Monday, December 24, 2007
Check This Out
Not everyone likes Al Gore, but it's worth watching this movie. After living in a smog-filled city, I at least think it's worth revisiting what we can do to make things better.
Sunday, December 09, 2007
Winter Pics.
A little Borsch (beet soup) mustache.
She loved the balls on the hood and toes of this suit.
Our school Christmas party.
Some of my gal pals, and peeking in the back is Jason, our PE teacher. Moving On...
This was an eventful week. We had a white elephant party at our place Friday night and our school Christmas dinner at the Hyatt on Saturday. The biggest event, though, was finding out that we will be teaching in China next year. Joe and I put in a request to transfer within our school system if something was available. The only thing available for our positions was Shekou, China.
Here's what we know about it. Shekou is a city that was essentially built about 20 years ago. It's a shipping (I think industrial) city with lots of expatriates. We've been told it's very westernized. Hong Kong is 50 minutes away by ferry, so we will be on the coast. The lowest temperature in January is 60-something, so it will be a much warmer climate.
As for the school, it's a growing school like our school now, so it will have some growing pains as well I'm sure. I will teach secondary language arts and Joe will either teach the same or middle school cultural studies. The best part is that there is a 2-year-old program, so Sophia can go to school with us. Supposedly, we won't need a car and we will be a ten-minute walk from school.
It is hard parting with friends here, though. We see our students going through this too as they always are going in and out of our school. I don't think you get used to it. It's also hard parting with our teaching assignments since it's the first time we are actually teaching the subjects we set out to teach. It will be hard to part with our nanny too. We really like her a lot. It won't be so hard to leave Almaty. Things are getting expensive here. We've noticed that just the price of butter has increased from $3 to $4 in the last three months. That's just an example. We're hoping to save some extra money in China.
So, that's our big news. We had a very busy weekend with the two parties. Our white elephant party was pretty successful, and our school party was fun. It's a formal event, so it was fun getting all dolled up. The ladies went to a friend's house to get ready, and all the guys came over here to get ready. The school always has a nice buffet at the hotel, and one of our teachers did a good job DJing.
Sophia has been rambunctious lately. Yesterday when I was trying to do Pilates, she was trying to crawl all over me. She tripped and fell, landing smack onto a toy. Poor thing, her lip busted open and puffed up immediately. I felt bad for her, and now she has a big cut on her lip. She got over it pretty quickly, though, especially when we mentioned that she could watch Barney. She is obsessed with that stinking purple dinosaur! She grabs our hands and drags us over to where we keep the videos. "Barby, Barby" she asks. If she gets her way, then she starts to chant, "Barby, Barby" and hop up and down. She can even sing the Barney song, you know, "I love you, you love me" without any words of course. She likes to sub "Ma, ma, me, ma, ma, me." She has also learned the word "happy" from "If You're Happy and You Know It." She has stopped throwing a fit when I play piano, and now she wants me to play the songs she knows. Her favortie is probably "Heart and Soul." Her repertoire of words is growing fast too. We keep telling her just one week and she'll see all these people we've been pointing out in our pictures. We're looking forward to it.
Hopefully, Blogger will let me upload some photos since it froze the computer earlier. I have quite a bit to post.
Here's what we know about it. Shekou is a city that was essentially built about 20 years ago. It's a shipping (I think industrial) city with lots of expatriates. We've been told it's very westernized. Hong Kong is 50 minutes away by ferry, so we will be on the coast. The lowest temperature in January is 60-something, so it will be a much warmer climate.
As for the school, it's a growing school like our school now, so it will have some growing pains as well I'm sure. I will teach secondary language arts and Joe will either teach the same or middle school cultural studies. The best part is that there is a 2-year-old program, so Sophia can go to school with us. Supposedly, we won't need a car and we will be a ten-minute walk from school.
It is hard parting with friends here, though. We see our students going through this too as they always are going in and out of our school. I don't think you get used to it. It's also hard parting with our teaching assignments since it's the first time we are actually teaching the subjects we set out to teach. It will be hard to part with our nanny too. We really like her a lot. It won't be so hard to leave Almaty. Things are getting expensive here. We've noticed that just the price of butter has increased from $3 to $4 in the last three months. That's just an example. We're hoping to save some extra money in China.
So, that's our big news. We had a very busy weekend with the two parties. Our white elephant party was pretty successful, and our school party was fun. It's a formal event, so it was fun getting all dolled up. The ladies went to a friend's house to get ready, and all the guys came over here to get ready. The school always has a nice buffet at the hotel, and one of our teachers did a good job DJing.
Sophia has been rambunctious lately. Yesterday when I was trying to do Pilates, she was trying to crawl all over me. She tripped and fell, landing smack onto a toy. Poor thing, her lip busted open and puffed up immediately. I felt bad for her, and now she has a big cut on her lip. She got over it pretty quickly, though, especially when we mentioned that she could watch Barney. She is obsessed with that stinking purple dinosaur! She grabs our hands and drags us over to where we keep the videos. "Barby, Barby" she asks. If she gets her way, then she starts to chant, "Barby, Barby" and hop up and down. She can even sing the Barney song, you know, "I love you, you love me" without any words of course. She likes to sub "Ma, ma, me, ma, ma, me." She has also learned the word "happy" from "If You're Happy and You Know It." She has stopped throwing a fit when I play piano, and now she wants me to play the songs she knows. Her favortie is probably "Heart and Soul." Her repertoire of words is growing fast too. We keep telling her just one week and she'll see all these people we've been pointing out in our pictures. We're looking forward to it.
Hopefully, Blogger will let me upload some photos since it froze the computer earlier. I have quite a bit to post.
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