..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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helloooo! back in china and missing the heat of the philippines & thailand! both were great and we had so much fun and there's soo much tell & soo many pics to upload..but unfortunately i'm stuck in shanghai!! we landed in shanghai at about 1am, Sat night and stayed at a hostel, planning to get a bus to zhangjiagang on sunday. when i got to the bus station, however i found out that that due to snow, the highways to zhangjiagang were closed, and therefore there's no way to get there at all! lol.. alesia however was able to get a [View Full Entry]

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wow, it's been a crazyy past week! i'm gonna go backwards so.. #1 ..not sure what i last wrote on here about my plans for our 6 week vacation, as it's changed a million times over the past few weeks but its finally set!!! First I'm going with Alicia who teaches in Changzhou through ciee and her friend, and her friend's 2 friends..so 5 of us total.. to the Phillippines for a week!! and from there Alicia and I are going to Thailand for 6 days!! i finish class on friday at 10am and i'm then going to meetup with everyone [View Full Entry]

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hey, soo, first of all i finally got a few pics of the noodle place, and of one of the muslim restuarants i eat at about once a week.. they're not such great pics cause i was trying to be discrete since there were people eating who probably wouldn't want me to take their picture, lol, but as soon as i figure out how to ask if i can take a pic, and to tell them that i want to take pics to show you guys..i'll put up some better ones, haha. second, i went to the movies here for the [View Full Entry]

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ha. so i'll start with last week. on monday carol very vaguely mentioned that there would be some kind of dinner for foreign teachers that thursday... then on thursday i found out that it was actually just for foreigners living in zhangjiagang in general (not just teachers) and that we were to meet at the front gate and someone from the school would drive us to the hotel where the dinner was. we then found out about an hour before that it was a kinda fancy dinner and that we should get dressed up. i wore black pants and the short [View Full Entry]

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so, i'm back in the office! soo annoying..not only do we not have the internet, but we have no electricity!! they've been doing some insane work..like digging up tons of the sidewalk and stuff near our apt building, and then today some guy accidently cut our wires!! it happened around 12:30, right before I had to go teach so I just left, thinking that by the time I got back they would have fixed it. (i didn't know they actually cut off our electricity, haa). when i got back though steve said he had talked to carol, and she said it [View Full Entry]

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hey..lots of fun this weekend! started out with our bus ride around 5:30 to Changzhou. we've figured out how to read the bus tickets by now which is nice so we know we know exactly what to do, and where to go..and there were only about 5 people on the bus besides us which was funny..and there was a funny chinese movie with english subtitles playing which was very exciting..except that they started playing the movie from the middle, lol. we got to Changzhou and met Alesia and some of her other American friends around 7pm..and then we tagged along with [View Full Entry]

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so yesterday and today have been kind of crazy... we were originally going to visit tiffany and michelle in Xuzhou a few weeks ago but for whateevr reason it didn't work out..then we planned on going this weekend, but last week they found out that they had some kind of competition that they had to judge..so they wouldn't really be able to hangout with us if we came. so we planned on going next weekend, until tiffany and michelle found out yesterday that the competition has been postponed until next week.. so kinda last minute, we decided to go this weekend. [View Full Entry]

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