Currently Listening Wicked (2003 Original Broadway Cast) By Stephen Schwartz, Kristin Chenoweth, Idina Menzel see related

It's Official, I am now a fully licensed Biker Chick!

This is definitely blog-worthy news, I passed my road test and earned my motorcycle license!  Now all I need is a bike, right?  Since I'm headed off to China, I'll just be begging the 750cc Honda Shadow off of my mom every chance I get!  I've been out a few times by myself to run errands and stuff.  I felt kind of funny pulling in front of JoAnn Fabrics!  Biker Chick meets Craft Lady!  It is definitely a lot more fun riding alone and being able to choose my own path than following behind my dad in a staggered formation and being stuck in the third lane (right side of the road).  I can't wait for the week after my brother's wedding, my parents and I are going on a motorcycle trip in Georgia!  Instead of driving back to Crystal Lake after the festivities in North Carolina, we are going to trailer the bikes down and stay at a condo with some friends from our fellowship.  So we will visit with our friends and take trips out on the bikes.  The weather is going to be beautiful, I just know it!

As a graduation gift my parents paid for me to have motorcycle lessons at a school about 45 minutes away.  At the beginning of June, I took a weekend of classes which better established my basic skills set and gave me the confidence to make slow corner turns and U-turns, which I needed to successfully execute in order to pass the road test.  In the class, we spent some time in the classroom reading out of workbooks and watching videos, but then we also spent many hours out on the range performing maneuvers that would help us practice the skills we needed to pass the test and to be safe and competent drivers.  There were five in the class including me, three guys, and two of us ladies.  On the last day of class, the guys in our class voiced the opinion that we ladies were better riders than them and that they were jealous that we could ride so well already!  It definitely helps that I had been riding my mom's bike around since last summer and already had some of the skills down, but I did have to relearn some of the maneuvers on the school's 250cc bikes, which are a lot different (even though all of the basic mechanics are the same)!  The school is called the Illinois Council of Safety and I recommend the class to anyone.  It was a lot of fun and the instructors were very encouraging and I could not have passed the test without their instruction.  Another great thing about this school was the fact that I could take the test on the motorcycle I practiced on and could come in while another class was riding and practice the road course.  Even with all my practicing, I almost failed my road test because I stalled on the offset cone weave and had to put my foot down to restart the bike.  But I did not fail, and I will have my license for life!  I'm thinking about getting a motorcycle over in China in the spring to use through the summer and then sell in the fall.  We'll see!

Currently Listening High School Musical By Original TV Soundtrack see related

No News is Good News, Right?

First, I would like to thank all of you who have continued to check my blog every once in a while, even though I have not posted in almost six months!  Most of you I have had a chance to see at fellowship or at college, so you know I returned safely from China and some of you may have seen my pictures and heard a few stories!  I won't be backtracking and posting any of the stories about student teaching at QMIS, so if you would like to hear more about my experience or see the pictures, I would love to meet with you personally for an hour or so some afternoon this summer.  Coming back to the states after spending two months in China, I had to leave a few things behind so I could bring back all of my souvenirs and Christmas gifts.  Another thing I left in China, (which I didn't expect I would when I first went over) was my heart!  I enjoyed working with the ISC staff and living in China so much that I applied to go back and teach this coming school year.

So, another reason for finally updating my blog is the fact that I have been hired by ISC to teach at a new school they are opening in Wuxi!!!  I had hoped to be able to return to Qingdao, but there are a few government regulations about foreigners needing to have two years teaching experience before coming to China to teach.  Since the new school is opening in a different province, I think it will work out for me to teach there even though I am a first-year teacher.  Although I will not be back in Qingdao, I am very excited to be part of the foundational team for this new school!  I received the phone call about the job this past Monday, which was the beginning of finals week, so I got really distracted from my studies and started thinking of all the fun things I want to do with my second grade class!

Over the summer I will be attending a two-week-long PFO (Pre-Field Orientation) at Houghton College in New York.  The dates for the PFO are June 22-July 6.  Many of you know that I'm a bridesmaid in my brother's wedding, which will be taking place on July 7.  So, I'm going to have to leave the PFO a little early so that I can get to Charleston, North Carolina in time for the rehearsal!  After the excitement of the wedding is over, I will have a shortened summer as I will be flying to Beijing on July 23 (my 23rd birthday)!

Graduation is this Saturday, so I will see many of you at fellowship this Sunday and can tell you the good news myself!  Farewell Taylor!

