Sorry this post is 6 days late.  I'm working on it.

We had a relatively quiet New Year's holiday over here.  We went to Teppanyaki (Hibachi) with a group of friends and had a wonderful all-you-can-eat grilled Japanese meal with all-you-can-drink sake and beer (and at around $25 per person, it's my favorite deal in town!).

My handsome boyfriend and me taking photos of ourselves before meeting our friends.

Friends to the right

Friends to the left

The meat.

The rice.

The pancakes.

The sake.

After that, we went out to a bar to continue the festivities and watch fireworks.  Funny thing: safety does not seem to be an issue in this city when it comes to fireworks.  Not that all of the fireworks here are safe, but more like the people setting off the fireworks don't take safety into account.  At midnight, a group of people went out to the curb in front of the bar and set off very loud, very big fireworks.  We oohhed and aahhed for a couple of seconds before the downpour of ash from said fireworks began.  I saw about fifteen seconds of New Year's sky sparkles before hovering in a corner with my hand over my glass and my coat over my head.  Truthfully, I don't know why I expected anything different.  I love this city and all of its distinctive illogical idiosyncrasies.

At any rate, New Year's is supposed to be a holiday on which we reflect upon our previous year and set goals for ensuring an even better oncoming year.  My resolution, as previously stated, is to stop being late.  I have a tendency to think it only takes me five minutes to get ready and that every cab ride is ten minutes, no matter where I'm going or where I'm coming from.  That being said, my goal is to leave the house ten minutes earlier for everywhere that I go so I can make sure to be on time.  My other resolution is to keep our apartment cleaner and free of debris.  For the random debris that somehow materializes all around our place, I've purchased several decorative baskets and placed them strategically around the house at our "dropping off" points.  For the cleaning, I've hired a maid to come once a week for around $4.80 per week.  Did I mention that I love this city?

On the docket for this year:
Vietnam
Cambodia
Hong Kong (again, and when it's warmer)
Japan
America (both coasts)
Taiwan
South Korea
Sichuan province of China

Happy travels!
Love,
ali

Hello!  This post is dedicated to my current class of students and all of their hard work so far this year.  They just completed their final exams for the first semester after taking similar tests in every class in every month for the last four months.  And I am the meanest teacher because right before these exams, I made them turn in a very important and time consuming project.

Here is one of my English classes with their poetry anthologies.  They should be so proud!

 And now for a sample of some of the best and funniest excerpts from these projects:

This student believes she will live to be 102 years old.  Ambition.

Pretty cool concrete poem about Taekwondo.

My students blow my mind every day.  The last two lines say, "She's not lost/ We just can't find her."

 

A rather dark student.  Bright, but very dark.

Concrete poem about tornados

So cute.  They had to write five haiku, one for each of the five senses, with accompanying illustrations and annotation.

Found poem.  They had to find an article and pick out words to write a poem.  They could only use words found in the original source.

This was a creepy surprise.  This kid found my facebook profile picture and included it in his anthology.  Of course, he added his own little detail - hot pink devil horns for Adam.

And the devil clearly stole his missing poem from his book.

I've been doing this poetry anthology project every year since I started teaching, and it has always been my favorite project to grade.  I love poetry, and I try my best to encourage my students to read and analyze poetry in order to become better poets.  This project that they created is a collection of the various poems they wrote over our five week unit.  They were required to revise, annotate, illustrate, and reflect on the process of writing poetry.  Some of them hated it, but most of them love it.  And they did a brilliant job (for the most part).  I'd say that's a win.

Love,
ali