Anna Rankin

Ahhh… I don’t have much time to write as I’m due at work, but life goes on. My birthday was yesterday and the folks at the kindergarten absolutely blew my mind with a surprise party yesterday - I almost cried right then and there. They are some of the sweetest people I have ever met. I got some really cool gifts, like a set of figures from Journey to the West (famous Chinese story), some brocade, a thing that I don’t understand (not pictured) and a certificate naming me the “校花,“ or “School Flower” of the preschool. They’re just so darn freaking cute!!! Tina brought this super awesome dragon picture made of human hair from her hometown, I need to take pictures of it.

Anyway, then we saw the Avengers in 3D. YEAH

什么都不想做！！ 烦死了。 Anyway, here are some photos of stuff. Went to Shanghai this past weekend.

Zzzzzz…

This cough’s been around for about three weeks or so now, it just won’t go away… I think I’m going to dedicate Tuesday to being an immobile lump.

Here are some drawings by my students of butterfly dogs!

Sigh. I’ve got a rotten case of homesickness recently. I miss my family, I miss my friends, I miss the craziness I’m used to. Mostly, though, it’s that I’m living on my own for the first time in my life. Granted, there are people around here I could pester into coming over every so often, but there’s nothing like a roommate you can babble to about yarn or cats or British television or video games at midnight. I miss having someone to cook for besides myself. I miss everyone.

All that aside, however, life’s been fairly interesting. Monday I went with Tina to see her family friend at 南京中医药大学 who happens to be a practitioner of traditional Chinese medicine, and he stuck some needles in my back to try to cure my cough. It very well may have worked, the cough’s on its way out after about three weeks. Yesterday we finally climbed 紫金山 (Purple Mountain — that’s where the pictures are from). By “we” I mean to refer to myself, Tina, Micheal, Joy and David. We struggled to the top in pretty good time and celebrated by having a picnic with the geckos and throwing rocks at bees.

Tomorrow is a preschool demo class at 9:30 that keeps changing around. I really don’t care at this point — they tell me to jump, I’ll hop, but I’m not going to worry about the results. I’m just going to do my best without exhausting myself and let everything else take care of itself. In other news, they set up cameras in the classrooms today so that parents can be even more micromanaging and watch their kids in class and complain that their kids aren’t getting preferential treatment. Can’t wait!

Sigh. So this week was intense; spent a LOT of time at work and started a new section of TWO to THREE YEAR OLDS. UGHGHHGHGHGHGDBPIsgdpaf;konp;asdolf Babies. UGH. I’m used to teaching children who at least have a firm grasp of ONE language… and an attention span (even if it is pretty short, at least it exists).

But besides that class, things are going well. My classes have been behaving pretty well and progressing. Little victory yesterday when I got a very reluctant boy to participate in (and pretty much lead) a class activity!

Yawn. Today is my day off and I’m going to spend it WORKING yay. At least it’s something I can do in a coffee shop as opposed to in a classroom. I’m half looking forward to, half dreading Wednesday - if you didn’t know, the movie Titanic is kind of a huge deal in China. They’re releasing it in 3D this weekend, and Tina and I are going to go see it and I’m sure act out various parts on the way home. Wooo.

Have some pictures of babies!

So David(my coworker)’s friend from Shanghai came into town to visit Nanjing for the first time and we all went to the Gujiming temple (the one I just went to a few days ago with Joy o_o) and XuanWu Lake together. It was a lot of fun - we ended up renting a boat out on the lake and NOT running out of electricity! We ended our day by eating at a place behind NanDa called “Sculpting in Time” which was summed up best by a friend when she said “The service is terrible, but the food and coffee is fantastic once you get it.” Omnomnom

So, this past 清明节 vacation was full of everything you could stuff into three days and still have fun. Beginning at the beginning as I am wont to do, Sunday was a barbecue out by a park near the Jiangsu Art Institute (will remember park name later). Much fun, meat and alcohol were had by all! Afterwards, most folk left, but Joy, David and I decided to explore the park some more. Unfortunately, my camera battery died before we broke into the swimming pool full of fish and frogs and the area with sunflower sprouts… but here are some shots from the park :3