Reflections on Summer 2012

 Today marks my last official day of summer, and I am trying to spend it just relaxing rather than doing schoolwork. So far, I have watched three episodes of Smallville (Did I mention that I bought all 10 seasons for 55 kuai, less than $10!?) Then I went to a local coffee shop and finished reading To Kill a Mockingbird for the sixth time. While this was schoolwork, I simply love this book. I think that few book are as convicting and as real as it is. Upon finishing it, I decided that when I do my Masters Thesis, I will write about TKAM. I already have title: Trash, Sin, and Squalor: A Study of Prejudice and Religion in To Kill a Mockingbird.  Anyways after finishing the book, I returned home to write my blog posts.

 This summer I spent four weeks studying Chinese, had one week of vacation, and then taught for three weeks at an English Language Intensive Class that we offered at the school. Certain aspects of this summer were rather hard. A lot of people went to various places around the world while I spent the entire summer here. I moved to a new place and was trying to settle in and find my place, but with so many people gone, it was a bit difficult. Now as people are coming back, those feelings seem rather distant, and this place truly is beginning to feel like home.  One thing that really helped was teaching the English class. I learned so much about teaching ESL, and it gave me a new perspective of those students who really struggled in my English class last year. On top of that, we had a great group of kids, and the teachers worked really well together.

As you can see, I had a very busy summer, and it was not really much of a vacation. However, after having the past two days off, I am looking forward to this school year. When I look at how busy I was, it doesn’t feel like I had much of a vacation, but when I look at all the other things that I was able to do this summer, I see that I really did have a good summer. The highlights include: 

•  Reading approx. 3,246 pages for fun
• Watching one season of Once Upon a Time, Gilmore Girls, and Smallville and two seasons of Sherlock
• Spending two days in Beijing
• Getting to know numerous people and going many different places with them
• Watching every episode to date of the Lizzie Bennett Diaries (If you are a Pride and Prejudice fan and you have not watched this youtube series, then stop reading and go to this link right now http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KisuGP2lcPs - Please note this series is wonderful, but in effort to modernize certain aspects of the book, this series can be a bit on the PG-13 side.)

So here’s to a good school year.