Turkey Day 2011

After another month of blog silence (because I'm lazy and really no other reason) and now it's time for Thanksgiving. 

Turkey all prepped and ready to get in the oven.

Thanksgiving is hands down my favorite celebration of the year. It even beats my birthday. Thanksgiving is celebrated with the four Fs: Family, Friends, Food, Football. I mean really, what else do you need in life.

Back From the Dead

... or something like that.


It's been more than a month since my last blog post and my best friend's mom had to message me on Facebook to make sure that I'm still alive. 


Indeed I am. Honestly, I haven't been feeling particularly inspired to write. The thing about living abroad is that at some point, you're just living somewhere. Eventually, wherever is exotic and cool for your friends and family just becomes the place to do your everyday, routine junk. 


I'll be damned if I let Prague become just another place I've lived. 

Bliss.

Luckily, Autumn is here and although it's a season in which nature is slowly moving into short-term death, aka Winter, (only to be reborn again in the Spring), it's one of my favorite seasons. It is also responsible for renewing that "Holy crap I live here" feeling. 

Pot Pies, East Texas and a Baby

With Christmas coming up and my bank account basically empty I've been trying to come up with things to make for presents. I took up crocheting again and I'm working on a couple of scarfs and hats.

My mom has taken up scrap booking so I've also decided to start working on some of that stuff also. I have a bajillion pictures from a bajillion vacations and such so those ought to be organized somehow, right? Well, I've decided to do it. I haven't actually started anything. Same thing though right?

In case you forgot my budding obsession for clouds, this is the kind of sky you get in Texas.

I am the ultimate procrastinator.

 I've managed to completely avoid doing anything about cleaning and packing up my room. I'm not sure if you know this about me, but I am great at getting things done on deadline. That said, I usually wait until the deadline is pressing. I guess it's the journalist in me. 

Yeah, I know. My room is trashed.

I'm one of those get it done way early or wait until the absolute last minute kind of girls. 

When are you nervous?

I woke up today not feeling very well. Initially, I thought I ate something bad last night at the movie theater. But considering it came and went all day, I think I've just got a huge case of the nerves.

As Leila said, it's only Monday and I've already had a crappy week.

Today I started my first of two cooking camps (I have one this week and one next week).

I love cooking and I love teaching so on the surface this sounds like the best camp ever. Well, looks aren't everything.

Ni lei bulei?

Today I kept myself busy. Making a list of things to do today helped a lot.

I still woke up kind of late but it was still an acceptable hour.

I bought a ton of fruit and veggies today and concocted this crazy "everything" dish with black beans, eggs and various seasonings. It was interesting and pretty good. It would have been better with tortillas and salsa though.

I bought some okra and I'm trying to figure out what to do with that. I'm thinking I might try my hand at some curry, though I'm not real familiar with that area of cooking.

I finally went back to Chinese class with Linda tonight. We covered two chapters in the book. It helped that I had pre-read everything.

I'm actually doing surprisingly well at reading the characters. We actually went through both lessons reading only the characters and not the pinyin. I'm proud of myself.

Linda also taught me a bunch of new verbs and ways to describe people and I now know conjunctions. (Thank goodness. I love conjunctions!)

At the end of the lesson, she asked if I study at home and when I told her that I do she said she could tell. She also said that it makes her excited to teach me because I'm so in to learning and I'm trying to read and all.

Who doesn't love a little praise from their teacher?

Which season do you like best?

Today was relatively uneventful. I had originally planned to wake up; make poached eggs, bacon and toast; and do some leisurely reading. Instead I had a really bad headache and ended up sleeping halfway through the afternoon trying to get rid of it in time for class.

Success.

I borrowed another teacher's scooter since she was teaching here today and I drove super fast to Dar-Nan. I subbed my first class. They're yellow book and still trying to feel my out. Most of them were super respectful and smart. They just need to dial up the fun factor. We'll see how next week goes when I see them again.

I was really pumped for my second class which was my regular red book class that is huge. We have 23 kids in that class and 3 were out on vacation today. We played a lot and I was being super goofy when I was explaining vocabulary words. I love being goofy with kids.

All my boys are starting to warm up to me more in that class too, so we're able to goof off just enough. This one kid, Kevin, is really smart and I think his English is probably at a higher level. Our QA today was, "What is your favorite season? Why?"

Kevin: "I don't like any seasons because there is not fun."
Me: "Kevin, I don't mind that you want to be obstinate, but you're going to do it using proper English. Write 'I don't like any of the seasons because they are not fun.'"

He seemed pretty shocked that I didn't make him change it to the standard, "I like ____ best because ______." (i.e. I like Spring best because there are lots of flowers.)

I honestly hate that we teach these kids so much formatted speech. The QAs are called "Free-talk Questions," but they're everything but "free."

After I got home I satisfied my craving for some amazing pasta. I found cheese ravioli at Carrefour and bought some pasta sauce and made up some quick pasta just as if I were at home. I miss that!

I can't wait 'til it starts to cool off a little. Then I'm going to be all over that kitchen cooking and baking in my free time. It's going to rock everyone else's world!