The truth about me

Congratulations, Jasmine!
Your IQ score is 131

This number is based on a scientific formula that compares how many questions you answered correctly on the Classic IQ Test relative to others.

Your Intellectual Type is Facts Curator. This means you are highly intelligent and have picked up an impressive and unique collection of facts and figures over the years. You've got a remarkable vocabulary and exceptional math skills — which puts you in the same class as brainiacs like Bill Gates. And that's just some of what we know about you from your test results. Read more...

And then these morons think I'm going to pay them. . .not so much. Oh, but sweeet, I just looked it up and technically I'm gifted. Encyclopaedia Brittannica says that any score higher than 130 shows that. So I may just be barely gifted, but woot! Talk about a little self-esteem boost. :)

Oh, and Dr. Haddad-I'm up-to-date in my lesson planning right now. It's still a pain though. I wish someone else could just do that part for me! I love my students, and I love the teaching--but planning? Ick. That's not part of my life at all!


I am a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy.
J. D. Salinger (1919 - )

Think twice before you speak, and then you may be able to say something more insulting than if you spoke right out at once.
Evan Esar (1899 - 1995), Esar's Comic Dictionary
Public speaking is the art of diluting a two-minute idea with a two-hour vocabulary.
Evan Esar
The girl with a future avoids a man with a past.
Evan Esar
Walking isn't a lost art: one must, by some means, get to the garage.
Evan Esar
Play: Work that you enjoy doing for nothing.
Evan Esar, Esar's Comic Dictionary

That all men are equal is a proposition which, at ordinary times, no sane individual has ever given his assent.
Aldous Huxley (1894 - 1963)

I don't understand the sizes anymore. There's a size zero, which I didn't even know that they had. It must stand for: 'Ohhh my God, you're thin.'
Ellen DeGeneres

Interesting times.

Crazy times. This is me eating corn ice cream--yes, corn ice cream. Emily and I went out for dinner one night and we talked for just forever. And our dinner took forever to come, because of some really funny mix-ups, and I ate the most garlicy garlic bread I have ever tasted in my entire life. She had mushroom pizza or something vile like that. Anyways, but after that, we decided it was definitely time to buy ice cream. So we started walking home and came upon a store that had like 5 ice cream freezers full of things we had never seen before. So we determined that we had to be brave and try new things. So I found some sort of chocolate coated thing with caramel. . .and I don't know, random flavors inside. But then, there was this package and it had the picture of corn on the cob on it. And we were intrigued. So finally I just bought it along with my other one, since I kind of figured it would be gross, and it was only 1 qwai anyways (like, 12 cents). So I ate the other one, and then I opened this one up and it was covered with this corn on the cob shaped shell, and when I bit into it, I discovered that the shell was made out of the paperish soft serve ice cream cone material, and the inside was actually corn flavored ice cream. It was like, cold, sweet, creamed corn--but completely smooth. It was really good. But it was still a shock to bite into it and taste corn flavored ice cream. I think that it'll become a big hit. I'm definitely going to get it again sometime. There are a lot of other kinds to try first though. So I'll try those first! Oh, and a few nights later, a whole bunch of us girls were out, and Camille bought the Pea Ice Cream--never going to make it anywhere. We all tried a nibble, and then we threw it away and wished that the horrible aftertaste would please just go away.




Since I didn't buy this, I guess I don't get to be free and healthy-of course, since I'm not a housewife, I guess I can't be anyways. :(

Especially since one of my kids threw up in class today. Not a good plan!

happiness

Totally floating away on the clouds. . .then being pulled down into harsh reality.

On further notice, I realize that I have just finished my first week as a real life grown up official teacher. I wonder if they learned anything. ah well, it was fun. I hate lesson planning.

Raining outside

Well, it's raining cats and dogs outside, and just got really dark, and since it's only 5pm, I thought I would just stay here and work until it dies down. So, in the best tradition of Jasmin-ation, I'm blogging instead. I had my first 2 days of school, and they both went really well. I have one girl I'm a little worried about, but she's never been in school before, and her English is really really low, so we'll work on it. The sewer smell from the canal grows much stronger when it rains, so even with my stopped up nose, it's invading my nasal passages.
Lesson planning really is the worst part of teaching. Man, if I could just have someone else do that, and I'd just do the work with the kids, I'd be happy. My kids are really sweet, and they listen pretty well. We'll see how it goes after the newness wears off. I really want to go home and veg in front of the tv, but the thunder that just cracked said no. I suppose I could try to get a taxi. But I just don't want to brave the bus stop again. I did that on Monday--went home in the pouring rain, just because I wanted to be home. My pants got soaked though, and since all my packages haven't arrived, I don't know that I have anything but the ones I'm wearing to wear again. Oh, well, except for that skirt. . .that's drying on my balcony--hopefully the rain didn't get in.

Well, it is still raining, but I'm going to brave it. Maybe it'll let up soon? The sun came back out, so maybe the skies are almost out of rain.

Eating out

Tasty spinach soup.


the back of a menu. . .read it closely, it's amazing.


Drinking yak butter tea--it was super.


Dancing with Emily in a looong line all the way around the restaurant.


These are from the Tibetan restaurant the whole staff went to the other night. It was lots of strange, but really tasty food. The dancing was fun, and the singing was mostly really cool, some of it a little painful.

