Monica - Café Con Monica

Weekend Recap…

October 23, 2012

So I know I am a day late but yesterday I got home from work and slept. Woke for an hour made a post on my phone(where most of my pictures were anyway) and then realized I can’t use Blogger on my phone because its banned in China. Yay me. NOT.

So here I go a day late trying to make a post!

It was a good weekend! Friday evening me & SouthAfrican got lost trying to take a new bus to the grocery store. After getting to the end of the line in a not so friendly part of China we realized we were mistaken, walked back about 20 mins and waited for a cab. Turns out we were on the complete opposite end of town. Saturday GCgirl and I went spent the day shopping, had a Starbucks break and then some more shopping and Sushi. It was just like being at home..except everyone around us spoke Chinese and the only store with pants that fit was H&M haha! We met up with a bunch more foreign teachers at the bar and even though I knew I had to be up early for a sunday field trip with my students & parents I got home at 4am drunk. Smarty pants that I am. Sunday was actually quite nice despite my roaring hangover. The park we visited was quite beautiful and the weather allowed me to wear jeans w/out dying from heat stroke.

Sooo now that I am done typing away you can look at the pictures!!!

Mango Passionfruit Tea!

delicious sashimi!

Girls day out 🙂

two Canadians & one American 🙂

around 3am 🙂

OOoh my god yes a Strongbow!!

entrance to the park!

some of my cuties doing 5 little monkeys with me

They had a little kiddie river the kids could fish in

Cheese!

My chinese co-teachers!

Have to stop and smell the roses!

Great part of having Chinese people with you is they always want to take your picture everywhere!

They know how to pack a lunch!

One last one 🙂

That was my weekend!

Friday Rambles…

October 19, 2012

I have all kinds of things in my head today so here we go:

{1}

Being in a long distance relationship is hard. Before I left I knew it would be hard but its harder than I thought. I am already fighting homesickness but not seeing your boyfriend for 4 months and having to have conversations that should be had in person by Skype or text sucks. Not to mention the conversation where you finally realize you may not see each other until July of next year. We both thought we would see each other in between sometime but its just financially feasible for me and most likely not for him. Its hard to decide if I want to use my month long holiday in January and only get to go home(because its that expensive) or stay in SE Asia and travel to 3-4 countries for less than I would pay for a flight home. I miss him but this is not an opportunity that rises everyday. Then there is the fact that I was supposed to be home in March….until I took the job in China which keeps me here till July. Yea…no one was happy when I dropped that bomb. Anyway…the point was that it is hard. Much much harder to deal with then I thought it would be.

{2}

Fall TV is killing it this year! I am seriously loving all the shows. Its a good thing there is nothing to do with my evenings because I have way too many shows to keep up with. I can’t believe I just typed that. Eeeek!

My faves: Greys! Of course

Vampire Diaries

Dexter

Once Upon a Time

The Voice-OMG this seasons battles are seriously amazing!!

Hart of Dixie

New Girl

HIMYM

Scandal

Bones

I am sure there is more…I’m trying not to look crazy.

Thank goodness for HULU & online streaming!

{3}

My Chinese co-teacher seems to think I don’t dress nice enough:

Her: You dont like shopping?

Me: Yes, I do why?

Her: Well you wear the same clothes every week

Me: Well…I couldn’t pack alot of clothes and I packed for a different place

Her: Yea but you can buy more

Me: They don’t sell pants my size here

Her: Oh yea thats true. Well maybe you can get smaller or just have your family send you clothes, they don’t make them here for girls like you.

Ouch. Thank you for making my already bad body image issues in this country even worse. I’ve been working on losing weight but being an country where 1 in every 50-75 people is over a size 2 can start to wear on you. I just want to buy some pants that aren’t sweatpants!!!

{4}

For the last few weeks i’ve had this cough. It doesn’t hurt and I feel fine but it won’t go away. Turns out I am having trouble with the pollution. Yay me!!!

{5}

The foreign teachers are going to be doing a play for the schools 10th anniversary. Guess who is the mirror? That’s right. I get to tell that Queen she isn’t the fairest of them all!

{6}

We started having kids take books home this week. They are all in Chinese but I found this one…can you guess what its about??
OOh and yes I do teach Kindergarten age kids.

{7}

I have been doing so good with the workout schedule, I am so excited for myself. I am sore all over for the first time in a long time but I am loving it because I know it means i’m working my ass off…literally!

{8}

There is some childish HS type girl drama going on here. When I first got here we met a girl that used to work at my school and she had bad bad things to say about everyone. Well I met the other people and they are all pretty nice. A bit different in their own way but not bad to me so I don’t care. Well…lets just say its nothing but drama having to decide who to be friends with without risking ending up friendless for the next year because I might piss off a person with a big ass mouth.

{9}

I am thinking of changing my blog name. I like the one I have but sometimes I think I might want to change it up around here. January will make 2 years I have been blogging and I think some changes are in order 🙂

{10}

I am loving Skyping with my family in their mornings my evenings. I get to talk to my nephew,sister & parents and watch everyone get ready for work and have breakfast together. It makes me so happy that my nephew gets excited to talk to me and doesn’t want anyone to move the ipad so he can’t see me!

Yikes! I am not sure how this ended up being 10 things.
Since this post was so pictureless I leave you with this:

Source: cdn01.cdn.justjared.com via Carmela on Pinterest

Thanks for sticking around! I guess I had a lot to say today! hope you all have a fantastic weekend 🙂

Guangzhou Safari Park Zoo

October 16, 2012

I promised I would post pics from my trips over the holiday week. The SouthAfrican girl and I decided to go to Guangzhou for the day and were decided on visiting the zoo. I don’t usually enjoy going to the zoo back home because I always feel so bad for the animals but I was wondering what an experience it might be in China.

Let me tell you something I learned while there. NEVER ever go during the holiday because it is ridiculously crowded, unbearable. The kind of manners you are used to back home are non-existant here so imagine a very big crowd with everyone doing their best to get to the front of the line or in front row, pushing, shoving, running and not caring if you are in line. It was very frustrating but we did our best not to get irritated.

So here ya go!