Five reasons Beijing is like burning man: 1. Dust storms 2.Face masks 3. Odd vechiles 4. Weird costumes 5. I often don't know wtf is going on but I love it. Happy at work at keeping my chin up ... read more

These photos are from about a month ago, some tourist-y stuff we did in Changzhou, coming soon: video of Tom's silly niece singing and video of one of my students reading her letter to "Mr. Hotdog". I really like my new job and the curriculum and the staff are amazing, I have fun everyday :) I am getting really good at getting around on my own and I can practice my Chinese with my co-teachers. ... read more

I guess I was unspecific about our plans, we have many job offers in Beijing (with good pay). Also, we have legitimate legal reasons to cancel the contract not just due to the scheduling problems. I am more interested in working in an ESL kindergarten in Beijing while Tom is not sure, he could be a translator or teach math/science. Anyways we will be fine, I have included a picture of us when we went to see a play that Tom's sister funded and produced.... read more

So even tho we LOVE our students at Changzhou we can't deal with how flaky the staff and people are anymore! They don't tell us when we are working or when our holidays our... etc etc, plus some other annoying stuff. So we gave them our two weeks notice and lucky for us our two weeks notice falls on the two weeks that the freshmen have military training, so we are thru with that school. I have very mixed feelings because I felt very attached to my students, I will miss them. We are moving to Beijing and living with Tom's sister Wentong, which is great because lots of family is close by, we eat with them 5 times a week if not more! Soon I am going to cook for them, they requested mased potatoes ... read more

So my Chinese learning has not been progressing as fast as planned, I am here to tell you CHINESE IS HARD. I keep saying it wrong, today was hard I woke up late this morning and have had lots of trouble with computers. I also got very discouraged today when I boy snuck out of my class early, literally made a run for it, also my last class was impatient and hard to work with, my spirits are a little down today as said before, staying optimistic. So far my power point presentations have been a big hit and I love working with them, and today my fav class turned in their first homework assignment and it looks good YAY. Anyways all of the bad stuff that is going on today can be overshadowed by the ... read more