A letter from China

I thought I would send you an update e-mail that you could pass on to the family. Sorry I haven't been updating much. Facebook is blocked 99% of the time, along with the website that I was going to use to write my blog. I've been able to talk to mom and dad through skype which has been great, though.

I'm currently teaching primary school in Hanzhong, Shaanxi Province, China. I'm teaching grades 3-6, and I teach 9 classes two times a week for a total of 18 classes. I had a rough start but the last few weeks have gotten a lot better. There are still a few classes that are completely out of control, but that's to be expected. I can't discipline them because I don't know Chinese, so I pretty much stand around and wait for them to calm down - sometimes that takes the entire class.

My grade six class is fantastic. They are very well-behaved and they know enough English that I can joke around with them and it doesn't get lost in translation. I have a lot of fun with them. I haven't been able to explore the city as much as I would like. I have a bike so I've rode around a bit, but I haven't been outside the city. I get paid tomorrow so once I get paid I will actually be able to shop around and check out the city. I've been living the last two weeks off of about $15 dollars. Thankfully, food is cheap.

I'm a celebrity in Hanzhong. I think there's a total of 11 westerners in the city, so everytime I go outside I get the older generation staring at me. I constantly hear "megguo" (american) and "Lao wai" (foreigner) as I walk by them. I also get people running up and saying "hello hello", laughing and running off when I say hello back.

I don't know how to cook anything so I've gone to restaurants every day. Some of the restaurants have pictures, so getting food is easy enough. Other restaurants just have a menu, so if I'm not with my Chinese friends I have to either have a Chinese write down what I want, or take my chances and point to a random dish and hope it works out. It usually does.

Starting on Thursday I get a week long break for National Day, which celebrates the anniversary of the founding of the PRC. It's the 60th anniversary, so there are lots of festivities going on throughout China. My friends and I are travelling to Xi'an, a town of about 5 million and one of the ancient capitols of China. It is the home of the Terra Cotta warriors, as well as various ancient cities and pagodas that have been preserved. I'm very, very excited to go.

I still don't know any Chinese. The school is supposed to give me lessons, but, well, they haven't. Sometimes you have to pick the right fights. I have Rosetta Stone so once I get the discipline I'll start to take lessons with that program.

My freetime has been spent applying to graduate school. It's pretty strange applying to school from another country, but I haven't hit any bumps yet. I've been staring at my statement of purpose trying to figure out what to say to make the admissions committees let an otherwise average (based on their test and gpa averages) student into their programs, but nothing is coming.

Anyway, that's all for now. I hope you all are doing well. Eat lots of McDonalds and Taco Bell for me, I miss it.

Love,
Corey

OK, well, that sucked

I've started following the Fitness Magazine half-marathon training plan for beginners. It all went great...until today.

Here's my workouts from the last week:

Sat 9/5/9 3 mi easy run - 1st run after a week off with a sprained ankle

Sun 9/6/9 Actually played volleyball with my family. Nothing wrong with a little cross training, right?

Mon 9/7/9 Rest day

Tues 9/8/9 3.7 mi moderate pace - felt pretty good.

Wed 9/9/9 - A Magical Day!!!!! I did my Yoga/pilates DVD and day 1 of Jillian Michaels' Making the Cut

Thurs 9/10/9 - 4.35 mi run - EASY. No problem, Felt great.

Fri 9/11/9 - 10 mi bike ride. I hope the bike. No I don't. Yes, I do. I just need to spend more time on the bike, but I didn't want to spend hours on the bike. I needed to get to work.

Sat 9/12/9 - 3.89 mi run. IT SUCKED! SUCKED BAD! I could tell in the first few steps that it was not going to be a good run. My legs were tired. My breathing was labored. I started up West Street, uphill, not smart to JOLT your body like that.

It may not have been up a mountain, but I felt like the whole run was going up hill. I just couldn't get into a groove and feel positive about my attempt to be healthy. Of course to make it worse, I cross Rt 9 and out of the corner of my eye someone is coming running at me. Oh crap! It's Gene! The man runs a 7+ min mile and here I am trudging along on probably one of my worst training runs in a long time at barely under 10 min miles. Ugh! So embarrassing. Of course, Gene decides to be my little cheerleader. "Keep it up. At least you're doing it." All the usual B.S. All I could think of was how horrible it was for him to see me TODAY of all days. When my legs felt like lead bricks and there was a small child sitting on my lungs compressing them to such a small size that I couldn't get any air into them.

I finished the afternoon by taking Samantha shopping for Homecoming dresses. I still can't believe that I have a daughter in high school. I'll post pictures later of the 3 potential dresses. At least she didn't make me suffer. She found something pretty quickly. Now we just need to get the shoes.

My body hurt the rest of the day after my run. I don't know if it was just the run was THAT bad or allergies had kicked in. I took some allergy medicine and came home from shopping and took a power nap.

We went to the winery for the evening. Jeff & I had a nice relaxing evening, but it was exactly a wild night on the town. The band was awesome (Jamsamich), but we weren't in the mood. We had a nice bottle of Alexander's Conquest and decided to head home early.

Hmmm Buddy...A humdinger of a day

Most moms would probably not pray for their children to get sick. I, however, did and God listened. Of course, my preferred timing would have been over the weekend so we didn't have to run to all of the family events we had planned for Labor Day weekend.

I'm glad I didn't miss any of the family events. I had a ton of fun spending time with everyone. Of course, I didn't want to miss my family outing...a day of volleyball. How much better could it get? And Monday we went to my SIL's house for my nephew's birthday. We had a great time there as well. So much so we didn't want to leave and head home. I didn't really want to miss any of the family events over the weekend, but we also had a 3-day weekend and we were barely home. I just wanted to lounge and enjoy my peace and quiet. Maybe another weekend....

Back to my answered prayer - Abby came home with a fever on Tuesday. I thought she was just having some sinus issues, but apparently, there are quite a few cases of walking pneumonia in school. She came home for the afternoon and I started organizing my pictures right away. I organized pictures I had on hand. I organized pictures on Snapfish. I organized my spreadsheet which told me which pictures I had on hand and which pictures I had on Snapfish. Let's just say I got organized.

I kept Abby home from school on Wednesday as well. Why take a chance and send her to school with all of those viruses walking around within confined walls? So, I spent Wednesday morning....yes, organizing more pictures. Now I feel ready to place my order through Snapfish...as soon as I upload the pictures from Samantha's church camp this summer.

After all that organizing, I needed to do some exercise. I did my Jillian Michaels Making the Cut Day #1 and Pilates/Yoga. It felt good to get it done, except when Abby came downstairs and started chanting "Move it Move it Move it! You need to lose some!" OK, actually that was funny, but when she called me fat a couple of hours later I didn't not find her very humorous.

Oh, the delightful unabashed mouths of children. So funny...and yet, not!

Irritating Thing #1

OK. I'm in a mood. So you'd better look out. I had a long day at work. I know 3 hours - enough already, but still it's Wednesday evening and who wants to work evenings? Not me! I came home and checked messages. Lo and behold I had a message from someone here in town who so nicely called me at HOME about WORK. I wasn't home. I WAS AT WORK! Seriously!

To top it off, the message was to tell me she needed a refund for the class which was cancelled...according to her. IT WASN'T. We held the class and now the park district has to pay for her 2 (yes, I said 2) children who didn't show up.

Now, I'm not saying that there wasn't some miscommunication. Obviously, that was the case, but if she had called to check on the class, she probably would have called me at home anyway!

Yes, I said I was in a mood. Can you spell PMS?