Currently Watching Prison Break - Season One By Prison Break see related

I'm Not Dead!

I have not been mostly dead or anywhere near all dead over the past month, but not posting for so long and being on the other side of the world may have made it seem so!  (I could not resist a movie reference!)  Through a series of random events: sickness, technology problems, procrastination, and just plain laziness, I have not posted since my first few days in China and I now I must do a quick re-cap of everything I have been doing over the past four weeks!  Instead of doing this chronologically and driving myself nuts trying to remember what came first (chicken) I have decided to do this by topic.  This will definitely prove to be the longest post known to man, so feel free to skip over any topic(s) which do not interest you (clothing, puppy dogs, etc.)!

Housing – As I mentioned before, I am sharing an apartment with Jenny-lea who is an English teacher in the high school.  We think a lot alike and we have about the same taste in movies.  If it weren’t for the hair color and South African accent, she could be my older sister!  There are about nine different apartment buildings in the New World complex and each building has three gates (stair wells) and eight floors.  Where I’m staying happens to be at the very top!  Eight flights is twice as far as the Swallow Robin, lounge to 3^rd Floor run which I had grown accustomed to!  (Alright Swallowites, no more complaining about no elevator!)  Check out the stairwell video clip if you want to see what it is like going down.  (I don’t know if I’ll ever videotape the trip up because I don’t want you to hear me huffing and puffing half-way up the stairs!)  At some point you will get to see pictures in and out of the apartment, but from one window you can see many tall buildings and the mountains in the distance, and on the other side you can see ships on the ocean between the buildings.

Food – In pictures from my last post you were able to see some Chinese cuisine and I have not been starving since then, I have just not thought to take pictures of the food!  I have tried to cook at least once a week and it usually falls on Friday or Saturday night.  Ground-Nut Stew was a hit, the Spanish Rice was sub-par, and my Baked Potato Pizza needed salt.  For each of these dishes it was a challenge to find the correct ingredients.  I had to stew my own tomatoes and pre-cook fresh spinach for the stew, the meat on the rice turned out rubbery, and I accidentally bought beef instead of pork for the pizza because it was thinly sliced like bacon!  I bought a Starbucks travel mug so that I can be cool like the other teachers and drink coffee at the bus stop in the morning!  The mug is a special Qingdao one which I could not get in the states.  One of the Chinese staff, who teaches half of my students Chinese everyday, took me out for Chinese barbeque and she ordered so much!  There was meat on a stick, shredded potatoes, rice, and rib/cabbage/rice noodle soup!  I was not very hungry to begin with and I know she was trying to be generous and hospitable as she offered me to eat more, four or five times!  There was so much food left over that I felt bad saying no even though I felt so full!  A few weeks ago I went to a Korean Barbeque which reminded me a lot of fondue, except you cook the meat on a grill over coals instead of in a broth or cheese.  Koreans use metal chopsticks and I am going to need a lot more practice to master those!  I am able to order lunch at school and I have been able to be multi-cultural in my choices as I get to chose from Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Western every day for only $1.25!  The school has a big cafeteria, but not a kitchen and orders the lunches from local restaurants.  Grocery store prices are very cheap, except, of course, if it is imported.  The only breakfast cereal I can find to eat is Cocoa Krispies from the states and a small box is 38 kuai ($5)!  But the Mozzarella cheese for the pizza beat that price at 77 kuai (over $10)!

So as long as you stay away from the imported items (comfort foods) you can get your groceries for the week for 100 kuai ($15).

School – QMIS is a great school with a great community of teachers!  Every morning there is staff fellowship time with singing and sharing, which has helped me become acquainted with the other teachers quickly.  The building and grounds are very unique so check out the few pictures I have of the front of the building.  The school has been told they are not allowed to renew their lease on the building for next year, so they are quickly trying to find a new building so that there can still be a school next year!  Our classroom is round and has 25 student desks squeezed into its difficult dimensions.  I’m finding it hard to contend with the miniscule attention spans these first graders possess, but I might be expecting a little too much from 6-year-olds.  As always I am trying to cut down the time it takes to teach and make the content more manageable for the students who can’t sit still.  This coming week is a short one with Thanksgiving coming up and after that I will have the class to myself for two weeks!  I have taken over Science, Reading, and Math so far.  I am enjoying test driving the new FOSS Science curriculum which Jenny-lea has deemed “Science for Dummies” because it comes as a kit with almost all the materials you need for two classes of 32 students!  (I also pointed out to her that the teacher’s guide is black and yellow just like the “For Dummies” books!)  Math is a bit of a struggle because it happens to be the last fifteen minutes of the day and the students’ minds are already out the door!  Reading has been a little bit of fun, but it is hard for 25 students to share the 15 basal readers.  The students are really cute and started giving me hugs the first week, but I just don’t know if first is going to be my favorite grade to teach!

