The end is nea......here.

Class 24 sent me off in style

Senior 1 Class 24

Margaret, one of my favorite students

One last KTV night! Dancing to Beyonce's "All the Single Ladies."

Molly. I taught her classes, and we were office-mates.

One of our newer friends towards the end of the year, Lily.

Hanging out with Thomas and Mayi on our last Friday night.

I am finally done teaching! It's been an amazing year, but I am ready for America! I've been China-ed out the last few weeks.

I was the only teacher who didn't have to teach this week. My department's teachers wanted this week to prepare students for their finals. I was fine with that, but I asked to have the first 5-10 minutes with the classes to say goodbye and take a picture with them. It was actually more difficult than I thought. I loved teaching pretty much all my classes, and I'm not sure if I'll teach them again next year. One of my favorite classes even gave me a small notebook filled with letters and thanks. Earlier, I had decided that I wanted to teach Senior 1 again next year, but now I think I might want to go to Senior 2 and teach the same classes. We'll see how it works out though.

I'm sure some of you have seen my status on facebook, but getting our work permits and everything figured out has been CRAZY! Peggy, our waiban, has been very busy with helping prepare students to travel abroad this summer. Because of that, I think our preparations were pushed to the side a little bit. Our documents for next year were turned in a little late, so we weren't supposed to get our passports and permits from the police station until Thursday. Plus, this is China....so there was a good chance they wouldn't be ready in time. Daniel was leaving on Friday, and Kirk and I were leaving on Monday, so we were all a little nervous!

Well, Peggy called me on Wednesday afternoon and said that our applications for next year had been rejected. The reason???? Are you ready for this.......WE USED THE WRONG PEN! Apparently, we had used a blue ballpoint pen (Oh, the humanity!!!) instead of a black non-ballpoint pen. We were all more than a little anxious about what to do. Fortunately, we have a friend who knows someone who knows someone in the police department. That's how it works sometimes! They told us that if we could get everything fixed that day, they would be ready Friday morning, a few hours before Daniel left. I went with Peggy to pick them up yesterday, and that fiasco is officially over!

As excited as we are to go to America, it's been a little rough as well. Last week, we found out that a student committed suicide by jumping off his dorm. There's tons of rumors flying around, but from what I have learned, he was very stressed out with classes. That week was a big holiday in China (maybe comparable to Thanksgiving as far as how big it is). He was excited to have a break, but we ended up not having one. I'm sure there was a lot more to it, but that's what I know. He was a student of Rebecca's, so it was particularly hard for her.

Also, I learned some bad news from Peggy today. She is basically our China specialist. She helps us out with passports, work permits, housing, etc. Honestly, I've been pretty frustrated with her the past month. As I mentioned above, I feel like we've been ignored a little (although it's not completely her fault) as we're getting ready to return home. While I've been a little annoyed, she's a great person, and we all really like her. Today, I visited her in the office and she was crying because her father has cancer and will probably die very soon. I talked with her for a little bit and p-ed for her and her family. You can be thinking of her as well as the student's friends and family.

Well, this will probably be my last post for awhile. I'll be landing in Detroit on Tuesday morning. I might send out an update or two over the summer.....but probably not! I hope to see all of you this summer at some point, and I'll pick this back up when I return to China next school year! Go USA!!

Top 10 Things I'm Excited For

10. Not taking 2 hours and 3 different stores to find shoelaces to buy
9. Real ice cream
8. Driving a car
7. Speaking at my normal pace
6. Cereal
5. Real milk
4. Playing basketball with Americans
3. American food
2. Going to American fellowship
1. Seeing all of my family and friends!

Country roads, take me home

Hello again everyone. I hope you're all doing great!

Last week, the unit that Rebecca and I taught on was farming. It was probably the most difficult lesson to plan for all year as the textbook was extremely boring. We decided to start each lesson off with our students learning a classic country song, "Country Roads" by John Denver. I think the students really enjoyed it. As they were singing, I was walking around holding my pen like a microphone and having kids sing solos. A great song at a great time for me. China Air, take me home!

Throughout the year, a lot of my students have been asking to play basketball with me. I've been trying to jam all of the classes into my schedule. It's a lot of fun playing with them. Plus, it's usually the boys in my classes who are the troublemakers (if there are any), so it's an opportunity for me to get back at them. I don't think I've ever blocked so many shots in my life!

The last two days have been pretty eventful for me. On Monday, I got a text from the school saying that I was going to be doing a demonstration lesson with 26 teachers from America sitting in. Oh, and it was the next day. Fortunately, I'm used to the last-second heads up now! I was a little nervous teaching in front of so many Americans. Plus, this unit was on humor, so I had decided to start out each class with some blonde jokes. I never planned on having a dozen blonde women sitting in on a class!

However, the class went amazing. All of my students focused and participated well. They made me look great! After the class, quite a few of the Americans came up to me and said I did all the "teaching things" right. Not sure what those things are exactly, but I nailed 'em!

Earlier tonight, 4 of us foreign teachers were judges for an English singing competition. It was fun watching a lot of my students really get into their performances. My favorite one was by a student of mine who sang a very energetic version of "Bad Romance" by Lady Gaga. It was hilarious!

Lastly, I'm happy to say that we finally got everything worked out with our school contract for next year. They moved very slow, but we were able to improve some of the things for our group next year as well as teachers in the future, including the increased flight reimbursement.

You may not remember, but awhile ago I went to a Chinese C with my friend Jesse. This Sunday, I am planning on going with him and his friend CiCi. I'm glad that he is excited to go again.

I think that's all for now. Go USA! Knock off the Brits!