Teaching

Tomorrow Emily and I start teaching again for the spring semester. We are going back to Cixi on Mondays, which is not awesome but at least should be familiar. I have 3 oral English classes, 2 tourism classes, one IELTs speaking class, and a class on American cinema. I thought I would be excited about the cinema class, but it is such a pain to get movies with Chinese subtitles and the previous teacher had chosen some REALLY bad movies. I should get to bed, but I'm nervous about remembering all the names of my students tomorrow. Eeek! Emily and I have just been taking it easy since we got back from southeast Asia. Cooking, cleaning, watching tv on the internet, reading, and just general shenanigans. We are ready to come home and see family and hope this semester goes by just as quickly and easily as the first one. It looks like we won't be home until the beginning of July instead of mid to late June as we had hoped, but that's how the cards are dealt. Wish us luck for tomorrow!

Lazy

Since Emily and I have been back we have been REALLY lazy. It pretty much sucks coming back to cold old China after such a magical vacation. I watched the remake of True Grit and loved it, but Emily hasn't found a western that can hold her attention yet. She has been watching a lot of Simpsons and Friends, and we both loved watching some Modern Family. How exciting to be able to blog about our internet/tv viewing! There's just not much going on. We made a pact to cook most of our food at home because we felt soooo much healthier on our trip. We suspect that food quality/cleanliness is the culprit. It seemed like we were always ill in China, which made it unpleasant. My one funny from being sick so long is that I was recommended some antibiotics for my persistent chest thing/illness and was taking them dutifully. Emily got some sniffles/hacking gross sinus infection and I looked online to see if the antibiotics would work for her (she's allergic to most of them). I discovered that not only were they banned in America, they also caused major neurological damage to 25% of the people who took them! Hurray! I stopped takng thema nd has seeeemmed to sufffer no ill effects ajkal;g8lohy agh..........................................

Back In China

We made it back to China today. I have a big post planned, but tonight I'm just too dang tired. We had a great time and met some great people. Only 5 more months until we come home, and we are ready for it. I really miss my family and Greensboro. I'm not sure what the future holds or what we will do there but hopefully we will be able to come back for at least a little while. Everyone send us you best wishes and positive thoughts for Emily to get a good job near home.

So far

We have finished Cambodia and are now in Vietnam. This has been an awe inspiring and incredible adventure/vacation but road weariness is beginning to set in. Waiting 12 hours for a 6 hour train is probably making me more grumpy/tired than usual. Emily and I are ready to go back and finish up our teaching so we can see our family. I think it was easier for Emily when her sister was here but we both miss family so much. The next few days on a secluded Vietnam beach should cheere right up.

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Egypt

We are having such a great time, but we are riveted to and shocked by the violence in Cairo. The Chinese government are blocking almost all news about what is going on in Egypt. As so many journalists on the frontline said, "The world needs to see this." We came to Cambodia yesterday and met a couple last night who is also teaching in china. It was nice to be able to talk with someone who is in similar circumstances as us. A casual hello turned into an almost three hour conversation. Tomorrow we go to Angkor Wat.

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