Health – Some of you may have heard through the grape vine that I have been sick and that is correct, I’ve missed 5 days of school because of it!  For an entire week I was out with a fever that wouldn’t go away, except I went in on that Wednesday because I was bored and got sent home early by the nurse.  After a week of doing nothing and not seeing much improvement, I got some anti-biotics and was back to feeling fine the next day.  Two weeks later, I went to Sunday morning fellowship feeling really bad and felt very queasy but the end of it.  I went back to the apartment and took a two hour nap before going out with the Chinese staff member to a bead/jewelry craft supply and pearl market.  I should have called it off and not gone at all, but I had backed out two week before when I first got sick and didn’t want to cancel on her again!  So a bought a few things and sat down for a rest and apparently my temperature spiked again and she had to bring me home after only being at the market for twenty minutes!  So I got the chills real bad that night and slept on the couch.  My fever finally went away early Monday afternoon, but I still missed another day of school.  I’m back to normal (as normal as I ever was) and I hope I don’t catch anymore China bugs!

Chinese – Twice a week I am taking Chinese lessons for thirty minutes while my students are in a Chinese class of their own.  Since I am only here for a short time, I’m getting a crash-course in survival Chinese.  My teacher is very nice and encouraging!  I hope I can remember everything we have gone over so far!  It is required for QMIS teachers to take 2 hours of Chinese tutoring a week and though it isn’t for me, I jumped at the chance because I know one of the first questions people will ask me when I get home is, “Did you learn any Chinese?”

Sorry!!!  I want to talk about a few more topics (like puppy dogs and clothes) , but I have to catch the bus home from school  More to come soon!  (hopefully)

Currently Watching Bride & Prejudice see related

Greetings From Qingdao

Traveling Merrcies

The father is soooooo good!  My flights to China went off without a hitch and my baggage did not get lost!  My flight left O'Hare at about 1:15am Thursday morning and after a 12 hour and 30 minute flight, landed in Seoul, Korea at 4:45 am, Friday (4:45 pm, Thursday your time).  I fell asleep just after takeoff and I think I got about three hours worth.  I even slept through the meal which they served at 2am!  The in-flight movies were The Lake House and The Devil Wears Prada.  This was the longest out of any flight or trip I have ever been on and on the whole it was a good experience and did not seem overly long.

During my five hour layover in Korea, I was able to grab an hour and a half of sleep sprawled across a bench.  This was achieved with very little disturbance because the others around me were doing the exact same thing and the airport was practically closed at this early hour.  After a little freshening up and wishing for my hairbrush (which was packed away in my luggage), I took the time to write my first entry in my new travel journal.  Knowing me, I will be needing more pages by the end of this experience!  On the Dedication/Title page I wrote "To the first of many overseas experiences yet to come!  Student Teaching, Qingdao, China, October 19th-December 20th"  Starting with this journal, I hope to keep up journaling, beginning a journal every new place I go.  The Seoul airport is very modern and surprisingly large.  To me it seemed even larger than O'Hare!  After journaling, I took a stroll to see the rest of the airport and look at a few of the shops.  I did not go in the Prada or Hermez (not sure about spelling, but it is a French shop with scarves and other accessories) stores!  Walking around, I only saw a handful of other caucasian travelers and definitely felt a part of the minority that I am and will be for the next two months!

I boarded the plane at 10:10 am Friday, (10:10 pm Thursday your time) and made the final leg of my trip to Qingdao in about an hour.  During the flight, the flight attendants served a lunch of sushi, sticky rice, vegetables, and noodles (which I did not eat, thinking they might be made out of wheat).  For this meal I used chopsticks for the first time and felt proud of myself for not dropping anything on my lap while seated next to a Chinese businessman.  Compared to my earlier flight, this one was over in the blink of an eye!  The immigration papers were fairly easy to complete (once I figured out they were written in English on the back) and after landing, I made it through customs without a problem.  None of the officials stopped me for questioning and they didn't search my bags.  Mr. Hedrick (my supervising teacher) and the school driver were waiting for me and I found them almost immediately.  In a moment we were on the road for the 45 minute ride to the school and it felt good to finally be in Qingdao, China!

Thank you for all of your thinkings of me!