laughing traveler

I was at Burger King yesterday with 2 of my American friends and in an almost empty restaurant this young Chinese guy comes and sits right behind us. I assumed he was hoping to practice his English by listening in on the foreigners’ conversation. Well I hope he learned his lesson. The conversation quickly turned to our shared battle with cock roaches. The king of all roaches has held my bathroom hostage for the last 3 days. I woke up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom the other day and thought I saw something but ignored it in my half-asleep daze. The next morning this monster roach was fearless and didn’t even try to hide when I flicked the lights off and on. I slammed the door and tried to pretend it wasn’t real. I literally opened a new toothbrush and brushed my teeth in the kitchen. It wasn’t until that night that I got the courage to face him again. Armed with a tennis shoe in both hands, I took a deep breath and went in swinging. The first throw was a miss but ...

After my first week of classes I had been observed 3 times by the head teachers and the feedback was, “I like the way you yell at them.” I teach one class of senior 1 (10th graders) with 30 students, two of which are foreign exchange students from Europe(very intimidating to me). Then another class of senior 2 (11th grade) which has 11 students, 10 of which are boys! My students are geniuses, no joke. The first day I walked in and started talking in my simplified, slower English I used in my middle school last year. They pretty much laughed in my face and responded in full paragraphs to my “How – are - YOU - today?” Lesson learned. Whenever I teach I do 2 classes in a row, so I basically have the students for an hour and a half with a 10 minute break in between. That’s just too long for them to listen to English and the last 20 minutes are always a struggle. The first week I individually got in each of their faces and gave my “I’m a good teacher, you need to be good students”...

It was a crazy trip to Shenzhen, I think a total of 30hours travel time. The journey didn’t start out too well when Roz called me after we had been on the road to Dulles for about 30mins and said, “Is Regan another name for Dulles?” That’s right we had all read the itinerary wrong and where headed to the airport. So we pull over and set the GPS on my dad’s truck which takes us through all these winding roads. I was completely silent in the car as my dad’s frustration began to rise and me and Amy both closed our eyes trying not to get car sick. We somehow got there in ok time and Roz and her family were sitting at TGIFridays laughing. I straggle in looking half dead and plop down in the seat beside her dad who immediately says, “You need a drink!” it’s amazing how different our families are but still so alike. I am so lucky to have a friend to travel with. The trip would have been unbearable without Roz to keep me company, plus I love her! So first they made us fly to Chicago on Amer...