Woosh!

OMG where has the time gone?! The Christmas season always goes by so quickly. It went by especially fast here in China because I didn't have any days off until the new year. I performed twice in 2013 in CHINA!! Oh yea!! I choreographed and performed a lyrical piece with a student while another student sang. This performance was for the New Year Charity Concert. Then I choreographed and performed a solo dance for the faculty New Year's party. It was really fun to be able to perform again and I got a lot of compliments that Sharon, Tony, and Jeremiah needed to translate for me >.<

The calendar new year has come and gone. I spent some time with my friends here. It was interesting to celebrate without fireworks... It wasn't that much fun :/ But enough about the past.... Now on to the future with Chinese New Year and Spring Festival! I'm currently working day 3 of 7 today... I went back to work on Saturday and will work until Friday with regular classes. Then next week Monday I will stay late (until 7:30pm) to start giving speaking exams to my students. Written exams start Wednesday and continue until Friday. But I have no written exams to grade this time around. We have Monday-Thursday of grading and working before our winter holiday starts so I'm not really sure what I'll be doing during that time since I won't have classes or grading. Maybe learning more Chinese??? For winter holiday I will be going to Hong Kong for a week, Beijing for a week and Shanghai for 4 days. I'm pretty excited but also a little nervous... That's a lot of traveling during the busiest time of the year here and I hope I'll be able to find places to stay/train tickets!!!! I will be going to Hong Kong Disneyland of course and next year when Disneyland opens in Shanghai, I'm hopefully going there as well. But for now, I'm just focusing on getting through this holiday. So January 31st is Chinese New Year (I will be in HK for that!) and Spring Festival is February 10th (I will be in Beijing for that WITH MY FAMILY)!!!!!! My parents and aunty will be coming to visit for a week and a half and I'm pretty excited to have them up here. My Chinese sucks but at least we'll be in a city that has a plethora of English speakers :D Then I'm going to Shanghai to visit Jeremiah. His mother lives there so that's why he's going there for the holiday. He claims he's from Shanghai but really he's from 4 other cities that spread out across southern China. He just speaks Shanghaihua and has a Shanghai accent :P

So that's all I really have in terms of updates for you... I know my post is short this time around but when things start happening too quickly, I forget what's going on. As you can tell from my post, my brain is pretty scattered. I'm trying to focus on one thing at a time but it's not working so well. I'm too excited for the winter holiday to be here and the fact that I'm finishing up my first semester of working a legit job in my career and... and... and... BEING IN CHINA!!!!!!!! I'm just so crazy right now! I love it here and can't wait to share this culture with my family :D I'll probably update you all next week but the next few weeks after that I may be MIA. I'll try to keep you posted if I can! Until then... Laters!