Intermediate Thoughts

I know I have yet to send a real blog post for the last multiple weeks, but this I send with random thoughts as I’m between holidays.

Christmas was spent in sunny Sanya, the southernmost point in China, known as the “Hawaii of China”.  I reclined on the beach, drank from coconuts, and ate freshly caught fish.  It being the holiday season, I embraced the line from Eat Pray Love of “I have no interest in being obese, but I’m done with the guilt.”  The guilt of worrying about the extra 5 pounds or (thanks to my genes) the extremely pale skin.  Rock on Scandinavians and other northern Europeans! 

 

For New Year’s I’m off to Nan Jing, which means “Southern Capital.”  A Chinese friend from college is back in China and I’ll visit her to bring in the solar new year.

 

Other random thoughts—my holiday season has just been doubled in length by moving to China.  I, like many others, embrace the holiday spirit of indulging in chocolates and cakes without regret.  Now in China, as the Western season winds down, the Chinese gears up for another month preparing for the Spring Festival—the Chinese New Year—on February 2^nd.  However, it’s likely a nice break from the past 4 years of resolving in January to eat healthier and exercise more.  I’m in the 90% that don’t sustain that resolution to the end of the year.  That’s ok.  The food is delicious!

 

Also, I’ve finally found a decent way of intensely engaging my students on a regular basis.  We watch 30 minutes of a movie and the students each have to write answers to five questions about the movie.  If they achieve a set percent score, we will continue the movie on the following day.  They are genuinely concerned about continuing the movie and, as a result, use their English, practicing subject-verb agreement, pronoun usage, and dependent clause formation.  Plus, it is a way to better teach to the middle, as I am regularly biased towards teaching the honors students. 

 

However, to make the questions for these movies means I have a lot of outside class work to do.  I have now seen these movies four times this week.  And let me tell you, Iron Man is not a great movie.

 

Below some pictures from the Christmas Concert, another long story to share: