Pancakes, Field Trips, Pizza and T-shirts..

The internet is out at our house again…so this blog may be long due to the fact that I haven’t been able to post all week, so much to say! Sorry for the lack of emails lately…hopefully this blog will give a quick overview of what’s going on here.

Last Sunday, Shaun and I organized a pancake breakfast as a ‘get to know you better’ breakfast for the American and Chinese teaching staff. There are 9 American English teachers, and 10 Chinese teachers. We thought it would be fun to show a bit of America with a traditional pancake breakfast, pancakes, syrup, eggs, bacon and coffee. And, all the Americans were more than happy to get a taste of home. The maple syrup and coffee were hugely popular with the Americans, not so much with the Chinese…I guess there are some things that are uniquely American! It was really fun, everyone had a good time, and as always, it was an adventure to cook a big breakfast on hot plates!

Tuesday was a great day. During Chinese class, we were all a bit lazy and managed to convince our Chinese teacher, Veronica, to take us on a field trip. Oh, how I love field trips! She took us to the biggest bookstore in Shenyang. We all managed to pick up a few things; I found this sweet world map that has both the Chinese characters and English for all the major countries and cities. At the bookstore, there was Langston advertising…haha! We enjoyed taking pictures and posing next to the advertisement for where we already work!

That night, 4 students took us out to dinner at a pizza buffet place. It was almost like Izzy’s…for those Portlanders out there. It was really fun to hang out with them outside of school and get to talk, laugh and eat together. We had a lot of fun taking ridiculous pictures, and just hanging out together.

The rest of the week was spent planning a vacation! Part of our contract with Langston is that we each get a week of paid vacation. There is a 3 day Chinese holiday in May, so I am taking my vacation the last week in April, and in total, will get 11 days off. It is always so fun and exciting to plan a vacation.

Tonight, Rachel and Emily, two other interns, are hosting a Tacky T-shirt Party! We have seen many t-shirts in China where the English makes no sense, or there are hilarious typos, or the lack of copyright laws is made apparent….so tonight, everyone has to wear a tacky t-shirt that they found here. I can’t give away my t-shirt before the party, but I will say, it has something to do with a panda with a comical life-motto at the bottom. I will post pictures next week and let you take part in our tacky t-shirt party too!

As always, I still can’t believe how fast time is going. This week was 4 months until I am home and back in America, spending time with the parents, Emily and Giles! It will be fun, but again, it seems that there is still so much more to do and see here! I hope everyone is doing well…hopefully we’ll figure out the internet and I will be able to get back on Skype and email more regularly soon.