AlliM

My last week in Shanghai was pretty rough. I had my last Monday class a week before I left and I wasn't even allowed to tell the parents because the new foreign teacher had just arrived and they still weren't sure which classes she would be taking. Friday and Saturday I had full days of teaching, ending with saying goodbye to coworkers. I was a mess. I was supposed to come in on Sunday to do office hours. When you no longer have classes to plan for, "office hours" entail sitting on your computer for 6 hours. This is clearly a ridiculous thing to do on your last day of work, but CHINA. Luckily, my co-teacher for the Monday class got confused and told all of the parents that I would teach one more class and ... read more

We left for Thailand at 4:30 am Christmas morning, which is a pretty depressing time to be awake if you’re not on your way to Thailand. We flew first to Guangzhou, my third Chinese airport, and my favorite. They had way more food and entertainment options than the others did, so we spent a fine time on our 3.5 hour layover. Ali bought an iPad game and we spent a good deal of the time trying to figure out what the heck we were supposed to do next, which mainly involved us yelling things like, “Maybe you can dig up the blood with that piece of wood over there!” and making everyone around us feel uncomfortable. As we were getting on the plane and having our tickets checked, we found out that Lindsey was not on ... read more

Ok. Finally. I’ve managed to sit down to write about my week in Indonesia. I left EARLY Saturday morning with David, who was taking a flight to Japan. We said goodbye at the airport. Like GOODBYE (?) goodbye, because he isn’t coming back to Korea, but we might see each other in the future in China. So it went something like “See you around…maybe.” I headed to my gate where I ran into a bunch of friends who work at a different school. Just about every foreign teacher from their school was taking this morning flight to Kuala Lumpur, and then heading on to different locations. This included my friend, Sam, who I was travelling with and was currently planning on meeting up with in Kuala Lumpur. Being on the same flight makes that a heck ... read more

So far this spring, I’ve been enjoying my classes pretty well. I started teaching a class on Thursdays for beginners were we watch cartoons (mostly classic stories, Rapunzel, the Frog Prince, etc.) and then learn some of the vocabulary and do some activities. That’s been a lot of fun since I like teaching the beginning learners a lot but my one regular class of beginning learners is a bit of a handful. This class has some of my favorite students from last year in it, as well as some other good kids from our beginner classes. Next month I’ll be picking up a third grade class that went through one year of our kindergarten program. I taught one of the students for several months last year and I absolutely love him. And I think it’s a ... read more

We were up by 6:15 to eat breakfast and catch our van to Honda Bay. Named for the Spanish name “Hondo Agua” (Deep Water), it’s apparently a popular tourist destination for snorkeling, fish-feeding, swimming, and eating. Our first stop was a floating dock in the middle of the bay where you could swim or snorkel. We didn’t stay there long before heading on to Snake Island (named for the shape, not the inhabitants) where I read and wrote, everyone else tanned, and we ate lunch (more grilled tuna and cucumber salad!) After lunch we headed to one last island before heading back to town with the other tourists on the 5:00 flight back to Manila. We learned that if you pronounced Palawan “PAH-lah-wan”, it means someone from Palawan. “pah-LAH-wan” means the island. When we got back, ... read more