A perfect outing

This is me at Dico's during my blissful $30 evening. That included: taxi rides to and from Walmart, a pair of shoes, a fuzzy blanket, a bath rug, and a bottle of wine, supper at Dico's, and hours and hours to myself, with nobody else who spoke English within sight. It was soooo nice. I was tired of meetings, and people, and having to be something that I'm not really--an adult!
I just loved the feeling of independence, and self-sufficiency, really. I was tired of feeling as if I knew nothing, and depended on other people for anything I needed. I got to walmart on my own, found my way around the absurdity of the 3 story store, found shoes that were almost big enough for me, tried on a few shirts that were invariably too tight(--Asian women are small), found some other things to buy, and then left walmart and went to Dico's, which is apparently a Taiwan based fast food chicken place--much like KFC. Then I went home, switched on Will and Grace, and spent a quiet evening relaxing. Yay for life.



Now, the next day I freaked out at life, but that's ok. I'm over all that now. That COULD have something to do with a happy pill I took this morning.



This is what I spend my spare time with. They are my beeest friends. Woot!

Me eating Rice and mystery veggies

Adventures in China

Now it seems I CAN get to blogspot. I don't know. It's so confusing. I don't understand it. That's not unusual though. Anyways. . .here's what I posted on xanga. . .i'll have to decide which blog i like better For now, maybe i'll stick with both. To see a couple pictures, look over at my xanga. I don't feel like uploading those twice. That would be absurd.


Well, my adventures in China began when i got off the plane in Beijing, 8 hours after I was supposed to. This meant that of course i'd missed the connecting flight, and then next one going to Kunming was 8 hours from when i arrived. So i prepared to spend the night in the airport. I had just slept on the last flight, for basically the entirety of the 13 hours, except for meals, and watching Pride and Prejudice. so yeah. That gave me more sleep than i'd gotten the last two nights at "home" combined, though, so I was wide awake. So I did lots of things waiting for that 7:30 am flight. The airport was dead, but I was hanging out with some new friends, one from India, that had just come from Kazakhstan, and the othere only spoke Russian. So our conversation was rather limited. That's ok though. I enjoyed the peace and quiet of the abandoned airport. That is, until 4:30 in the morning, when this guy who looked like an airport official tried to convince me that I could go ahead and check in. riiight. So i went to the entire other end of the airport, walking alone through these tunnels that had moving walkways and were very nice, but very abandoned. When i got to the other side, this guy met me, and took me upstairs to thiso little cafe, where he tried to convince me to sit down and wait. Yeah right. So by this point, I'm thoroughly freaked out, and kicking myself for getting up at all. I insisted on returning to where I had been, and told him I would wait there. So then he pulls out this piece of paper that says airport tax and wanted 100 yuan. I was like, no way. Dream on. at that point, i didn't even have any yuan, and i certainly wasn't going to give anything to this guy. Anyways, so I got all the way back, and nothing happened to me, and i just sat back down with my friends. I checked in later at 6 when the airport was buzzing. . .and i certainly did not have to go to the other terminal. Anyways.

So I get to Kunming, I got my bags, and I was even picked up. i was a little bit worried about that, since my delays were so significant and i'd only managed to send off an e-mail with a subject line from the Chicago airport with my new flight numbers. i was hoping.

But yeah. We ate lunch, we came to the school, and the old Kindergarten teacher briefed me for like, 2 hours on everything in my office and classroom. I was just sort of dazed by this point. But THEN. Camille and I decided to do something crazy. I wanted to relax and watch a movie that evening, I thought that would be nice. So we went to Carrefour and bought a TV. But not just any TV, no no. A humongous 29 inch one. And a DVD player of course.

Then we had to figure out how to get it home. They had a delivery service, but we wanted to watch tv that night. So we thought we could take a taxi. Seriously, we couldn't even get it through the exit magnetic detector thingies, we had to go out through the entrance. So I'm standing on the sidewalk with a shopping cart and a gigantic tv box sitting on TOP of the cart, and no taxi was even going to think about letting us in. The box wouldn't have fit. So anyways, these two girls who worked there finally started running around asking all the taxis if they would let us in. Finally there was one with a bigger trunk, and even then, we had to tie the trunk shut. Then we got home, and since we have this beautiful apartment on the FIFTH floor, we had to figure out how to lug it up. So this random guy helps us all the way up. There was no way in hell we were going to be able to do it ourselves. I don't know what we were thinking. Talk about stupidity. So yeah.

Then we had to figure out how to connect it all. Everything was written/marked in Chinese. So we were trying every combination possible. It took us like, 2 hours. Then we finally watched our movie. I fell asleep during it of course, and then finally crawled into bed to sleep off the last 24 hours. I slept really well, and have had no jet lag. It was great. Anyways, I update more on my life since that first extreeeemely long day, later.

This is my view from my living room window. . .see those beautiful mountains in the distance. I just sit and stare at them sometimes. Of course, I also sit and watch the dark screen on my tv with the little thing that says DVD player bounce around it and change colors when it bounces off the edge. I'm just stupid.

alas

Dear friends. It seems as though I can no longer properly access blogspot. I can post, but I can't view comments or even other people's blogs. It's absurd and crazy. So thus, I must therefore create a new blog. I have chosen xanga, for the simple fact that I heard of it before, and it seems simple. I am all about simplicity. Please relocate yourself to my new blog, add it to your favorites (it's easy, Janie, I promise, just click the link and when you get there, go up and click Add to Favorites, under your Favorites menu). I was told by a random Indian guy who'd been in Pakistan, while I was in the Beijing airport that I should definitely keep a blog. So, thus, I determine to be faithful.
Hmmm. . .so now I have to think of a new blog name.
http://www.xanga.com/KindergartenFiend
See you soon!