's some of the stuff I did NOT do in the last month:

Run the Peachtree Roadrace

This is the big race to run down here. Its a 10K. I didn't sign up in time. I got excited when I found out about a friend of a friend who had signed up, couldn't go, and was looking for someone to take her number. I trained hard for a week. Then I found out that the race packet had gotten lost.  No race for me. However, I did go for a run on Peachtree street with my friend Kyle the day of the race, which I think was better anyway.

Get a Tattoo

Nope, didn't do this either.  And I'm not planning on it.

I took a week off of service and went home. I went to Taylor's third birthday party, and it was really good to see a lot of my family there.  I even got to spend a whole day with Taylor and my mom. Taylor made these cupcakes, and she was very excited about them.

I also visited Bear Lake Camp which was a very good thing.
I went running a couple times with the one and only Brittany Cook.
I got to see several of my friends at home. We went to Mexican restaurants and played Euchre (we like to have cultural experiences).  I don't think I need to write a whole lot about my time at home because most of the people reading this were there when it happened.

Alayna (my college roommate) got married. Mozy (my other college roommate) and I took a road trip to Iowa for the joyous occasion. It was a ten hour trip, but it was definitely worth it. Highlights included making hundreds of chocolate-covered strawberries, dancing for several hours, and seeing Alayna and Mozy again. 


This is the Mississippi River ->











Alayna got married!






Due to a crazy coincidence ( or not?) our friends Anthony and Emily Parrott live very close to where the wedding was, so we visited them and decided on a whim to go to South Dakota (why not?) since it was only an hour and a half away. They also took us on a night bike ride around the town of Okoboji, which was quite magical.

Here's me at the Sioux Falls falls. I was practicing my peace sign picture taking so I can fit in in China.

On our way back, Mozy and I took the route through Minnesota and Wisconsin to get back to Chicago, from whence I then flew to Atlanta.

All in all, a very successful week. Saw family, saw friends, visited four new states.

To see more pictures of my adventures, go here. 

Two posts in two days!  Here's the pictures of our Americorps community garden.We have black-eyed peas, several peppers (not sure what kind), some zucchini, cucumbers, and I think squash. We also have some tomatoes in another location.

These are the black-eyed peas that I planted. Yay! They are so big!











I went out one morning and found this in the garden.











Turns out it was fake.



Our scarecrow. Seems to be doing a pretty good job, animals have not eaten anything as of yet.

China! (insert shouts of excitement)   In honor of my new plans, I have a new schnazzy template for my blog.  The horse's name is Philip. Anyway, after much thought, I have decided to take on the adventure.  I will be teaching English at a school just outside Beijing for the next year, starting in August.

So let the preparations begin! For the next two months I plan to learn as much Mandarin as possible as well as learn more about the history of China. I will also work on not capitalizing the H in CHina which seems to happen every time I type it. Weird. I will also spend as much time as possible with my family and friends back home (which regrettably will not be much).

Contrary to what the title may have suggested, this post has almost nothing to do with shoes, except that I was wearing them during most of my adventures.

When I last posted, I was in the midst of a quarter-life crises. And while the crisis has not been resolved, I'm feeling a lot more at peace about my future. God has given me some really awesome people around me that have shared a lot of wisdom and been praying for me. Still no where near a decision, but feeling at peace about things.

I should probably tell you about Drum and Dance Camp. I spent 5 days last week in the mountains of North Carolina learning about African drumming, dancing, and various other things from some of the most talented African drummers in the world.  Highlights included:

• Learning to play the balafon (wooden xylophone) and performing it with a group in the talent show. 
• Learning new songs on the Djembe and just generally having an awesome time playing it. 
• Performing with our group from Douglasville (someone told us we won the Ms. Congeniality award)
• Learning African dancing and performing it in the talent show. Also, watching my friend Austin dance may have been the funniest and most awesome thing I have ever seen. 
• Experiencing some of God's most beautiful creation. 
• Successfully organizing a silent auction fundraiser. 
• Getting a small taste of some genuine West African culture. 

It was also probably the most time I have gone without wearing shoes in my whole life. So my shoes spent most of their secret life under my bed; not very exciting.

Shortly after my return, I went on another drumming trip. We took a group of the kids from Inner Harbour up to Helen GA (refer to previous posts) to perform for an arts festival they were having for the local school kids.  Highlight of this trip: my awesome drum solos got me the nickname "Thunder Hands".

