While in Xi’an, we took a day trip out to Hua Shan. We had intended to actually climb up, wander around, and climb down, but we didn’t have a lot of time, wanted to see a lot of sights and plus a lot of the scenic/ historic sights along the road up were apparently closed. So, we took the cable car. I know, it’s wussy, but we got to go there and ( Read more... )

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Ok, back from traveling. This is gonna be a huge post, so I’m gonna do it in stages ( Read more... )

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We leave tomorrow at 11am ( Read more... )

Namely, shopping adventures. I know, not too exciting for everyone else (yet!) but I got tons of shopping done today. If I didn't buy anymore presents, I'd have presents now for all the people I NEED to get presents for. Now I just gotta get a few more so I can give some to the rest of the people on my list. But I got the big presents done for Nate ( Read more... )

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So, having the free time to actually see more of the city than the inside of our dorm room, we’ve been going and seeing lots of the touristy places. Temple of Heaven (Tiantan), the Summer Palace (Yiheyuan), the Great Wall (again), the Forbidden City/ Palace Museum (Gugong), the Beijing Zoo and Aquarium, etc. Yes, they’re touristy, but they’re also ( Read more... )

ah ha. finally got things figured out pretty well with this teaching job. Got my schedule with the highschool classes yesterday. Because the highschool has a very set cirriculum, with the teachers mostly already having decided what they want to teach in order to prepare for the exams, they don't actually have a lot they want me to do and they don't ( Read more... )

so. I have this job teaching english to high school age students at a school in Beijing for a month. One of the things suggested by the department, and one that I happen in fact to agree with at least as a teaching theory is teaching the students songs in english. Now comes the problem.... what songs to teach ( Read more... )