Life Update

Sorry I have not posted to this blog in FOREVER! I imagine every one understands how life can get away from you. I have started taking an ed tech class this semester. I am really enjoying it and enjoying blogging for homework. It has gotten me into the habit and mood to blog. Blogging has helped get my thoughts about my class on paper and sorted in my head. It has also helped me work out how to include assignments that I had dreamed about. So I thought I would update this blog.

I have decided that this blog should be dedicated to what is going on in my personal life instead of just about living in China. This way I can write about my life in this blog no matter where I am.

So moving on to what is going on. I have decided to stay in Wuxi at Tianyi for another year. It took me a long time to get to that decision.

I love Wuxi and it will also feel like home. It has become a much bigger city with a foreign scene. They were tons of good bars and restaurants that opened last spring.

However I really wanted to stay in China because I love the place a lot. I felt like I had not experienced enough of the culture and seen enough of its sites. I mean I was a Chinese studies minor in college and took lots of extra classes on the culture. I wanted to explore more of the country. However I really wanted to live in a city that had more opportunities to meet people. I wanted a city with more ways to connect with people. I wanted a city with a rugby team or a choir or some other organizations.

Also the other downside of staying in Wuxi was that most of the teachers at my school were leaving. My closest friends were my coworkers at school. So I figured I should leave too, but stay with the company in China at another school.

So I put in for a transfer at the beginning of the year. I was offered a position at Suzhou which would have been great. Suzhou has a bigger foreign community that is really interconnected. It also is home to many traditional Chinese gardens which I really enjoyed studying when I was in college. However the position required me to teach statistics. I have never taken a course in statistics course in my life because it did not interest me and was not required. I had friends in college that took it knowing that they may have to teach it later on. However I am not the type of person to take a course because I feel like I should take it. I follow my heart and my passions. I mean that is how I ended up in China. So anyways there were not any open positions in which I could only teach Calculus and other math.

So I decided to stay at Tianyi in Wuxi. Now I am not disappointed or sad about that. A lot of things changed after I put in for a transfer. For one thing my school agreed with the company to offer more benefits. One of which was a raise. I also will get two round trips paid for as long as they are under 2,000$. That means I get to travel for my winter vacation and go home for the summer on the companies money. Also it turned out that some of my coworkers and close friends were staying. One of which is the Physics teacher who I have started collaborating on with cross curriculum projects. I am hoping next year that we can have even more labs and assignments that tie together physics and calculus next year. I am looking forward to that. Also this semester I have begun comfortable networking and meeting people. I have made friends with teachers at many different high schools, programs, and even teachers at the university here in Wuxi. Then I meet friends of those friends. I have really been able to expand my circle of friends and met people who I have really clicked with. So I am happy about my spot. I will just have to make sure I use what little vacation time I have to see different parts of China and this region of Asia while I can.

I am also looking forward to the new staff next year. It will be fun getting to know new people and showing them around Wuxi. I plan to be here in August when they get here and help them get settled. This will take some of the burden and work off of my Chinese co-worker. She will have to help about eight new people get settled. That takes a lot of work and running around. So I may not be tons of help with things like setting up a Chinese bank account or some of the other more offical things. However I can help them buy supplies for their house and show them where to get good food. I am looking forward to showing the new staff all the good restaurants and bars. I will be the only female foreign teacher. Which means I will be sharing an office with nine male teachers. It will be interesting indeed and if I can handle playing with the men's rugby team at Willamette University for a whole year I can handle this.

So I will be in Wuxi from now until July 13th. Then I will be returning to Wuxi around August 19th. I will be in Wuxi until at least July of 2014. The question I started getting asked after I decided on what to do for the academic year of 2013 to 2014 was what is next? My answer is I don't know. For the longest time I had everything planned out. I always had my classes planned out according to my interests, graduation requirements, and career aspirations. I had all four years of college classes planned out before I started my Freshman year. I knew for a long time that I would major in math and then go on to get my Masters in Teaching. Then after that I would teach math in a high school. I had not put thought into where that high school would be or what I would do after that. Although recently I have thought about what I will do when I am done teaching. I recently found a cool online program where I can get my Masters in Mathematics for Teachers that would really enhance my teaching. It is about making math more inquiry based and student centered. It bridges the gap between advanced mathematics and high school math. I may even get to take math classes I really wanted to take in undergrad, but couldn't. I heard about it because someone from the Center for Education in Mathematics and Computing came to talk to my students and told me about the program. I may wait to take it because I have been taking classes while teaching for three semesters in a row. I wasn't going to take any this spring, but like I said the class has gotten me back into blogging again so I don't regret. So anyways I need to focus on teaching next year. I most likely will be teaching a new prep next year so I will be spending more time prepping for that.

However this has gotten me thinking about what other degrees I would eventually want to pursue and I think I would like a higher degree in education. I enjoy teaching and learning new ways to teach. I was lost my first year of teaching because I didn't have that support network I had when I was in grad school. Then I began taking education courses online at Willamette University and felt inspired again. I really enjoyed the classes. Then I started thinking about how much I enjoyed studying education. So I think when I am finally ready to leave the classroom, which is decades upon decades from now, I will go teach teachers how to teach. My passion is for education and teaching. I will follow that which has given me some insight about my life trajectory, although very far down the line.

So I am finally at the part of my life that I don't really have planned out. I am kind of enjoying that, but it is also stressful. That means I have to make hard decisions. I think I might teach international for a while. I think going back to the states now would be hard because I have taught some of the best and brightest math students I will probably ever see. Plus that would be some major culture shock. I figure I am young and now is the best time to do it. However where I will go I don't know. The company I work for has started a separate recruiting company and can help find me jobs in other countries. I may take advantage of that. I will also look for international jobs online and see if a position or country interests me. I don't know! I may even stay in Wuxi for a fourth year depending on what the staff is like next year. Who really knows! However I am ready for the adventure.

I will keep you posted on my adventure on this blog no matter where life takes me. I hope that next year I will post every Sunday or maybe every other Sunday (because exciting things to write about don't always happen every week) about what has been going on in my life. However I will find some regular time interval to update and find things to write about. At leas that is the plan now, but as we know life can get in the way.