2012 at the finish line...

What a year it's been. Korea. America. China. Weddings. Funerals. Old friends. New friends. Re-meeting my brothers as men. Life decisions. Oye. Big year. Getting ready for 2013. That's weird. I'm going to turn TWENTY-SIX this year. I have to decide where to live/what to do next. I'm looking forward to this year. 2012, you've been great. 2013, welcome to the crazy.



New Years Eve, 2012. Bali.

Coworkers in Korea. February.

Magkoli. March.

Sunnie Teacher. April.

Yoanna in Korea in May.

Wedding at home in June.

Beach with my girls for the 4th of July.

Favorite Boys on the farm for the August Camp Dale.

Cosplay welcome to China in September.

China coworkers in Beijing for October.

Coworkers in November.

Christmas Dinner.

2 hour wait for our Christmas Dinner.

Merry Christmas and so long to 2012 from China.

December.

Yeah. That was my year in a nutshell. Hope you enjoyed. I'll be sure to keep you posted about 2013. Heyoo!

Christmas Cheer

This is what's been going on this week. We're having a staff dinner at a pizza place to celebrate Christmas. Heyoo. Love love!

Class picture before our performance. Me, Nobunari, Bieru, Sofia, Amelia, Minsoo, Susan, Anna Teacher, Whitney, Veda.

The finale of our performance.

Goofballs.

I found invisible beer and soju. BEST DAY EVER.


Still in China

Hey. Mid December. Talent show on Tuesday. Should be embarrassing. I think we have a half day for Christmas. Yay! We also may have three days off for New Years, but we're not sure about that either. We went out last night for Chris' birthday. We did some speed bowling (they closed at 9 but we got there at 8:30, so we had to bowl really fast. I got 120!) then we went to a pizza-bar place and did that. Next we went to Korea town and I found Makgeoli and Soju!!! HOORAY! People were less than impressed. It was a good night.

Schools good. The kids are doing well and we're trying to wrap up and get ready for the show and finals. Teaching Biological Reproduction is going better than I expected. I have decided that I really miss working with the babies. Just them being happy to see me everyday. I think that's why I do so much tutoring-I crave the babies. 12 year olds are HARD!

I've been working on updating my resume/CV (career victories). That's hard. I'm trying to get my act together and come up with a plan of sorts. As usual, open to suggestions.

Happy Holidays guys!! Much love!

The board for our last unit, How the Goverment Works. On the left are the countries that are represented in our class. On the right are profiles that they did for them.

Chinese take-out. No fun boxes.

Sunday breakfast- Rice and eggplant. Surprisingly delicious.

Cold and snowy enough that I voluntarily wear shoes. Terrible.

How the snow gets cleared.

And in this corner

In China vs google/gmail, China is winning. It's also winning at annoying me. I have created a new email address. katiedale09@hotmail.com  . (I don't want to talk about it) 

I'd suggest emailing me at that one if you want a response in the near future. Gmail works on occasion.

That is all for the moment.

December. 2012

Is it all going to end this month? Maybe. Hope not though. I've got some stuff that I haven't done yet.

Let me clarify my vacation plans for those of you who have been asking. I am flying from Shenyang to Cambodia with an Irish girl named Shauna. We will run around that country from the 16th until February 6th. Ian may meet me there. All I know for sure about Cambodia is that I want to get my scuba certs. After Cambodia, I am going to meet Sophia in Kuwait. She will have another week of work, so I will tool around Kuwait. When she finishes work, we will go to Sri Lanka (plan, not finalized as of now). We will do our thing there until I have to leave to be back at work on the 26th or so.

December. Happy Birthday GrandpaBob on Wednesday. We have a big old talent show coming up that I have to plan an act with the kiddos for. Luckily 12 year olds really like to do things like that. NOT. We do not get Christmas or the Eve off. I believe we get New Years Day off, but we're not sure about that. We are starting a new I.B. topic Monday. We just finished "How the Government Works". The next one is "Biological Reproduction" I am not looking forward to that. Not even a little bit. But hey!

This past weekend I made my Chinese project, Tony hang out with me all day. (He's the guy I'm forcing to be my friend.) We ran around town and ate a Hot Pot. Its like Korean Shabu-shabu. A big pot of broth and you throw meat and veggies in and then pick out what you want to eat, dip it in sauce, and eat it. Its a fire on the table deal. Very yummy. Things are good. Happy December!

Tony eating Hot Pot.

I got a ticket, I got a ticket, I got a ticket, hey, hey, hey, HEY!

That's right folks. I have a ticket. Two actually! I am officially going to Cambodia on January 15th. I am officially going to Kuwait on February 7th. (SOPHIA!) That's all I have worked out so far. I'll keep you posted.

School is good. I have a new student from Japan. He has a genetic disease called MELAS. I've done some googling on that and all I can really make out is that it has something to do with lactic acid. His mom told me she doesn't think he'll live past the teenage years. He's 11, but due to 4 strokes/seizures in January he functions at about a 5 year old level. However, he functions in Chinese, Japanese, and English. It's been stressful and my other students do really well with him sometimes and less so others.

I am being observed on Thursday by pretty much everyone in the school. All first year teachers get to experience this pleasure. Luckily, the homeroom teachers get observed fairly regularly anyway so that both myself and the kiddos are sort of used to it. This one is the most serious one though, so I'm a bit nervous. It'll be fine though probably.

We found a bar that has amazing Western food so I went there with the ladies last night.