In other news, wildlife in the woods is out in full force. We find scorpions in our breezeway a few times a week, and we've kept a couple as pets. We are still looking for good name ideas. They're actually pretty cool pets, we threw a moth in with them the other day and it was pretty cool to watch them catch it.

I think that's all I'll include for now. Happy Sunday!

It's my mom's birthday today!   You should probably tell her Happy Birthday if you get the chance.

As most of you know, I'm spending the week in DC with Ashleigh and Arick.So here's a little update on cool things (or not so cool things) that I've done and seen the past few days.

Flight
My flight left Atlanta at 5:45 a.m. on Sunday morning. So rather than sleep for a few hours and get up super early (not to mention making someone else do this to drive me there) I just went to the airport Saturday night and spent the night there. Not a bad experience. I was definitely not the only person doing this, and it was kinda cool to be part of a temporary community of people trying to sleep in chairs or find a good spot on a carpeted area. I've decided that sleeping on the floor every now and then is good for a person, helps you be thankful for what you have. Anyway, I got a bit of sleep, got on my plane ok, yadda yadda, ended up in DC, and there was much rejoicing.

Sunday
Sunday we went to Easter church (where there was also much rejoicing), and came back and made Easter dinner for the three of us. It was awesome. We had ham, mashed potatoes and gravy, green bean casserole, rolls, pasta salad, and peach cobbler. We all chatted with our families a bit and then all fell asleep for several hours. This was also awesome. Apparently I hadn't gotten that much sleep at the airport.

Monday
Arick had to work (who does that?) so Ashleigh and I took the Metro into the heart of DC and walked around all day. We went to Ford's Theatre (no spellcheck, I meant to spell it the British way) and the Petersen house, the White House, the Decatur House, the WWII memorial, and the Lincoln Memorial. Huh, a lot of houses. And we didn't get to meet any of the people that lived in them. We did, however, see some protesters outside the White House, which I thought was pretty cool. I'm not even sure what all of them were protesting, and it may not have been the most effective method, but its good to see people standing up for what they think is right and doing more then just complaining about what they think is wrong in the world.

Tuesday
Yesterday. Ashleigh had class (who does that?) most of the day so I went on what I called a "running tour" of DC. I ran from the apartment over to the Mall, where I checked out the Korean and Vietnam memorials, then went down to the Capitol building and got in line for a tour. I made friends with the retired couple standing in line with me who turned out to be from Philadelphia. They thought what I was doing with Americorps was pretty cool and told me I should get more involved in politics. Maybe I will. After the Capitol, I went to the Supreme Court, which I think is one of the coolest places to visit in DC because you actually get to go into the courtroom, hear a lecture by a cool old lady, and the wait isn't very long. Anyway, I also stopped at the Library of Congress and the Botanic Gardens and then realized that I only had about 30 minutes to make it back to the apartment before Ashleigh got back. She had given me the keys because I thought I would get back before her. I was pretty exhausted already from running in the morning and walking around in the heat all day, but I walk/jogged the 3 miles back and made it just in time to meet Ashleigh at the door.

Ok, that's about all I have to share right now. That was really long, I hope I didn't lose too many people in there. I know when I start reading someone's long blog I like to skim over things. So its OK if you do that to mine. I'll just put something in bold at the bottom to regain your attention, something you might see in a postcard.


TRIP IS GOOD. ASHLEIGH AND ARICK ARE AWESOME. I'VE SEEN LOTS OF COOL SITES. MET SOME COOL PEOPLE. HOPE YOU ARE DOING WELL.

Dawn

This past weekend my family (all 7 of them) came down to Georgia to visit and run a half marathon with me. I won't go into too much detail because about 50% of the people that read this blog were there. It was a pretty fantastic weekend overall, not very relaxing, but a lot of fun. The race was at Berry College in Rome, Georgia, which is about 1.5 hours from where I live.  Turns out that not only does Berry have the largest campus in the world, it's also one of the most beautiful. We decided to send Taylor there. Dad was most excited about the thousands of deer they had running wild all over the campus. Anyway, the four of us "kids" ran the race Saturday morning while Mom and Dad watched Taylor. We all did really well, Kevin finished in the top 10 and Julie, Keith and I all had PRs. We were pretty worn out, but we did some sightseeing/driving around in the afternoon (when in Rome . . .). Sunday we went to church, then on a tour of Inner Harbour and my campsite, and then went to a nearby State Park and did some hiking.The whole thing went by way too fast, and I was pretty sad when they all left to go home.

