Feeling good

I am reading over the material that was given to us by the international college for teaching the course and it is very helpful. I am thinking that I will love to have my students speak about their wishes and what they want to do with this course when they are done with it. I think that this will be a good thing. I am actually very excited to start teaching now. I feel slightly more prepared now that I have begun to read the literature and I am very interested to meet my students. I am sure they are excited to meet me as well. I am looking forward to introducing myself and explaining why I have come to china to teach english here at ZFU. My airconditioner isn't actually broken so that is a good thing. Someday when I have kids I have decided that I want them to know what it is like in foreign countries. Maybe I will take them traveling with me when they are old enough and then they can appreciate other cultures the way I do. I really feel that I understand more now that I have been exposed to other countries and other ways of understanding. I love being here but I do miss home. I will start teaching on thursday and it can't come soon enough. I will see everyone in December, hopefully. I love you Blake!!

Today was good

Today I had my first meeting with my department. I will be teaching oral english to the ielts test. I will be teaching classes of about 6-8 students for 13.5 hours per week. If I do english corner I get paid overtime at a rate of 120 yuan per hour. This is $17.64/hour. Pretty good. The other american girl is named lynn. She is from Eau Claire and she is really cool! She got her degree from UW Eau Claire and did an internship in Hawaii last fall for geology. She has never taught english here either and she is my age. This is really cool and we both have the same problem with hawaiian lingo getting stuck in our heads. We both said da kine today! It was awesome!!! So anyway I explored, I am learning more mandarin and also I am making friends overall pretty cool. Miss you guys at home. I will post more pictures as soon as I take some. Kisses to all! :)

Sleepy

Well I got to Lin'an city yesterday and I already made a new friend. His name is Piffle. Technically its Morten but that just sounds weird. So I am poppet and he is piffle. We are the Oral English teachers here at ZFU. Well I didn't have to wait two months to learn how to order food. I am picking up mandarin pretty quickly. I am excited to start teaching but at the same time I am really really scared. I don't want to do something wrong and get fired. I am sure I will be fine. After all I know what not to do so thats a start. I don't want to offend anyone. Piffle told me yesterday that he accidentally compared "isolationism" and the great wall at his other job and one of his students threw a book at him and called him a terrorist. I will just have to be really really careful not to do something wrong. I will also have to research what is wrong because I don't know yet. Well I love you guys have fun wherever you are. Love you blake.

Exactly one year since SAS

So it is exactly one year since Semester at Sea started. I am uber excited to be leaving for China but at the same time sad that I will be missing all of my family and friends here in the United States. Apparently it takes 8 weeks to become conversationally understandable in a foreign language so I am about to go through hell for 2 months before I understand Mandarin enough to go to the grocery and buy a banana. I just want to let everyone know how much they all mean to me. I will miss my family so so much and I have had a lot of fun in WI. I will miss the water skiing but maybe I will get to go snow skiing this winter. I have one wish for a fall present... want a nice black wool coat. Thanks.

My year in China

I am sitting in the Chicago-Ohare Airport and my flight to Pudong has been delayed by about 2 hours. Well I am in the first class lounge and they have this amazing alcohol bar that you can just help yourself to. Its amazing. I'll add a picture of it at the bottom of the blob. They have tons of hard alcohol just sitting out with shot glasses next to it. Oh and cole, yeah thats about 40 cans of the 16oz guiness in there... oh yeah... FREE!!!! So this place is really cool so in the end its not so horrible that my flight got delayed. They have a shit ton of free food and they wait on you hand and foot. Its so cool. And all of this only cost me like $O because my dad is like super awesome. I love my daddy. Anyway so I am going to go drink a guiness because it looks really tempting over there staring at me fondly with its black can face. I miss you Blake Cole Maria!!! Love you guys. Oh yeah and everybody else too!!!