I am NOT a secretary

Happy Monday (in China) bloggers! As predicted, not much has happened this week but for those of you interested, let's catch you up.

Monday I came back to Jinan and Tuesday I was back at work. I pretty much hit the ground running because I had a meeting at 10am and the deadline for the handbook I'm creating got pushed up a month... Oh did I mention that I'm creating a student handbook? Yea. My Oregon boss told Tony, the dean of students, that Tony was to create a handbook in English (keep in mind we're in China, our students speak Chinese as a first language, and Tony speaks English as a THIRD language). There's some drama among the administration because my boss doesn't think the dean of students counts as administration so they've been having a work war ever since the first day they met. Any way, so Tony comes to me and say, "Brian wants you to create a student handbook," then walks away! I was like oh wth?! But like a good employee I sucked it up and went to work on it. The task was assigned May 1st and I was told I had until July 10th. I was like sweet plenty of time to figure out what needs to go into the handbook. I spent the first two weeks of May getting translations of the school rules to put into the handbook. The last two weeks while I waited for more translations, I edited grammar, made sure the formatting was alright, and put everything that I thought we needed in there.

Then Tuesday comes around and my boss says, "so we're having a staff meeting next week Tuesday and we need this handbook by Monday." Well, I was told July 10th not June 10th. So I spent all week busting my butt getting as many translations as possible and working on this damn thing during working hours and when I went home.... I was so mad that I got caught in the middle of the admin war. But I got it done by Friday and gave drafts to people to look over. I only had minor edits to make. What really pissed me off and made me feel REALLY disrespected was that when I went to my boss and handed him the draft he said, "Just so you know, when secretaries are trained on making documents like this, they underline things that need to be edited so you should take out the underlining on the headings." HOLD UP! I'M NOT A SECRETARY! HOW DARE YOU JUST CALL ME THAT AND TREAT ME LIKE I'M ONE! I spent the rest of the day Friday out of my office because I was too mad to even think about what he just said.

Rewind back to Tuesday's 10am meeting.... BossMan also gave me a task that he assigned to someone else 5 months ago. I pulled it up in an email and sent it to him being like uhhhh you already have what you need for this. How is he this unorganized?! I don't get it. He also asked me to look for ways around students having to take the IELTS and TOEFL to get into universities.... Ummm it can't be done, it's required, task done.... CHECK! I swear... this man should not be an administrator!

Fast forward to Friday night after work. I wanted to go out to eat because I was still in my low mood from my Beijing trip and plus I was mad at my boss. So I set up a wechat group and asked if anyone wanted to go out. Then it started thunderstorming right as we were getting ready to go out. FML! The lightning and thunder happened at exactly the same time so basically we were right under it. I'm pretty sure I'm partially deaf from that clap of thunder that night. We still braved the storm to go get food and had a pretty decent time.

Saturday I had a performance so I spent all day stretching, prepping, and getting myself beautiful :) It was a nice relaxing day and the performance went well. A lot of the SDU students love watching me dance so they ask me back a lot :D Snaps for me! Haha.

Sunday I went shopping with Christine. We needed a girls day out even though it was hotter than hell. We got a bit cranky because we were searching for a tea market and couldn't find it after riding a bus in the heat and walking a lot in the sun for about 2 hours. That was pretty much the end of that day.

This morning we were on our way to work and about half way to school we got stuck in traffic. Our 45-minute commute turned into a 2 hour commute! Monday morning Jinan traffic FAIL! We were about an hour late for work. I don't have any classes so I don't care but for everyone who did, they felt a bit frazzled. This week is a long week and we're anticipating next week to be a long week as well :( SUPER LAME but on the 20th I'll be headed back to Beijing again. I can't wait. I might have to take some time off work but I have a lot of strong arguments as to why I deserve that time off aside from the fact that it's Saturday that I'm taking off. Oh China. These next two weeks (unless I get caught in another admin war) should be pretty chill so I'll update you if I have anything to update you on.... in the mean time, check out my friend's blog http://aiccomics.blogspot.com/  It's some pretty good stuff :P  I'll post again next weekish! Until then... Laters!