Café Con Monica

Hello world!!!

Ahhhhhhhhhhh my VPN is finally working all the time! yay!! woo woo! 

Ok enough of that! I didn’t get to share my Christmas photos with you all because I just couldn’t get it to work and then the days just turned into one long one! Now its going to be NYE and 2013! I can’t believe it! This January marks the start of my 3rd year blogging and I am planning some fun new things for this place next year. 

So with this being the last day of the year I want to catch you up and share some things: 

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Since I left home and moved to Thailand then China I have had moments where I stop and look around and have a minor freak out. HOLY SHIT I am in China! yes! I get homesick, I fuss about the weird cultural differences, and hate using a squat toliet with all my life but I am so amazed and grateful for this opportunity and the fact that after years and years of saying I am going to do something crazy like move abroad to teach I actually worked up the courage and did it. 

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I couldn’t have made it through the past 6 months without the amazing support of my family and friends. Even with G telling me I should just come home because his life is a mess and missing all the fun new things going on in Snifferelllas life, even with missing my nephew getting bigger every day. Thank goodness for Skype and google voice texting and Facebook for letting me all the pictures! 

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2012 was a rough year for me and The Boy and I have no clue what 2013 has in store in that department but we are still friends and he has been pretty understanding about this adventure into figuring out my life that I am on. 

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K and I are officially all booked for our 3 1/2 week adventure around Asia! We start in Thailand, head to Cambodia, then Vietnam, Hong Kong and then end our trip in Beijing! Its going to be a whirlwind of crazy busy and I can’t wait! It will be so great to have one of my closest friends here with me and get to experience new places with her. 

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I get to spend NYE on a boat cruise around Hong Kong and then bum around for a few days before I go back to work for 8 days! Crazy right? Well in China when you get a couple days off they hit you with a work on the weekend! Sneaky ones I tell  you! I have a cute(but warm) dress to wear and I  may actually comb my hair and put some make up on! 
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Last year I posted pictures from every month but lets be serious I have taken well over 5,000 pictures in the last 6 months alone and I don’t even know how many the first 6 months of the year. So for now you get my Christmas pictures! 


My kiddies about to perform Jingle Bells 

Feeling Festive! 

Making Christmas Crackers for our kids 
all the gifts my family and co-teachers sent/gave me!

after our performance on Open day! 

Skyping with the family while they open gifts Xmas Eve 

Oh you didn’t know Santa is Chinese? 

My fellow North American 🙂 

hard work getting the houses to stay up 

see the concentration! 

I’m off as I only work a half day today! 
I hope you all have a wonderful NYE and start your year off happy and hopefully with a slight buzz!!! 



Monday Monday

Hey there you sexy thing! 


Haha no really I didn’t do anything worthy of a great post this weekend. I worked my part-time went to the bar and had a few drinks with the other foreigners and then proceeded to lay around my apartment like a lazy bum. It was quite fantastic if you ask me…except the part where I had to leave to get food because I couldn’t be bothered to cook for myself. Ooh and the squats…oh the squats! 
Somehow in my random moments of genius I decided to do the December squat challenge. What in the good name of all that is sweet was I thinking?? My thighs haven’t hurt this bad in…ummm well lets just say its been a long time. Were on the 17th now and today I have to do 95. 90 effing 5 squats. You know what tomorrow brings??? 100. Kill me now please and thank you! 


Actually I am just being a whiny baby, its not that bad. Not so bad in fact that I have been doing push-ups as well. I am finally able to do 2 real push-ups at a time! Yes dolls you read that right!! 2 real mother-effing push-ups at a time! Woooooooooooo! I started the 1st of the month doing 15 and just added 5 everyday and of those I try to do as many real ones as I can. Thanks to Snifferellas advice I am now past doing none. Woo woo! 

Next month I am doing an abs challenge…lets see how that goes. 

So there you have it. My oh so exciting update! 









Week?

Hello Everyone! Its been a while huh? Well I am still having issues with my VPN. It is working when it damn pleases. As such I had to make this post over two days. One day to figure out how to get the pictures on it and another to finish because I was so irritated yesterday! 

Its madness around here because we are preparing for the schools 10th anniversary celebration. The foreign teachers are putting on a very short, chinese written Snow White play. Yep, and I am the mirror. So very exciting…not so much. We’ve been running around like crazy having random last minute practices, and also prepping for this past weekends fair at the school. 

It definitely helps things go quickly and I still can’t believe its already December! I got most of my Xmas shopping done so that makes me feel better. Now some pictures…I have to get going to practice again.

Saturday afternoon I was invited to lunch on a student’s family farm. I was actually really worried about what would be served for lunch because the Chinese like to surprise you like that. It turned out to be sheep. I would like to say it was good but it was varies bits of the sheep that I prefer not to think about. We walked around the orchard for a bit too. 

definitely not prepared for the walk or the weather 
Why couldn’t we just eat Chicken??? 

Sunday we all had to be up early to go to the school and set up for the fair. One of our parents made cupcakes and cookies so I worked that booth. Ooh how I wish Chinese cupcakes tasted as good as the ones back home! 




One of the cookies the parent made, has the schools logo on! 

Shopping on Sunday afternoon we came across this poor kid. He has about 10 layers on. This is not uncommon my students all look like snowmen to deal with the 50° weather haha! 

We started decorating our classrooms this week! I saw this idea online a few weeks ago and then I can’t remember which blogger had done it to her fridge as well. I will save my apartment decor for another day.



That is all I have for now folks! I can still read all your blogs but until this VPN thing is worked out I will continue to be kind of touch & go so forgive me! 

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