hey, just letting you all know that we're all safe from the earthquake here in zhangjiagang. I actually found out about it on msn, around 4:30 yesterday after my classes. the article on msn said that it could be felt in shanghai which is strange because we are actually closer to the center of it, and felt nothing. of course, when i searched "china" in google news, google was then blocked from my computer for 10 minutes...crazy! Ciee also sent us email about it, but no one from the program is living in Sichuan, the province that was hit the worst. [View Full Entry]

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hey! I brought the letters my 6th graders had written to their penpals this morning to read while I was eating dinner tonight, and omg I was actually laughing out loud! I'm gonna look through them now as I'm typing this and put up some quotes here for you enjoy, haha. hopefully you'll actually think they're funny and its not just because i'm exhausted after teaching & tutoring for 6 days straight! lol. " This is my mobile number. But please call me in July or August. Because I'm busy now. I will go to middle school in September. I must [View Full Entry]

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here are some more ktv pics! just realized i actually could have just added them to the other post, but whatever. oh and here's the link to the videos too ktv video playlist tomorrow's may day so we don't have school :) think i'm just gonna do laundry and hangout and then go to wuxi on friday...we'll see. enjoy! [View Full Entry]

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heyy, just figured I'd update with news from the the last few weeks... First, I went to Fen Si Jia's house the past 2 weekends which was fun. The first weekend me and Candice went out to dinner with her family to a hotpot restaurant in Jianying, the city next to Zhangjiagang. I'm guessing we must have hotpot restaurants at home, and I've just never been to one, but if not..its kinda like fondue where there's a big pot in a hole in the table filled with broth and you cook all the food yourself. We got tons and tons of [View Full Entry]

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Back from Beijing! We had a great time and really saw just about everything! here's a quick overview... we got the train from wuxi on friday night at 8:30. some korean guys asked us to switch rooms so they could all be together and then to thank us they gave us peanuts and beer, haha. our roomates on the train were an english teacher and her husband, they were both really nice and we took lots of pics together, lol. we got to beijing at 7:30am and were out and about by 8am. our hostel was about a 2min walk from [View Full Entry]

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it's been a while! everything here is good though, and I finally have a some pics and videos to upload :) my kids are all still crazy as usual, as you can see from the pics! lol, but i have managed to get them to participate in hosting flat stanely and in a postcard exchange, which are both working out well! I re-wrote the flat stanely story for my 4th grade classes so they were able to understand and they loved it, haha, especially the part when the bulletin board falls on him, and i made a huge crash with a [View Full Entry]

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heyy! so, not much has been new since we got back to school..my kids quickly got back into their "normal" routine of being absolutely insane!! lol, but whatever..haha. today one of the 2nd grade classes was so crazy when we were trying to play a game that i ended up just stopping the game to play simon says so they could move around and then teach them a song. but they wouldn't even get quiet enough to hear me call out "simon says.."!! so then i just had the kids that wanted to learn the song come up to the front [View Full Entry]

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..and we're back to school! we started teaching again on wed, so it's only been 2 days so far but its actually going surprisingly well, haha. I think that a big part of it is that i'm actually expecting the kids to be crazy now, and i'm pretty used to just going with the flow which is good. While the kids are definitely still off the walls, I've been trying to get them to discuss what they did over the New Year which most of them are pretty excited to tell about. I was little worried about how they'd even be [View Full Entry]

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that's happy new year in chinese! the actual new year's day was a week ago now..but the holiday is still being celebrated here. well, not even celebrated really..everything is just closed!! haha, its getting a little annoying if you can't tell.. as of last wed, on the 6th, everything here has been closed. all restaurants and stores, besides the big chains like rt-mart and kfc, and thank god our supermarket across the street. soo, i've been improvising in a the kitchen a bit. so far i've made fried rice a few times which turned out pretty good, and then i made [View Full Entry]

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finally made it back! :) ..well actually i've been back for 3 days now, but haven't gotten around to writing on here cause its freeezing in the room of my apt that has internet, lol. i got a space heater today though and i have it right next to me so i can finally bear to sit in this room for more than 5 min, haha. k, so the trip was amazing!! everything was a little last minute and there were a million unexpected changes, haha, but it all worked out and was so much fun..and the philippines and thailand are [View Full Entry]

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