Okay, here's me in my bedroom playing with my new camera! Ni Hao!

Here's a photo that's also on my Facebook - a new Monopoly-ish sort of game the real name of which I do not know, but we call it "Uncle Wang" because the little blue guy on skiis there on the board is apparently named "Uncle Wang". You buy countries instead of Boardwalk or Park Place, etc. It's a good way to learn the Chinese names of some countries.

Here's another Facebook double-post of me and my roomates from left to right - me, Stephanie, Katie-Jo, and Amanda. We're celebrating 9-09-09 at 9:09 pm (or close to it anyway). I discovered ocean spray cranberry juice in 24 oz bottles at the 7-11 for about 50 cents and drink maybe two a day. I should be super healthy.

Another Facebook double post of me and Katie-Jo. The flash went off right in my face. We're about the same age and both like to hike and do kind of the same stuff, so it's fun to get to know her. She speaks really good Chinese.

Here we are at the night market with our Watermelon Juices. This is funny, because Jimmy, our Taiwanese friend in between me and Katie Jo, taught me how to say "watermelon juice" in Chinese - Shi Guo Jir (I don't really know pinyin either so that translation could be completely off, sorry!) so I practiced and then trotted off to successfuly order my own watermelon juice. Then when I came back to the group, Colin , Jimmy's roomate there on the far right was getting taught by Jimmy how to say "watermelon juice" and then he trotted off to order his "shi guo jir". Then when he got back to the group, another friend with us, Roger (who is taking this picture) was getting taught how to say "shi guo jir" and he trotted off to get some. Then Katie Jo decided she wanted some. Then Jimmy went. One. at. a. time. The Watermelon Juice lady probably thought we were nuts.

Here's me and Katie Jo at the Cash Box on her birthday I think. Cash Box is a KTV place (read: Karaoke TV). I didn't realize until looking at this picture just now that I had stuck my face in the guy body. Oh well.

Ah, here we go: classroom pictures! Here is a Monster my little Bobby made with bottle caps dipped in paint.

Here are some remnants of our Butterfly Theme: handprint butterflies! I am especially fond of the crooked Googly eyes.

Supposedly this project was to demonstrate the symmetry of a butterfly's wings. You paint half of the thing then fold it and smoosh down and it's suppose to end up symmetrical. Yeah, well the paint we used dried too fast to transfer to the other half and we ended up with many very non-symmetrical butterflies. Oh well. Live and learn. Read: won't be doing this project ever again.

Here's one of our Ant projects that flutters about in the wind from the fan every day. You can see my students are quite creative. They really love to draw and color and make stuff. This bodes well for me as their teacher, as I too am fond of these things.

Also from our Ant theme, learning about ant communities and behaviour, each student drew their own version of an "ant home" underground ant nest with chambers, each with a tunnel leading out of each corner of the paper so they could get tacked up to make one giant "ant nest" this worked quite nicely, I think.

Here is "My Domain". This is where I stand and teach for 3-5 hours every weekday. Notice all the fruit posters on the sliding glass door. Those were our only real wall decorations when I started teaching in this classroom. We now have lots more. Yay!

Here are some of my Bumblebee boys on break playing a game of "Paper, Scissors, Stone". This is a very popular game here and is also a basis for many other hand games. Also, it's a GREAT way to keep things fair in class. If there's ever a quibble about something being fair, we "paper, scissors, stone" it and whoever wins gets to do whatever it is or whatever. "Paper, scissors, stone" is like the law to kids around here. I love it.

Here is my class from the door. The kids are on a break so they're allowed to play games like Uno or read books or whatever on the mat.

My classroom from the door. It's a pretty good sized classroom, lots of wall space for our crafts.

Here is the downstairs "computer lab" area, and meeting area. That's my co-worker Karen, another foreign teacher doing some kind of prep at the table. There on the back wall there are four corkboards with pictures of each of the four foreign teachers and some basic information for the parents (where we're from, our experience, etc.) Mine is the pink on the left.

Here is my (very messy today) desk.

Here is the teacher's area facing the front of the school. It's little messy.

Here is my favorite tea drink: "duo duo lu cha" which is yogurt green tea, which I order "ban tang" or half-sugar and it comes out just right (still plenty sweet) and with ice. oooh it's so gooood... and I have gone to this one tea shop around the corner from my school so often that all I have to do now is pull up and they know what I want. Notice the sealed plastic "lid" which is the most clever thing ever. Scooter-proof!

I bought a new camera! I braved my way to the Nova (a conglomeration of electronics vendors - Dad, you would have a ball there) and bought a brand-new 10.1 mp Sony Cyber-Shot, a cuter, smaller, much newer version of my broken clunker of a 5 mp Sony Cyber-Shot. It's red. I'm happy. And I think I got a pretty good deal. So, with that, I present the above photos I took yesterday in my classroom. And also a few other places.

Whew, it took a long time to upload and type all that. I'm not great with the layout of pictures, so sorry if it's a little confusing to follow.

I have to go to bed now. I'll try to type more stuff this weekend. And hopefully there will be more pictures posted more often now that I have a working camera. Yay!

Zai jian!!