Today is shaping up to be a Katie Day. I'm reading Dracula.

The internet has been very annoying still. Sorry. I miss contacting you too.


Oh yeah! Happy Thanksgiving!! The Americans made some food, but I had tutoring and then some skyping with Ian and the family. CHENEY was home and I finally got to see that muscle princess. It sounds like things are good on the home front.

Muscles. Cheney!

Wooster cup coffee. Happy Thanksgiving!

I've been swimming a few times each week and trying to run at least once. I'm also in the process of forcing a Chinese co-teacher to be my friend. I made him go swimming this week. That's been my project since the internet is making watching tv while knitting very un-relaxing.

Love!

SameSame

Not much to report. Just checking in. I'm super excited that Obama was reelected. I haven't been able to check in on all the election day results due to the Chinese "election". What? Oh, let me tell you. China is appointing a new president that noone knows anything about. My assistant tells me that this is because China is too big to know the people in it. As a result, the internet has been much harder to use than normal, and I find it very frustrating. Therefore, I have not been on it much. Thing are expected to go back to just the normal Chinese frustrations that come from trying to use the internet by next week. Fingers crossed.

I woke up today due to a phone call from my co-worker, Peter. Peter is an Australian-Chinese man who is a subject teacher. (I am a homeroom teacher, there are 5 of us and 14 subject teachers in the English section) He was calling to invite me to his home to hang out with his family. I said "Ok!" so I went and hung out with a Chinese family. It was way less awkward than I thought. He has a 7 year old daughter who I played with. His mom made a delicious lunch. Not too bad.

I'm finally getting around to planning my vacation. As noted earlier, the internet has made it super challenging. I am going to Cambodia for 3ish weeks, Kuwait for a few days and to SEE SOPHIA! FINALLY AFTER A MAJORITY OF OUR RELATIONSHIP HAS BEEN LONG DISTANCE AND I"M SO EXCITED. Then we are going to Sri Lanka. I think the actual traveling will be a bit pricey, but the rest of it should be AWESOME. I am unsure as to if I will be doing Cambodia on my own or not. I think I will get my scuba certs though, so that's cool.

Work was good this week. I started a language exchange with one of the school administrators, so hopefully I can pick up some Mandrin. I  know a bit, but I usually just panic and speak Korean, which is weird because I didn't really speak much Korean in Korea. Ehh, what can you do?

Bathrooms.

The homeroom teachers after I was observed by about 30 teachers all day. Brendon has grades 3-4, Chris has the juniors, I have 5-6, Emma has 1-2, Dave has the seniors. And he's the boss.

Life is good. It's getting cold. It snows sometimes. I found the yarn shops, so I have a hobby going. Finally.

Oh, hey November! Fancy meeting you here.

Happy November! Happy Election week! We had a Halloween thing last week. Now we have Exams coming up. I've picked up a few more tutoring hours. I'm trying to plan my winter vacation trip. (Anyone want to meet me in Cambodia January 15-Feb 1st?) It's supposed to snow this week.

Mom, thank you. It was a big hit.

Myself and Emmathedilemma on the Halloween Pub-Crawl.

Happy Halloween!

Minsoo, Veda, Misuzu, Anna Teacher, Amelia, Sofia, Susan, Bieru.

The girls.

Bieru made his ninja costume out of a shirt. He's very proud of himself.

 

 

That's all. I know nothing too exciting. Love and miss.

Nightmare

Thursday and Friday we had a field trip. It was almost fun, but mostly terrible. We had a 4 hour train ride, 3 hours in an aquarium, way too long in a hotel, 3 hours in a zoo, and a 4 hour train ride. My kiddos are at that akward age where they want the freedom the older kids have but they're still not quite responsible enough for that, so we have a lot of arguments.

Here are some quotes that I like.

 "It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are."
"I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal labotomy."
"I'm going to live forever, or die trying."
"If they're shooting at you, they're shooting through me."
"It's faster if you run."

Batman Panda!

Class picture at the Aquarium.

Dinner time.

Boys and some jellyfish.

Myself and Anna, my assistant at the seal show.

English Primary 5&6-my kiddos.

A mermaid and my girls.

Ironman Panda!

My Japanese girl and some giraffes.

BEIJING-CHECK

Went to Beijing this week. I went with the three English lads I work with. We had fun. I was less than sober the morning we went, so when I packed myself, I took 3 shirts, 17 pairs of underwear, a frisbee, and a vest. I forgot tennis shoes, my toiletries, and the cash I had ready to go. If you read a guide book, it will tell you the four main attractions of Beijing are: The Great Wall, The Summer Palace, The Forbidden City, Tianenmen Square. We did them all, plus some.  These pictures are what we did for five days in the capital city of China.

Being lazy and taking the lift up to the Wall.

Chris, Me, Brendan, and Dave. On the Wall.

Me. My water. A lollipop. The Great Wall of China.

Our first night in Beijing. We accidentally all matched.

Dancing with BossmanDave.

At the Summer Palace.

Dave, Chris, Brendon, Me.

The Great Wall-CHECK

There it is again!

The best part? The 10 minute slide down the mountain that the Wall is on top of.

Going down the mountain.
(Mom, I say that like the guy in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance kid does.)

The Forbidden City. Not Forbidden. Not a City.

Brendon, Me, Chris, Dave. The Forbidden City.

The boys and the Bird's Nest.

Me and the Bird's Nest.

Swimming past the Water Cube.

The last afternoon, the boys got massages. I went to the Lama Temple.