Yesterday was an amazingly beautiful day here, so a few of us took a day trip up to a place called Helen. It's a little town in North Georgia that has been made to look like a German Alpine Village. Needless to say, it was pretty awesome. Highlights of the day included:

• Eating Schnitzel
• Eating the most amazing funnel cake (see below)
• Using German phrases all day
• Seeing the largest pitch pine in the state of Georgia
• Taking pictures of all of these random activities
• Getting a sunburn in February (don't worry, I'm just a bit pink)

The really interesting thing was that it is basically just a big tourist attraction of Georgia, so alongside the Alpine village theme, they also have just about anything else touristy you could want, like redneck T-shirts and a haunted house. One of my favorite places was a Mexican restaurant right in the middle of the "authentic" Bavarian village.

Oh, and there was also this place:
which I think might be trying to be a knockoff of Giordano's.

Last night I began my first ever Dungeons and Dragons campaign. For those of you who are not familiar with this game (most of you, I hope), it is a role playing fantasy game where several people create characters for themselves and these characters become part of a narrative told by the Dungeon Master. Basically we sit around a table and role dice to see whether or not we get eaten by a six-headed horse. This game is also ranked somewhere around Star Trek conventions on the nerdiness scale.

In other news, the Colts lost the Super Bowl.  I was feeling pretty proud to be from Indiana (and still am) and glad that they made it that far, even though it was the only football game I had the chance to see this season. I did have to suffer a little ridicule when they lost; my favorite quote was, "Why is Indiana so bad at everything?" (This coming from an Iowa native, not really sure what she had to brag about).

In more positive news, our Americorps team is currently playing Assassin (aka Ambush, aka the best game ever). In this game, each player receives the name of another player and tries to assassinate that person, while avoiding being assassinated by the person who is coming after them. In our version, you assassinate a person by clipping a clothespin onto them (it can also be played with water guns). It creates a lot of excitement and paranoia in the community. Highly recommended.

 (This was written last night)
I’ve been getting a lot of criticism lately for not updating my blog. And I guess it has been a while.
So, to make up for it, I’ve decided to give you not only an update on what’s going on with me, but a story about an awkward situation I was put in today. First, for the update:

I went home to Indiana for Christmas. It was awesome. My family is great. I spent the night in 5 different cities (and 2 states), including a night at camp during which I hid in the bottom of an industrial refrigerator and someone (won’t mention names) broke a hole in a wall. We also went sledding, and coined the term “snowy face”. I built a snowman on Kevin’s car, participated in the 3rd Annual Over the River and Through the Woods to Grandmother’s House After Christmas Run (3rd place, by the way), ate a lot of unhealthy food, and got to spend some time with Taylor.

The day after I got back to Georgia a few of us decided to use our day off to do a little exploring in Atlanta. It was a great day, except that it was about the coldest day that Atlanta has ever had, and we spent most of it walking around outside. But we saw some cool stuff like this:

Last week it snowed here. We got about a half inch. They closed school the night before just to be safe. Which I thought was a little ridiculous, until I went for a drive the next day and saw that the roads really are pretty icy when you don’t have any trucks to put salt out. Anyway, since my students had the day off, I just got to hang out with them for the day. We ended up watching the first two Harry Potters and then had a snowball fight. Sooooo, pretty good day.

But my job is definitely not all fun and games. With the upcoming MLK Day, we have been assigned to do a 3 hour activity/lesson/etc. with our students tomorrow morning. All of us have been working pretty hard on getting this ready, and right now most of us are getting together last minute stuff. Which is what I should be doing right now. Hopefully I’ll let you know how that all goes in my next post.

Oh, and the awkward situation.

So one of the teachers here is known for her, well, outgoing personality and uniqueness. I don’t really know her that well, but she reminds me a lot of Ms. Frizzle.  Anyway, I was walking out of the cafeteria today when I saw her alone talking on her phone behind the building. In the midst of her animated phone conversation, I heard her say, “How are you doing?” and turned to see if she was talking to me. Turns out she was, so replied that I was doing well. As I kept walking I heard her say, “Oh, William, now there’s a nice girl for you.”  Slightly confused, I turned around again with a puzzled look on my face, to which she replied, quite matter-of-factly, “Oh, I was just recommending you to a wonderful, good-looking, wealthy young man,” as if this is something she does on a regular basis.

I mean, I appreciate the gesture, but I’m just not sure if I should trust her judgment.