Again with the missed updates!

Except this time I have an excuse... It was midterms week last week... which means that I was grading midterms this weekend/yesterday because scores are due tomorrow. So I was actually working! I know, I know, shocker! Lol So here's what went down last week:

Monday and Tuesday were regular days with regular classes except some of my students had tests and I ended up with classes of like 3 or 4 students.

Wednesday I had block (two periods of the same class) but my other block was canceled because those students had midterms. It was a pretty boring start to my week. 

But then Thursday hit and all bets were off because it was the grade 10 and 11 field trip.  They called it camping but it wasn't. When I think camping, I think hiking to the spot where we'll sleep and set up tents and then do activities in the woods... What we did was what you imagine as day camp in the summer. There was a big fake rock wall and a bunch of equipment for CS (Imagine paintball with lasers instead of paint and no boundaries). We slept in tents in the -5 degrees Celsius temperature. But we we were also on concrete in the parking lot... Yea... it was like urban camping. It was entertaining. I made it to the top of the rock wall! One of the few females who did actually. The girls who watched me were so cute when I came down they all complimented me and hugged me. I played some of the bonding games like passing a water bottle from person to person using only your head and shoulders. I got very close to my teammates lol.  We went on a pseudo hike scavenger hunt up a rock mountain. I thought it was weird that we'd go somewhere with no trail but we were with a guide so as long as I didn't leave the group, I was good. The kids had a lot of fun and despite not understanding most of what everyone was saying, I had a great time too.  The best part in my opinion was getting to know different people. I teach 12s and only 10s and 11s were on this trip so it was nice to meet students that I could potentially teach next year. I also got to meet teachers that I hadn't seen before (well maybe I'd seen them but I just met them last week). Apparently everyone knew about me and they wanted to get to know me better but we just never really had a reason to cross paths and talk. So now I have lots of new friends :D My favorite new faculty member that I got to know is Jeremiah. He has a half sister who lives in Japan so he knows some Japanese and practices it with me (yes he's fluent in Chinese and English and working on Japanese... Jealous yet? I am!).  He's also applying to Princeton right now so I've been working with him to help him prep for his interview. He reminds me of myself when I was prepping for my interview... except his resume is ridiculous and he has WAY more accomplishments than I do now let alone back when I was applying for college. If he doesn't get accepted, then Princeton deserves to be shut down. He's an amazing candidate.  Anyway, we returned home around 5pm Friday evening and had to work Saturday.

Saturday classes were the usual.  I started grading midterms! I'm officially a teacher. I spent all day reading over short essays and grammar. It was fun to mark up everyone's papers... Not that I enjoy finding mistakes in my students' work. I just had a lot of fun with my red pen. Not surprisingly my students all did really well because we prepped them for the midterm and they studied really hard.

Sunday I went shopping with my new friends whom I met on the field trip. I spent a ridiculous amount of RMB on Starbucks travel mugs for my family and because I spent so much I got a free hot chocolate.  I'm still short two mugs, which hopefully I'll find next weekend. The inventory changes so drastically from day to day!

Monday... graded more midterms and decorated my dance club bulletin board. I think I'm gonna win that competition because so many foreign teachers just aren't doing it. Really the competition is between Michael and I. He's very competitive so we have a lot of fun trash talking each other and stealing students from each others' classes to help with our own boards. I can't wait to see what his board look likes.

This week is another short week so I'll be going out this weekend! I'm so excited to be going to a club called Soho. All my students say it's the "foreigner's bar" so I should feel right at home :P I'll let you know how that goes. Until then... Laters!