Summer in the City

Summer in the City has truly began today in Beijing! When I left the building for the first time to go to the gym this morning and I wanted to just run back into my nicely air conditioned apartment building. It was hot. I mean, really hot. Like, I want to go back a year ago to my former self complaining about spending a hot day in a pioneer dress last summer and give her a stern "Suck it up" speech, kind of hot. The kind of hot were my arms got a little pink on my ten-15 walk to the gym and back!

After a good application of sunblock and finding my EF baseball cap, I made it into work. We had a meeting introducing the new boss to the entire community staff and then we had our academic meeting where we learned a little more about our summer courses. For the first four weeks of the summer course I will be teaching a high school class every day for four hours in the afternoon and then my normal evening and weekend classes. I was told I was most likely going to be teaching a preschool class in the morning, have a bit of a break, and then go back to work. I'm thankful to be able to keep some of my morning routines. The morning here is the best time for me to talk to anyone at home, so I am glad I don't have to give that up.

I spent the rest of the afternoon getting all my lesson plans that had been piling on my self organized and into a binder. I also got all my teaching supplies neat and tidy. It felt good to have that done. I taught a special study club class for low level elementary school students about space. It was pretty fun... but I had left out the planet Jupiter for about half of the lesson. Whoopsie! The kids enjoyed that I had made a mistake. We watched some awesome Nasa videos, too.

I went to a little market with my friend Cindy in her neighborhood. I bought my mentor teacher Amy a plant as a thank you present for all the help she has given me and making sure I was ok while I was really sick. Cindy and I chilled at a Starbucks were I had a yummy sandwich and a huge hibiscus iced tea!