drowning in school books

it's Saturday and I'm at school!!! but what's exciting is that another Canadian teacher has arranged a game night at her place tonight, so we have something to look forward to!

this week has been insane. daily meetings, but mostly time spent in my classroom getting ready for students. my room is small, but it's fine for the 15 students I have :) the daily schedule for school days is very full. besides all the language arts, reading, spelling, science, math, penmanship, and bible that I teach, other teachers have my class for chinese, gym, music, art, and computers. so much to keep track of. and there are so many textbooks and workbooks! I can barely keep in all straight. AND we have to submit our weekly lesson plans each Monday morning! I haven't done this in a long time, so it's a bit daunting, but coming along slowly.

and then of course we're trying to set up our apartment and make it comfortable. we went to the market this morning. we like it there. so many people, lots of excitement. but we're sure we're getting ripped off. as soon as they see us coming they start harassing us, asking us what we want (I think that's what they're saying :) lots of crazy smells too. the market right next to our apartment is called a "wet market" because it has all the fruits and vegetables, and meat. it's a big covered market, and along the sides are lots of vendors of household items, clothes, bedding. we got another mattress cover, because the foam is barely enough! I like walking around the fruit and vegetable vendors, so many interesting things to see, many I don't know what they are. but we're starting to stock up our kitchen.

but the washing machine! what a hassle. someone finally came to show us how to use it and we were all excited to finally get a load of laundry in. awhile later I came back to find the kitchen all flooded! the drain was too small to handle all the water coming out of the machine so it just spilled out onto the floor. and everything here is dollar store quality! Scott is frustrated trying to fix anything.

anyways, we're having fun! it's all so exhausting still, so we try to get lots of sleep. I'll try to give you all glimpses into what we experience each day....we have to remember what we've already gotten used to, but might be still interesting to you in Canada.

ok, back to work now!