我的 丈夫 很好

My husband is so smart! Two days ago he bought a Chinese wireless router, and managed to properly install it on our computer--in Chinese! Within an hour, he had it working and my laptop hooked up to it, which means I now have internet on my own computer. Yay!

My Little Friend

By the way, at the time of my "close-up" in the video you can hear my little friend Anna saying loudly, "There's misser greene!" She doesn't usually remember how to say misses, so Nathan is Mister Greene and I am Misser Greene :-)

Anna's dad is Jeremy Carman, the white person speaking Chinese at the end :-) His Chinese rocks--I want to be like him!

I'm a star!

Haha, some friends of mine and I were asked to come down to the PSB for some publicity stuff. They're working hard at helping the foreigners that live in China, and wanted to let us know what all they do for us (while being filmed for the news, of course). Anyhow, the first time it was for pics, but I didn't get any copies. This time we made the news! My friend Jeremy, who volunteered that day to be a translator when needed, posted the video on Facebook. If you have Facebook, you should be able to get to it here:

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=142888090045

Sorry, I'm not sure how to paste it up myself on this blog, but I'll try and figure it out. Enjoy!

--Ruth

Waste of Make-up Day

***Disclaimer**the below may seem as if I am complaining, or even whining (don't tell Nathan), but in reality I'm laughing at a quite awful day :-)

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I once read a cartoon (I don't remember which), where the teenage girl had a terrible day and labeled it a "Waste of Make-up Day". Today certainly felt that way, except, I'd like to call it a "Waste of Wearing High Heals and a Skirt" Day. I spent all this morning creating a new outfit and feeling so good about it, only for the day to go downhill from there...

This week we have SAT Testing (the all grades type, not the get into college type). I thought this would be great as, since I am neither a core subject teacher or a home room teacher, it seemed I would have very few classes, which means little lesson planning. Unfortunately, today was also the day 3rd Quarter Grades were do, and I had about 5 hours of grades to enter before 9:00 AM. Being gone so often has not helped my organization skills.

My delight in having few classes deteriorated when I discovered last week that I was signed up to "proctor relief" for several hours instead. See one of my earlier blogs to find out my opinion on proctoring. Proctor relief is better, but not by much, instead of staring at the kids for hours on end, you sit in the freezing hall and wait for a teacher to need your help in proctoring.

The highlight of the day came when I realized I had not just been double booked, but triple (or even quadruple booked depending on how you count it). As I was looking at the schedule, I realized I was supposed to be at proctor relief at the same time I was supposed to have a 17 min 7th/8th grade art class (don't ask me why it was so short...that's a whole other story). So I get someone to cover the rest of my shift, rush over to my classroom, only to pass several of my 6th graders. "Where are you going?" I ask them. "To your drama class, Mrs. Greene" "but I don't have drama class...I have art!" Quickly, I realize there had been some miscommunication in the schedule about which "elective" was at that time, and I now had not only 20, but 40 students. I decide to hold both of the classes in the auditorium and play some drama games. It's only 17 minutes, right? So we get to the auditorium and find the 7th/8th grade DRAMA students there (not my class). Another 30 students. There was some miscommunication about where they were supposed to be too. So, I figure, what's thirty more? "Okay class, we're going to do some large group activities." Just as I get the class settled, a 7th grade drama student yells, "we're supposed to be in the gym!" Oh, yeah. That's where your teacher is. So they all go rushing out the door, yelling, drama in the gym! Only now the 6th grade drama students now get confused. "Which drama?" "Not your drama! Sit down!" I manage to salvage the last ten minutes and the kids actually have a good time...confused? Me too.

The day went on from there. I then also forgot that I was supposed to teach Nathan's 6th Grade Tech class--we're doing a unit on Art and Technology. Oops. And that I was supposed to lead pilates after school for staff...Another oops. Fried, I went home on the early bus. I wonder what else I forgot to do...

And to top it off, nobody even noticed my, what I thought was, so very cute outfit. Bummer.