London was pretty crazy in terms of a first-time teaching experience. Or so we thought.

Then we came to Dagang.

Don’t get me wrong. Living and teaching in China is in a whole new world apart from London, England, both geographically and work-wise. The students are (mostly) keen, they’re (almost) all well-mannered and there are a billion and one opportunities to get involved at our school. Besides being a bad procrastinator, some of the reasons I haven’t been keeping up with this blog is because of all the extra-curricular stuff that goes on at our school.

A typical day means being at school before 7:30 and, more often than not, leaving around 5:30 PM for dinner, and then planning after dinner until we go to bed. Jack coaches ultimate on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays I’ve got study hall, Thursdays I’ve got debate and we’re both helping out in the school play, which meets on a different day each week (on a rotating schedule) (EDIT: We’ve just entered a new semester with new after-school responsibilities! Shows you how much I’ve posted = =). In the past two months we’ve been at school on the weekend every two weeks or more. Weekday evenings are spent planning lessons for the next day, with other teachers in “marking parties” and weekends are pretty much the same. Every now and then we’ll catch a board games night with our co-workers. School is life.

A school snack sale from a collaborative effort by Marketing 12 and Foods 11/12.

Marketing 12 came up with their own mascots for the snack sale.

Our friends dressed up for Halloween since all the teachers stayed after school to supervise the dance and party.

I’m loving it though. And I’m loving the fact that, being in our second year of teaching, Jack and I are learning to find time to still spend time with God, with each other and with our new friends. Here’s to hoping that I’m also going to spend more (regular) time back on this blog.

Still alive and loving life! I’ll get back on that post-posting-about-Europe thing soon too. There’s so much we should catch up on. To the friends in Canada and London, I’m missing you and thinking of you aplenty.

Love,
Andrea