Happy New Year!

Chinese New Year, that is.  Even though it's not until Thursday, we started our celebrating early here.  While this means some unpleasant preparation (cleaning the whole school), most of them are extremely fun.  For example:

Looks good, right?

The stage is set...

For CNY, employers are supposed to take their employees out for a fancy dinner.  Now of course, we couldn't just have a fancy dinner.  We also had to have performances by each group of teachers…

Middle Class dance!

(And no, I am not posting any video of my performance, although it was quite spectacular.  It may be somewhere on Facebook.  You may be able to see it if I get tagged in it. I make no promises.)

*Oh, and Thursday was also exciting because of this…

My bus directions to my favorite place…immigration!

Which means I FINALLY have my ARC (Alien Resident Certificate)!  Yay!

*And I ran 11 miles.  Fun times in half marathon prep.  There will never be pictures of me running.  It's sure not pretty.

Friday was traditional Chinese day. That's right, as in teachers and students are required to put on our traditional clothes for school.  So as you look at the following pictures, keep this in mind.
*If you are a truly hate filled person looking for an example of white girls playing dress up to feed your discussion of cultural imperialism, this is not it.  This is something the whole school does, as you can see in these pictures!  And while I almost wish people wore this every day, unfortunately this was just a one day thing, for all of us.

The Chinese New Year race…reenacted by our adorable students

Some of our teachers who also rented awesome clothes…and hats

English teachers/student teachers came in with lion masks and danced "Gangam Style"
You can't make this up y'all…my school is this awesome!

English teachers…gone Chinese!

Except my class of 15 5th grade boys (and 1 poor 5th grade girl.)  The dress up thing is only really for preschool.

So much happiness..whenever I announce it's time to play dodgeball!

So that's it for me for now!  I hope you enjoyed my retelling of Chinese New Year adventures.  This is especially awesome because this year is MY YEAR!  And your year, if you were born in 1990!  It's HORSE YEAR!  So I'll consider it an extra impetus for putting my best self out there this year and going after my dreams.  And to start, that means crossing continent number 6 off the list…Australia here I come!

I'll miss you teacher Vicky!!!  (and my students…but they can't read my blog
… because they can't read)

See you all in 2 weeks with MANY pictures of Australia and stories of fun times with my dad!

Also, this means only one more continent to go…I'm not sure whether or not I'll make it to Antarctica before I'm 25, which had been my goal.   But by next horse year (12 years from now)?  I hope I have not only been to every continent…but I've truly found one to call home.