Blogs from Baguio, Philippines, Asia - page 4

So it's been awhile since we've published anything. We're definitely getting into a routine here. It's feeling a lot more like home and normal day-to-day life, rather than a new experience in a foreign country. School is still amazing. I think in the last blog I mentioned that I was going to be teaching another IB class. The admin decided that it would be a better idea to make it a combined and co-taught class so the other teacher could still work on teaching IB, but get some feedback from me and then also watch me teach it as well. It's going pretty well right now because the two classes are the in the same spot (the curriculums are very similar, however my HL (higher level) class goes a little more in depth and covers more ... read more

School is amazing :) I love my job! I just can't describe how awesome it is to teach a subject that you're passionate about to great kids. And somehow I lucked out and got all the honors/higher level classes, so most of my kids actually like math too, in addition to being very motivated. All of my classes have been going really well. I've actually been able to do some fun activities and games because the kids will actually work on what I ask them to do. Such a change from last year. However, one of my students in 12th grade IB (the one who won the math competition... it wasn't 13th place... it was first place... I misread the sign. It said the 13th annual math olympiad. And he placed first, nationwide.) is probably way ... read more

Again, it's been a busy past few days. I'll start where I left off... Friday was just another day of orientation. There was some time to do classroom preparations, so that was nice. I think I'm going to be a little overwhelmed with the IB curriculum, but the good thing is, I only have six IB students between the two classes :) I haven't really thought too much about the other classes that I'm teaching (8th, 9th, and 10th grade regular math), but they shouldn't be too bad because it's the regular American curriculum (Algebra, Geometry, and Algebra 2). One benefit of this school though is that we only meet with each class every other day. So even though I have 5 different preparations, I only have two or three classes each day (they are 75 ... read more

Having missed Banaue and Sagada, I did the next best thing. Go up to Baguio City, the Summer Capital of the Philippines. Temperature here was so pleasant between 16 to 24 Celsius. What a respite from the sweltering heat in Metro Manila where we live and suffer 36 Celsius temps. With the NLEX and new SCTex highway, the journey was shortened considerably that we made it to Baguio well before lunchtime. Just a 5 hour car ride over good roads and via Marcos Highway on the uphill climb. On our downhill drive towards Metro Manila, we chose the more famous Kennon Road. In years past, we have visited the usual touristy sites in Baguio City. The "routine" calls for visits to the Cathedral, Mines View Park, Wright Park, Mansion House, Burnham Park, Camp John Hay and ... read more

Thursday March 31, 2011 We had breakfast of a pastry that was a carmel, leche (milk) topping - and of course pineapple juice - we then walked over to Carpios. We all got in the Nissan truck and went to Minesview park ( where there used to be gold mined) We went up to the top of the mountain - took pictures of the mountains - then dressed in native costume and took pictures - then we shopped for souveniors - ate corn on the cob that was boiled and on a stick. We went to another part of the park and treated Gladys and Jackie to a horse ride. Gladys loves to take the horse ride! We passed out tracts in the park -then we went back to the Carpios and had grilled pork chop, ... read more