Thanksgiving again!

tonight our staff is having a social....celebrating Canadian and the upcoming American Thanksgiving holiday. the hotel where our main campus is located agreed to roast the turkeys for us, which is a big deal. because there are only a few staff that have full-size ovens and it's a big job, especially to then bring it to the school. I'm going to make carrot cake this afternoon for the ocassion.

this week was a short week of classes, but a busy one! we had parent-teacher conferences Thursday afternoon and all day Friday. about half of them had Korean translators....which made for one awkward situation when the translator was the mother of another boy in my class. it's been stressful for me....I found out some things about some of my students. for example, one boy I thought had poor English because he just came from korea. but he's actually been attending international schools his whole life. so he's not fluent in either english or korean! a bit of a shock. I barely understand him when he speaks, and his writing is terrible.

and then a big incident between two girls. they came to me on Thursday morning to say that one of the girl's diary and wallet were missing. I found out from the mother on Friday morning that it was that same friend who stole it! one mother came to me crying about the situation, meanwhile the guilty one's mother didn't want to talk about it and brushed it off as not important! social situations seem particularly important to korean parents. another mother was crying to me because she feels bad about taking her daughter out of her previous school where she had close relationships. AAHHHH!!! I just have to remember not to allow their burdens to become mine.

what else have we been up to? umm....last weekend we tried to find a community center in a migrant village where we were going to volunteer for the morning. but we couldn't find it! but it was a good experience to walk around in this poor migrant village, which is right here in Beijing, not far from our house! welcome to China!

our neighbours also came over last weekend and taught us how to make dumplings and play Mah Jong. really nice of them! we are quite blessed to have neighbours like them.

last night we had another small group with two other married couples. we're studying a book by a christi-n author about communication. it's nice to fellowship with other married couples. so far we just hang out with non-marrieds our age.

anyways, I should go do some laundry, cleaning and baking. I'm really hoping to get a dust-buster or some sort of little vacuum. the dust is just overwhelming! Scott's at another soccer tournament. oh, and he starts coaching girl's volleyball next week. meanwhile I'll just get used to this teaching thing :)