A guy who does small blips about current news liked the pictures I took of the sandstorm. He asked to use them on the news site www.nowpublic.com. :)

Here's the link to the article: http://www.nowpublic.com/node/44014

I'd never experienced one. Neither had my father, Dick, or Martha in all their years in China. Hmmm...a Beijing sandstorm!

I guess up until five years ago sandstorms were a huge problem in the springtime. But the government spent a lot of money to plant trees to try to prevent them from doing so much damage.

So on Saturday evening, I took this picture of a beautiful sunset not far from my school. Mike & I were in a taxi on our way in to Tongzhou for some groceries. Then on Sunday night, the sand hit.

We woke up to a hazy, windy and depressing day. But I heard it was so much worse in the city center of Beijing. Three hundred thousand tonnes of sand from the Gobi Desert has blown into Beijing & the surrounding areas! Ouch for our lungs :(

Yesterday was my first day at my new assignment: teaching at Beijing Union University. It was interesting...I taught six students for three hours, and my classroom is a Chinese teahouse. Here's where I teach:




It was a nice experience, but it was exhausting...especially with the sandy, windy weather in Beijing.



Today at BCCSC, many students were hacking and I started coughing & couldn't stop. I think tomorrow I'll wear my white mask since I have absolutely no time to be sick, lol!

In less than two weeks it will be the May holiday, and while most of the other teachers are heading to Thailand (to the beach!), Mike & I are going on a hiking trip to Hongshan. Happy Easter to everyone back home :) Please know that I think of all of you often (even though I send e-mail very little), and I wish I had $$$ to bring you all here or to come to you & visit, miss you...

Ah, today was an eventful day...good, bad & ugly.

It started off for me like it has everyday for the last week...I overslept. I can't seem to have a night without crazy dreams these days. Arggghhhh! Anyways, I missed breakfast with my friend Dick, arrived at the office on time, then headed right out to supervise a test for Period 1. I was disappointed to catch someone cheating during the test. Grrr, I really don't like it when a student cheats! They don't seem to understand it's dishonest, and they really don't get that I'm really good at catching cheaters (I've had a lot of practice this year, lol) and they shouldn't even bother.

For Period 2 & 3, I took a class of students out into Tuanli for our Earth Day cleanup activity. I know, I know...Earth Day is April 22nd, not the 14th...but next week is so busy at school that our environmental science teacher organized it for today.

It was an interesting adventure cleaning up our community. We found some odd items, some gross items, and some pretty sad stuff too. I almost stuck myself with a syringe (yikes!), found a pair of pants covered in dried blood, and a tiny dead puppy :( I asked another teacher to help me put the little puppy in a garbage bag (I didn't want to just leave it there, I think it deserved a burial somewhere), but he just joked that "it probably has SARS or something". I was almost in tears by this time & that was a horrible joke!

So, I covered it with a couple of garbage bags & tried to pick it up myself, but when I felt it through the bag...I just couldn't do it. It was such a sad little thing. I placed four stones at the corners of the garbage bags, then surrounded it with the full bags from our cleanup to make sure the students stayed away.

After my return to the school I had to dash off again to do more test supervision for Period 4 & 5. I gave the students my little speech about the importance of honesty & what would happen if I caught them cheating (a big, fat zero from their teacher). And I wished them luck & hoped they did well. Then I collected all their little cheat sheets...heehee

Lunch went fast: eat, walk to the office, walk to the apartment, back to the office...then back to teaching.

This afternoon, a visitor came by to talk to my students about university and about why it's important for them to learn English. I was disappointed to find that my students didn't do their homework, grrr...and they didn't exactly treat our visitor well...ha, joke's on them, I'll just make them work harder next week!

Now, it's the weekend. But I still have too much work to do! lol... I have to prepare for my classes next week, and get ready for my latest assignment: lecturing at a university in Beijing on Mondays & Thursdays. Crazy!

Today was fantastic! We had such a fabulous time :)

Mike & I were asked by our friend Ray to help out today. We met Ray & his wife on the trip we took to Harbin back in January, and we saw them again on the trip to Yunnan province. They're an older couple from the U.S. living in China and they work with the YMCA in Beijing.

We brought six students from BCCSC with us to help out with the swimming party for children living in the Bethel Home, homes in China for visually-impaired orphans.

Mike got in the water and helped a young boy swim all over the pool, and the six students & I helped from the side of the pool and in the locker rooms.



The BCCSC students were amazing! They spoke with the children in Mandarin, translated for them, helped them move around the two pools. They impressed me so much with their kindness & friendship towards the children :) ; it was so nice of them to use some of their weekend to help others.



After the swim, all the children & the adults had a meal in the YMCA restaurant together. I got to sit with two little girls (one of them was my little buddy, Lu Lu) and I shared my tofu, meat & watermelon with them. They were so hungry after all that swimming!

When the morning was over, we walked the children to their bus...and we all felt so happy to have met them & to have shared time with them, and a little sad to see them go. But we will definitely see them again...the YMCA director was so pleased with us coming to help that she's asked us all back for the next time the children come for a party :)

Ah, it was that time of year. Awards season takes place in April here at BCCSC...a little strange, since the students are finished in July, but oh well :)

Dad asked me months ago to design new awards certificates, which I did...then I was asked to change them not once, not twice, but six times! Arrggghhhh! A wee bit frustrating, especially since the last change was requested the day of the banquet!

Anyway, being the perfectionist people pleaser that I am, I smiled & said "sure! no problem!", then spent almost all day Thursday formatting & printing the silly things for that night. Eighty-four certificates had to be reformatted, printed, cut, sealed, stamped & signed by Dad and Andy. Blah!

After the stamping part (it exhausted my arms to press each certificate with the school seal), I crawled under my desk & took a quick nap...while I was there, I took a picture of Mike working at his desk :)



At the short but sweet banquet, we had a great meal prepared by the cafeteria staff (some of them have trained with professional chefs in Beijing), the students received their prizes, and I even got to present the International Award in English to one of my Korean students :) It was nice to see all the proud students with their big smiles!

Heehee...on Friday afternoon, nine of us teachers & five students piled onto a bus and went into Beijing for a TV show taping. Something to do with leading up to the Olympics...it was kind of boring for me because I was sitting directly behind one of the camera guys. I only got to see his backside, lol!



Anyway, Mike got dragged up to the stage :) and he had to ask a question to see if he could pick out the real professional basketball player. He got it wrong...

After a couple of hours sitting in a super hot TV studio, we we're all happy to get moving. So after a long bus ride (most of it stuck in BJ traffic), we made it to Tongzhou for pizza at Big Pizza. mmmmm...pizza buffet! They make really good fruit pizza and tons of fresh veggies! yum :)