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This week was an exciting week for the following reasons:
1. Booked our flight to Australia for January 19-February 17=30 days
2. My Parents also booked a flight to Australia for January 18-January 28(much longer flight than ours)
3. Got a copy of the school calendar(SWEET)
4. Ducks won the Civil War and are going to the Rose Bowl for the 1st time in 15 years
5. Didn't have class on Thursday due to the students practicing for their upcoming performances
6. Found out we don't have class on Thursday Dec 10th or Friday Dec 11th due to Sports Day
7. Survived 4 months in China as of Dec 3rd.
8. Mailed packages to our families for Christmas
Some of things things you maybe asking yourself "why is that exciting" but we have to remember all the little things in life that make our days happy.
The school calendar was sent to Pete from Soloman after he never responded to our vacation request. It also was in Chinese so I had the language center translate it for me. The schedule is made by the government for the WHOLE province(state is the US) we are pretty excited to have an idea of when we will have time off and again their will be midterms next semester that are not on the schedule. Catherine, Head of English Dept, told us to book our trip and she would make the classes work around our schedule. We will arrive the night before my parents due to their flight from Chicago to LA to Sydney is between 19-20 hours and our flight is 9 hrs 20 mins. They all have to cross over the International Date Line. We will spend the time with them in Australia then once they leave fly to Auckland, New Zealand for the remaining 20 days of our trip. The dollar goes further in New Zealand than in Australia and supposedly much more beautiful per the locals. We have one Aussie and one Kiwi (NZ)in our CTLC group of English teachers.
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This week in class our lesson was about Mood, Feelings and Emotions. It was interesting to listen to the kids responses to some of the questions asked in the power point. The most stressful thing in their lives was always homework and exams for all 10 of my classes and they all relieve stress by playing sports, listening to music or screaming. Yes screaming!!! 
We found a pizza place about a 5 minute bike ride away from our house and since we have been going in there once a week for about 3 or 4 weeks now they gave us a VIP card. Unsure what it gets us but SWEET. Our next accomplishment we want to achieve is to order the pizza over the phone for delivery. I think Pete will be doing this since he has been studying Mandarin about 2-3 hours everyday recently and getting really good.
I also took some pictures of Christmas decorations around Vanguard, our supermarket, to show the Christmas spirit. It is VERY strange since China doesn't have a high population of Christians, they don't even get the day off of school for it and they don't give presents. I think they just like to decorate and be like the western world. I will continue to take pictures as their are lots of decorations downtown and I didn't have my camera with me. I also put up some Christmas decorations in our apartment so check out he pictures below.
 On Saturday, I taught a Demo Class at A+ English to seven 2 year olds. It was a very successful class because 5 of the parents signed up their children. These children all go to an Early Childhood Center that teaches them how to concentrate from 6 months old-3 years old. CRAZY!!! The kids range from 2 yrs 4 months to 2 yrs 10 months. The youngest one, her mom owns the Early Childhood Center, already can identify 1,000 Chinese characters. I will teach this class every Thursday night from 7-8:30pm. I also will start to teach the 3-4 years old class on Tuesday from 6-7:30pm. I will take my camera to class the next few weeks to take pictures of these little ones as they are SO CUTE...
Today we are having our 5th visitor of the other foreign teachers in CTLC. Riley is Pete's best guy buddy and also business partner in crime here in China. Riley is finally making the trek out to the outer district of Longgang to watch lots of college football today on ESPN.com
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