我爱你

my two favourite mealtime delights right now are hot green tea with lemon and fat free organic vanilla yoghurt with diced apple, raspberries, and a hearty dollop of cinnamon. it is seriously the best breakfast ever.

it's so funny for me to look back a year and a half ago when i was applying to schools, and it was all like 'i applied to (insert horrible english mill) in beautiful DONGGUAN!" dongguan is like the most polluted, dirty industrial city in guangzhou. i am THRILLED that i didn't end up there. i also applied to all these kindergartens that paid next to nothing in shanghai and beijing. now as i go through the application process a second time, i'm way stingier and so suspicious of every single school which is weird since that's how i should have been BEFORE i moved to china in 2007. needless to say i applied to a chain school with locations along the east coast - hangzhou, shanghai, yangzhou, qingdao, oubei, etc - and i'm hoping i'll swing it for hangzhou. i do have a job waiting for me but i'm considering it my back-up option in the event that something better doesn't fall into my lap. i'm talking more pay, better hours, nicer work environment. i have a real longing to teach in a public school there too, something about monday to friday, 16 hours a week really does it for me. unfortunately it's really hard finding a job that isn't posted by some sketchy recruiter on like teslchinarecruiterspyware.cn haha. been checking out jobs in qingdao and shanghai mostly, as hangzhou ones are also hard to come by.

my life right now is pretty quiet, just slipping through my last two months at work while balancing tai chi, grief counselling, dieting, mandarin lessons, and zero social life. on the plus side i sleep really well, watch horribly satisfying television, and am down 45 lbs! only 13 more to go!!!!!!!!!!!

grief counselling is tough and awful and incredibly good for me. we're a group of 10 girls ranging from 18 to 28, most of us have lost parents recently. it's good. we delve into the hardest things and work through our experiences. it feels like a safe place to think about my dad since i never allow myself to do that at any other time. it hurts too much to go to that place where i have to remember him, especially in his last few months. i sleep with an old sweater of his and have a picture of him tacked up right by my pillow, but that's the extent of it. i'm not ready to work through it all yet. i'm not ready to cry and hurt so badly. not when it's this fresh. but doing it in small doses, once a week - i can manage that.

tonight i'm watching indiana jones and maybe going for a walk and sleeping at a sensible hour