Another surprise... this one not so good

With the beginning of 2013, Ryan and I were greeted with sore throats and coughs.  Not too bad but just bad enough so we wanted to lay in bed and watch TV.  I'm glad we bought food to prepare in our room so we didn't have to venture out into the cold as much.  Well, we ended up going out at least once a day.  Cabin fever got us too.  We also needed to buy a DVD player.  Ryan's computer's DVD player only likes boy movies.  Ryan and I have bought about a dozen movies and his DVD player only likes to play the movies Ryan picked out.  We tested the movies in the teachers office to make sure they work and then off to the Wu-Mart. Also I think it's about time for us to take advantage of the 42 inch TV in our apartment.  All the TV channels here are in Chinese so we have been watching TV on the internet. 

Friday morning come around and back to school for us.  We are still a little under the weather so the only thing getting me out of bed this morning was knowing I only had one day of teaching and would be able to take it easy over the weekend.  Ryan and I did think it was weird that school would be open for only one day before the weekend but hey we're in China and we just go with the flow.  Teaching went well today.  I tried a new game with the kindergarten classes. I was also glad I had lots of videos for my 1st grade class because my voice wasn't up for talking too much but made it through and ready to relax for the afternoon and maybe do a little lesson planning to catch up.  Well, as soon I got back to the teacher's office after teaching I was informed that we will have classes on Saturday and Sunday.  We will be following the Thursday and Wednesday schedule for those days (my 2 hardest days).  There was some confusion about us teaching tomorrow since Thursday we are at the branch schools but we did find out that yes indeed we will be teaching tomorrow.  I sadly informed Ryan of this information when he returned to the office.  Well, we just had 4 days off so I guess we shouldn't be complaining.  We did ask a while back if we would be teaching anymore weekends and were told no but oh well, what do you do?  I was told that tomorrow and Thursday will be the last time we go to the branch school this semester (which ends at the end of January).  So I'm not sure if Ryan and I will have another project to do during that time or not.  In the meantime, I will assume we will have Thursday off to rest and relax. :o)  Once we found out we were teaching, I needed to hit the lesson planning.  I was not prepared for Thursday teaching.  Luckily I had an idea for grade 3 and 4 and, Ryan had a lesson I could use for grade 5 and 6, and for grade 2 I will use my grade 1 lesson from today.  Ryan and I started making flashcards about 10 til 5.  I think we made them in record time.  (I can't believe we have job where drawing in part of the job description).  I decided it's probably better we didn't know we were teaching this weekend or we would have dreaded it during our holiday break.

All this talk about Thursday reminded me of a weird observation that Ryan and I have witnessed for the past 8 weeks.  8 weeks ago, we were driven to the branch school and we saw a truck with a flat tire in the middle of an intersection.  Not a super busy road but it's a 4 lane road with a decent amount of traffic.  We didn't think anything of it (thinking that it must have happen recently) until I saw the truck on the way home from school that afternoon.  The next week the truck was there. The weekend after that, the truck was still there.  By week 5 or 6, there were 2 flat tires of the truck.  Is the truck still there?  Ask us tomorrow?

Well, off to relaxing for the rest of the night.  I guess we won't be heading into the city this weekend.  We usually celebrate international food day on the weekends so everyone please eat some delicious international food for us. I like anything cheesy especially pizza and Mexican.  Feel free to take a picture and send me.  :o)

Hope you all have a fun weekend. 

Julie