The Begining of Many Updates

So since my last update about 6 months have pasted, mainly 'cause I got tired of the blog not working here so I stoped checking. Checked on a whim today and here it is up and running just fine. So I will have to do several updates to get caught up.

The weekend after my last post I did go hiking. It was to a beautiful place and I had a great time.

There are more pictures from this hike, but they do not want to load right now, so I will have to try again later.

In November and December we had lots of fun with the kids, including a winter presentation where our students sang (sort of) for their parents, and a health check along with regular class activities.

Music class is lots of fun.

You get to dance,
use the egg shakers,
and even learn how to play wter filled bottles.
And once you have gotten the hang of it...
you can help your friends.
The only down side is that the first couple of classes Simon might seem a bit scary :)

Of course we allow no fun during class time, so the students have to make the most of their playground time :)

Ayisha
Eric
Karolina
Emiel -- that face doesn't spell trouble at all does it?
Xuan Xuan

Here they are in art class. This is very serious work you know.

The heath check was run in the school by our nurse. It still made some of the kids nervous. Some of them do not like to do things that are so different from their regular routine.
Louis getting weighed.
Tyler getting weighed
Ayisha getting weighed.

Here are some of the photos from the winter presentation, aren't they cute all dressed up?

Louis in his great big red scarf. Annika just too cute in her dress and sweater.

Ok, So It Has Been A While

Well at least this time I have an excuse. First blogger deosn't always work here and second, my computer was down for about 2 weeks. So here goes.

The weekend after Xian I went hiking. It was fairly obvious that I had not been for a hike in a while as it was more challenging then it should have been. We hiked up to see some old parts of The Great Wall, which were pretty cool. I still have not been to the restored areas, so I cannot compare. We had a beautiful day, for the most part anyways. There were a few short periods of snow -- there is often some wierd weather in mountains.

After that the month just flew by. There were some dinners out and some discovery of the local foreigner bars. Then on the 31st we had a Halloween party at school, that was fun-- the kids were too cute. The other teacher in my class and I were in charge of the painting room. This was a good thing since our kids are so young many of the rooms were too difficult for them, but they were able to hang out with us.
Elena
Tyler and I
Ayisha and Laura
Annika and I
Isabella

Justin and Annika (they are good friends)
Annika, she loves to laugh
Ruhi and her brother
Richard (Nemo) and Tyler (Superman)
Richard

Last weekend (Nov 3) I went to the park that is across the street from my apt to see a performance by an Aussie group. The premis that they announced at the begining was that due to the drought in Australia they could not keep their swimming pools full. Thus they had to find a way to replace the 'popular' sport of syncronised swimming. They replaced it with syncronised swinging -- here are some pics -- it was quite funny.
The plan for now is to head out hiking again tomorrow -- I really need to get out of the city and breath some clean air.