Hi Everyone, I have been meaning to write since last Friday but have been busy with back to school stuff and actually have been quite tired lately.
Anyway, enough excuses. Everyone is settling into the 08/09 school year. James is dealing with all the big changes that middle school brings on top of being new, attending an international school, and having both his parents at school with him! He has joined the cross country team, they practice 3x a week and I think that will be plenty to keep him busy for now. He seems to be making a few friends and spends his lunch period playing yu gi oh in the hallway with quite a big group.
Abigail really likes her new teacher who is from New Zealand and has started taking chinese. She joined the choir which practices 2 lunch periods every week. Apparently they have quite a few performances at the school as well as out in the community. At Christmas time they perform at an orphanage in Suzhou. I think she will really enjoy it.
Mark is busy as usual teaching kids from grade 9 - 12. The school has a very comfortable atmosphere and the teachers are very social outside of school, Mark also commented the other night that the percentage of male teachers is quite a bit higher and I think he likes that after teaching with mostly women for the past 3 years. It looks like he will be volunteering his after school time to the school production of Oliver Twist, working on sound and lights.
As for moi, I have been working with pre-K and kindergarten doing their PMP program which is very similar to the kidfit I was teaching in Texas. I have also been working as resource co-ordinator for the elementary school. I took a step class yesterday after school which was fun. There is talk of getting a group of teachers together 1 day a week for a tennis round robin so I'm really hoping that gets organized.
We have a long weekend starting tomorrow, not sure why but we'll take it! The school is organizing some buses to take a group to IKEA in Shanghai on Saturday so I am really excited about that! It will give us a chance to feather the nest a bit. We still have not received our shipment - apparently there was an issue with my resident visa because my marriage liscence has my middle name on it and my passport doesn't. The chinese police didn't like that. Stay tuned I guess. I'm trying to get Mark to post some pictures so hopefully we'll have a link set up soon.
That's all for now, Lots of love to everyone!
