moving foward (moving north)

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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 with gravy. I am looking at other job opportunities now and I got three interviews and a contract yesterday, that really boosts my cofidance for leaving Changzhou 😊 I am also looking foward to teaching small children, the school I am really looking forward to interviewing with on Tuesday is a new experimental school based on homely themed pre-schools on the north-east coast of US. Everyone there seems really nice and I am very excited about developing the school with them. Yesterday I did the hookie-pokie with Tom's neice for a while and then paid dress-up, photos to be posted soon.

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Photos

Wedding!
So first they pull up at 10:10am on 10/10/10. Everyone takes pictures with them like they're celebrities and they are cold, this pic is hella awkward

Wedding!
now we are posing with their rental car... lolz

Wedding!
each table had a fancy plate of ciggs!

Wedding!
Tom is pretending to be a smoker and Tom's sister is precious.

Wedding!
lolozzzzzz Engrish: We are Wdding!

Wedding!
We think we're cool here

Wedding!
The bride and groom!

Wedding!
people are making speeches and the groom is sweating bullets

Wedding!
not sure what this is...

Wedding!
So in order to open the box containing the rings he had to find the puzzles pieces hidden in the room.

Wedding!
He found the pieces!

Wedding!
They are lighting candles to symbolize their union but the candle won't light and the groom is freaking out

Wedding!
Success!

Comments

[melissa]

oh wow!
holy crap, what a change! looks like things are going great though :):):) best of luck in job hunting! much love melissa

[Lorena]

Adventure
What a fun adventure you are having! Everything seems t be working out wonderful for ya'll.

[Colleen]

Glad you moved on!
Sorry, I am reading your posts backwards, now that my student teaching is done and I have time to read them! I totally understand about the flakiness of administration and your quitting. Americans who have never been to work in China don't know what it's like... I guess we are used to something different here, especially in California and the Bay Area. Anyway, it seems like you're much happier now, and I'm so glad. When we left China, we also felt bad for leaving our students. But it was just too much disrespect for us for too long... And not all of it was the Chinese administration, but the older Americans/English teachers taking advantage of their higher position (and I suppose as older people who had been there longer) - basically taking away the classes we had signed up for while we were away on our paid vacation, and giving us all the crappy ones. It was kind of the straw that broke the camel's back, and it had been a long time coming. Just because we're foreigners with no "connections" does not mean we're slaves, or that we don't need to have a schedule and personal time to ourselves... I know exactly what you mean about many of the foreign (American/Canadian/British) English teachers being alcoholics, sleazy, or worse! We could tell you some stories... I'm glad you're learning some Chinese. I wish I had had more time to do that when I was there!