March Madness

Sunday the 4th, my friend Molly and I went to a friends house (she teaches Chinese to our students at TIS (Tianjin Internaional School) and we all celebrated "yuan xiao jie" - Lantern festival. We made jiao zi together, talked, ate lots of yummy food and of course set off firecrackers. It seemed a lot more fun to hear the firecrackers and set them off with a chinese family. It was a very enjoyable evening and the snow made it seem even more festive. :)






Monday! Well, Monday was the first sunny day in almost two weeks. This is the view from one of the sides of school (right) and the other of the track is the view out my window in the Chem lab. This is one of those rare really blue sky, no smog days! Can you count the cranes in the picture out my window?? At one time I could see 12 cranes from my desk - I'm not kidding! Most of them are gone now.












Tuesday/Wednesday - My brother Dave and his wife Joy had twin boys on March 6th!! (March 6th is also the birthday of their cousin, Rebekah) Tanner and Tyler forney (I still don't know their middle names). They join a wonderful group of other nieces and nephews I have which now totals 7! Just for the record now - My sister has two girls and my brother has 4 boys and 1 girl. I am a very proud aunt even if I live thousands of miles away from them. Back to the twins! From what I hear everyone is home from the hopsital and seems to be doing fine. I just got some pictures. Here is one of Hannah and Britton holding their new baby brothers - yeah, I can't tell them apart....


Goodbye Chen: For approximately the last year I have been taking Chinese Gong Fu with Chen. It's kind of hard to explain what Gong Fu is. It's kind of kung fu but a little different. I do it more for the exercise - of which it is! Chen was a great trainer and teacher and always pushed us harder in a nice way. One hour with Chen cost 30 kuai (about 4 dollars). Chen is moving to Japan this weekend and therefore I will no longer have gong fu. Here's a couple of things I learned in gong fu -


1. My right hand punches better than my left, My left leg kicks better than my right.

2. how to defend myself and get away if someone grabs me by the wrist, neck or any other way - if I can only remember exactly what to do I will be fine!

3. That I should never try to do a high kick if someone is attacking me - I frequently lose my balance on high kicks...yes, it's humorous! :)


Last Weekend: Sorry - no picture here. Last weekend I went to Beijing right after school on Friday for a conference on differentiation in the classroom - if you don't know what that means it's OK - your life will be easier. It was a good conference but I was in classes for 8 hours on Saturday and Sunday which meant no time to rest my brain. There were many positives from the conference and I made some good connections with science teachers at international schools in Beijing. It was also just good to go to beijing again and I did have a good time Saturday night catching up with some of my old guy friends I taught with at SIAS a long time ago who now live in Beijing. I returned late Sunday night exhausted.




This week: I had all the details and then realized that it was a little boring. I'll just say it's busy at school and outside of school. But whose life isn't busy? It is a good busy. The things are good but at times overwhelming. There are lot's of things that I have to do now or plan now that will occur in the future. I'll just share them with you after they are finished.

It was good to be home this Saturday (next weekend I will be at a woman's conference in Beijing). Molly and I went to the flower market this morning again. I bought a pack of 20 white roses with bright pink tipped petals (they're so pretty) some more cala lilies, and a large gardenia plant that is just about ready to bloom. Gardenia's are a special flower - the smell of always takes me back to Brazil. It was 20 kuai (about 3 dollars). I'm missing the greenery and the spring flowers that Pennsylvania always had, (lilacs, tulilps, even snowdrops and crocuses) but definitely can't complain about the selection at the flower market! After two weeks of COLD temperatures warmer weather is on the way!

I'll finish with two pictures of my students. The one on the left is the 8th graders building atoms and bonding them with yarn and puff balls. The right one is of my 10 graders doing a lab on stoichiometry.