First, to complete my last post about the REAL China- Last week, after visiting Tianyi (and H&M), Mom and I wandered a little south to the huge market/bazaar area I mentioned.  This was the China I had been looking for - Dark winding passageways lined with stalls selling various goods of every kind, while breathing in the nasty reek of who-knows-what and, simultaneously, wonderful grilled foods and rice aromas, the energetic bustling of many Chinese running...

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Well, feel like I had a true Ningbo weekend. Went out Friday with some other teachers, including the wonderful Katie, another intern from i-to-i.  Together we are the Katies. And this morning Mom and I met up with new wonderful Chinese friend Jim at his school.  The kids there were soooo ridiculously freaking adorable!!! Then he put Mom and me in the right direction for Tianyi square.  I thoroughly enjoyed my first visit to the giant...

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Hot showers!  We have them now. We love them. It's heaven. Enough said. Had a pretty good weekend. It was sunny. Awesome. Warming up and it's lovely. Got to see some other parts of the city and make some new foreign friends (yay!) My awesome Guatemalan neighbor let me borrow his portable heater.  I carry it around the apartment with me like a favorite toy. This is really living! My Korean students and I actually had...

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The good news: 1. I only had two classes today and was able to sleep in. Yay! 2. The repairmen finally came yesterday to fix our water heater (meaning hot showers! even if they did smoke like chimneys the whole time they were in the apartment). 3. It's sunny!  Which means it's warming up (unfortunately our heater broke on Tuesday).  It is so much lighter out that the landscape looks different - so much so...

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Today I am beginning my three-day weekend!!! I won't have Friday classes until next week so I'm hoping to enjoy my extra day off by mopping, laundry, and lesson planning.  Yesterday I only had two classes: the first was the worst class I've head (very poor English, very badly behaved) and the second was the best class I've had.  Oh I wish all my classes were like them! I'll be looking forward to them every...

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Just finished my first class. The students were grade 5 (aged 12 to 13) and there were 42 of them.  Their regular teacher was there to translate (which should have been a relief but instead intimidated me a lot - seeing as this was my first time teaching EVER).  I had come up with a lesson plan to use and it went well to a certain extent but I'm not sure how much the students...

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Today we arrived at our placement school, in Ningbo. At the moment I'm missing the wonderful friends I made in Beijing and the comfort of safety in numbers. I can't really say much yet about the new place. Well, actually, I could say a lot, but for the moment I'm just going to keep my mouth shut and keep Bob Marley (every little thing will be alright) on repeat... And be glad that I have...

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