After teaching about high school in the USA I have learned many new things about high school in China. I made a power point about many different topics and asked the students what they wanted to know about. Here is a quick list of the topics discussed: daily schedule, school holidays, subjects, sports, part time work, driving, dating, dances, social life, exams, grades, uniforms, and HAIRSTYLES. YES hairstyles threw me off but I learned something new. I have learned and knew some of this already but both school systems aren't perfect by any means but yet interesting in what a society thinks is good for their youth. China All high school students live on campus 7-8 students in a dorm room. They arrive on Sunday before 7pm and leave on Friday at 4:30pm. There are only ... read more

On Friday afternoon we ventured to Hong Kong for a weekend of sightseeing. It is such an amazing place and there are so many things to see and do that we have barely touched the surface of what HK has to offer. Friday We got to our hostel, Inntide Guesthouse, in Causeway Bay around 4:30pm. Once we got checked in we headed to the Peak Tram. The ride up the tram is almost at a 45 degree angle and was built in the 1800s, quite amazing. Once to the top the view is spectacular as it was a pretty clear day. We took lots of photos then headed back down the hill on the tram to meet up with 4 of our friends. We met Kris and Kelly at 7:30 in Kowloon then ate dinner at ... read more

Sunday-was a pretty lazy day as we had no plans since A+ can no longer have foreign teachers teach any classes, per the police as of last Thursday. So we laid around and hung out all day. For dinner I went over to a Senior 2 teacher's mom's house for dinner then met her Junior 3=9th grade in USA son so I can start to tutor him. Lily, Senior 2 Biology teacher, surprised me at 7:30 when the 1 hr lesson was over that her and I would be going to the spa to get a facial. SWEET!!! Once we arrived she informed me it would be a 2 hr treatment: steam sauna, back/arm/neck/head massage then a facial. It had been a few years since I had a facial. I hadn't had a massage in so ... read more

Finally on Day 28 we were able to sleep in as long as we wanted as we had one more day in Queenstown with no plans. We took the day to walk around the town and see what we hadn't gotten to see yet. We wanted to ride up the Gondola but after finding out it was 23NZD per person to ride up we decided our view from our hostel was good enough. We walked around the Queenstown Gardens, enjoyed our books on a bench by the lake, ate Fergburger for a late lunch/early dinner and chilled at the hostel the rest of the evening. We departed Queenstown around 8:30am on Tues, Feb 16th heading for Christchurch, our final destination in NZ. The bus ride was over 500km that day and we didn't arrive into Christchurch ... read more

Happy 33rd Birthday to Brooke, my sister!!!! This morning we were on the bus by 8:45am and our first stop was only 5 minutes away from the hostel, Puzzle World. I was feeling really sick with a sore throat so I didn’t go in but Pete was very excited and enjoyed the maze along with 4 different illusion rooms. Description by Pete - It was great. I went in and had high hopes for the place and I wasn’t disappointed. There were some crazy 3-D holograms better than I have ever seen. There was a creepy room where there were a bunch of concave faces of men that appeared to the eye to be protruding from the wall. Everywhere you went it looked as if the faces were following you. There was another room where everything ... read more