oops

guess its kinda been forever... where to start? I can't possibly catch everyone up on 2 months.

Work: Work is going great. We're prepping the kids for our Christmas concert/show. Its gonna be the 26th from 9am-12pm. Over 200 students + family will be there. They rented out an old theater. I have classes learning Jingle Bells, O Christmas Tree, a skit entitled "A Christmas Story" and a skit on how to decorate a Christmas Tree. Plus they all have to learn Deck the Halls. Its going to be tough but most of them have it down, pronunciation is terrible, they understand none of it, but they have the beat :)

two of the TAs left recently we got 2 new ones though right before they left. One of the ones that left was my favorite Mary. Shes 28 and just got married. Shes been at the school for 2 years and her husband didn't want her to work there anymore because of the hours and they want to start a family. They grew up in the same village and have been together since they were teenagers. He makes plenty anyways. The other TA I couldn't wait for her to leave. She was a crazy confused girl that thought she was a great Christian and could convert the world and if you disagreed with her and her skewed view of the Bible you were going to burn in Hell. Crazies....

Most of my classes are finishing and moving on to the next level. I'll still be there teacher but some of the kids have chosen this time to leave the school. Only 3 kids out of all of my classes so far but whatever, their parents are stupid :P I've started teaching a class using the Side by Side book which is like the most popular English textbook here. Its a nice reprieve from the same old boring DD Dragon material. It actually teaches spoken American English :D :D :D, which is all that matters. The problem is their English level is so not there yet so they can't even read the fucking textbook so I have to keep yelling at them to learn how to read and to pay attention hehe. Again stupid parents thinking their kids are geniuses...

I've stopped teaching the kids the word Autumn and just use Fall now haha they know Autumn but I told them Fall is better. I think I get the most joy when a kid says wadder or saddurday... one of the parents was like my kid says Saddurday, I was like yeah thats good Saturday sounds so posh and British. Luckily my TA Doris loves American culture and speaks with an American accent. Her parents paid like a grand for her to go to some American accent camp when she was younger.

I'm going to start tutoring for some rich ladies daughter soon. I said I only wanted 150rmb an hour, so should have said 300 but whatever. Thats the difference between 22 and 28 bucks an hour.

Works pretty much great now, I run the classroom, they don't tell me how to do anything. I do what I want so its all gravy. The worst thing is on Saturday my first class is at 8:30am AHHHH!!! Definitely was late this week and didn't even go out!

About that Life:

Life is pretty awesome. I don't go out near as much anymore so I'm able to spend my money on other stuff like building a winter wardrobe. Its SO cold here. Its like in the 40s maybe 50s all of the time. Its supposed to be under 30 in the daytime this week. I walked around in shorts yesterday and the Chinese were staring at me and I could hear them telling their friends to look at the foreigner in shorts. Some even came up to me and said, "你冷不冷？" or "You cold not cold?" Gotta love Chinese :P

So now I'm planning what I'm going to do for my 3 days off after Christmas. Debating missing a few days and going to Beijing or maybe I'll go to Hong Kong with my friend, which will be expensive but whatever. Use my Christmas money for that or something.

My guinea pigs died. I don't always come home now and I left them for a day and a half and they were dead. Stupid things, they had knocked their water over so don't know if is that. Or I ran out of food and gave them a whole apple when they're only supposed to have small pieces. I think its better to think that either my roommate killed them or Ayi.... It was poison I tell you!

Went and got massages the other day and cupping. The cupping was weird, I was with a German and a Swede. Its cool having such international friends... makes me feel worldly. I actually don't regularly talk to another American. So when I encounter one its like woah sweet an American. I really can't stand the French here, or most Europeans for that matter except the cool ones that are my friends. No one here likes the Africans. The Chinese are afraid of them and don't trust them at all... All of the foreigners buy their drugs from them (or people from the Stans). They sit in a corner in the club stinking up the place, but I don't really talk to them so I won't judge ;) I've only talked to a girl from the Congo that spoke English, Spanish, and French fluently and was working on Chinese. She was awesome.



Um don't know what else to say, I'll probably think of something and update it again later. Let me know if there is anything you want to know via Facebook... I might answer :P