suddenly, it's the weekend

another week of teaching has come and gone. phew.

it's been an interesting week. monday feels like a year ago, and yet i can't believe it's already friday. does that make sense? i can't even think of what i did on monday, but i feel like the week went by super fast again. hmm.

wednesday was (obviously) pretty terrible. it was bad even before i got my wallet stolen, because i was stressed out for no reason during the day and then got an email from the administration that frustrated me to no end.

let me back up. i can't remember if i already wrote about this, but if i did, sorry. So during orientation, the administration asked all of the new teachers to pick a topic for a speech and sign up for it, in case they wanted to pick one of us to give a speech to the local division. Shannon and I were advised by the returning teachers to put down something that we figured they wouldn't pick because let's be honest, who wants to give a speech to a couple hundred Chinese students who probably won't understand what you're talking about anyway? So, Shannon was ambitious (and, as I've learned, VERY smart) and wrote down "Human Rights." Obviously a speech about Human Rights, in China, is something they might avoid. I looked through the other topics people had put down, and noticed that at least 4 other people had written down "music." Very vague, very general. So I wrote it down too, assuming that there was no way they'd pick my name out the other people who wrote 'music' too.

Fast forward to Wednesday. Out of the 20-something new foreign teachers, they chose 5 to give speeches. And, wouldn't you know it, something about the way I wrote down "music" the same as everyone else stood out to them. I have to give a 40-minute speech on 'music.' I've obviously already narrowed it down to collegiate a cappella. That's right. I'm going to give a 40-minute speech on collegiate a cappella. You know you would too, if you were in my position. It's always so much easier to talk about something narrow for a long time. And I will obviously be playing a bunch of Dicks and Janes. Live tracks and the cd. Nothing will get me though those 40 minutes quite like playing some music tracks...

Yesterday was much better. My students were moderately well behaved, I showed the first half of the Wizard of Oz in my music class, and my favorite ESL student waited outside of my classroom just so she could give me a hug. Also, during the last 2 periods of the day, the 6th grade students were doing a scavenger hunt. The hunt required them to take pictures of/with some of their teachers...so I posed for a bunch of pictures. It was fun. AND I was able to get an advance on my paycheck, so i'm no longer penniless. And today we got our plane tickets and confirmation stuff for the trip to Xi'an. Now it's me, Shannon, and Dania, and I am so excited!

Special thanks to Courtney for creating a facebook group in my honor....