Hello

Hello World. It’s me, Jenna. I haven’t talked to you in a while, and I don’t know where to start. I am leaving Prince George on July 5th in the evening for Yangzhou, China. I will be arriving in Shanghai around supper time on July 7th. On July 9th, the school is sending a bus to pick us all up. We start school on the 12th I think. Summer school sounds like so much fun. Each teacher had to pick a country, a holiday and sport to teach the children about. I have Canada, Canada Day and Dodge Ball. A part of me wants to just show “Dodge Ball” and have that as my teaching, hahahahahah! All children need to know to grab life by the balls! Anyways, I think I will haul out my photo album from Mom and my trip across Canada and put it into a slide show. I am thinking I might get some Aboriginal music to play it to. Not sure what else I will do, but Dollar Stores are great for cheap Canada Day stuff too! We will celebrate in style! I am pretty excited about this.

Here’s a blurb about summer camp from the school!

“The IESC is a two week program of English Immersion for children ages 8-14. The day lasts from 8am to 8pm with a 2 1/2 midday break. The classes are taught on a rotation basis where all the teachers eventually teach all the age groups.

The day begins with a 70 minute 'homeroom' class of students that you see every day. This is where your English language and culture classes are mostly taught. The emphasis is on oral English and to get the students to speak English. As a native speaker you are the model for them. After the 70 minute class and a short break the school goes in to a rotation where you have a new group of students every day for two weeks. This is where the sport, holiday, and country information is given. The schedule has yet to be confirmed; however tentatively in the afternoon your homeroom comes back to you for a 40 minute summary and anything else you would like to do with them. After dinner is the evening program with the whole camp in attendance. This could be a sing along, movie, dance, presentations, talent show, etc. Any suggestions are welcome. After this you are free and the students go back to their dorms.”

It’s going to be long but super fun days. Then we get a month off before real school begins. One of the other teachers (I have emails for five others) says she plans to climb Everest in this month, so I think I might not be travelling with her! I am hoping that we can travel as a group and get started on making great friendships! But if need be, I will travel on my own. A guy from CNC has been to China and gave me his list of favorite places and tours and where to find cheap things on the internet. I haven’t looked into any of them yet, but I can tell it is a great list already! My China guide book arrived hot off the press last week. Like my Mandarin book, it has yet to be opened. Soon! I have been working full time for the last month and life just seems out of control! I haven’t had a weekend to sit and do nothing since I started work! This, my dear people, is why you haven’t heard from me. This weekend is fairly quiet, but I am supposed to be doing my homework right now. I have until June 10th to finish the final exams for both of them, and I will need to review at least a little! I am finished reading the grammar lessons (and am ignoring the final assignment to fill you in on my life!), but I still have two lessons in my Child Learning course. And of course, I have another busy week coming up! Technically, my contract ends on Friday, but I am pretty sure it will be extended a little. I am willing to work until June 15th before I start to panic on getting ready for China.

I am anxiously awaiting the arrival of the paperwork needed to get my visa in place for China. The school says they are hoping to have them completed by the end of next week and will be FedExing them off to us then. What I understand (another thing I am postponing to write to you) is that my passport has to be walked into the Chinese consulate and handed over to get stamped. I cannot mail it in. However, I do believe that I can hire a homeless bum in Vancouver (or one of my sister’s friends, either or!!) to go and stand in the line for me. If this is the case, I will be receiving my paper work and fedexing it to Vancouver where this will happen and then it can be fedexed back to me and I can get on my plane. The timing is getting short! And, if I can’t hire a bum, then I need to get my ass to Vancouver to do it myself. This could all stress me out, but I am not too worried yet. I will get my ass on looking it up soon.

I bought travel insurance yesterday. You will be pleased to know that if I die, I have life insurance. And my body can come home. And, if I get sick and need to come home, they will even fly me back to China. Good times there! And, it was just over a dollar a day before I added the cancellation policy on the flights I have booked already. My poor MasterCard is going to have a heart attack though! I have put so much on it in the last week! Sometimes money is just so easy to spend!

I can’t think of anything else to tell you to continue my procrastination, so I guess I will go for now. Thanks again for all the support! I love you!