Ok, so its 5:19am and I am still awake. I think my time in Hong Kong has totally messed up my sleeping patterns (late nights and early mornings) and my dark circles under my eyes i’ve been sporting around Hong Kong may actually have become etched onto my face. I am so out of routine and so under exercised, I haven’t gone for a run for over a month!Arriving at the airport was a little strange. I guess when you are away experiencing another culture that is so fast paced you tend to forget some things about home. Like how flat Perth is, or how dry it gets in summer that all the grass and trees take on various shades of yellow. When I got back driving along the freeway the streets felt so deserted.

I’m surprised how fast I become accustomed to life in Hong Kong. I’ve only been there for 4 weeks and yet today I felt really homesick for that place. I was missing my family, the lifestyle, the sights and my friends. Its just so different over there, but I feel so blessed I could experience it. I was sitting on the couch talking to Bisa about it, It felt like a whole other world.

It was nice to be picked up from the airport by a familiar face. The first thing I did when I got home was get my car out of the garage and take it for a drive! I was praying the battery would be ok. Though its a new car, you just never know… ! I missed driving in Hong Kong. Going from pretty much living in my car to public transporting it every where was novel. My long drives to work made it the place where I could collect my thoughts, listen to worship music and pray to God, plus the freedom of being able to go I want, whenever I want… I had to learn new habits in Hong Kong, but being in HK made me realise what a nice commodity a car is.

So i’m its almost been 24 hours since I have been back. I had a little cry this afternoon because I missed it and spent some quality time with God. Afterwards I was ok and and looking forward to seeing all my girlfriends and getting back into beautiful passionate life. I wanted to go down to The Moon Cafe tonight to see what bands were playing. Gosh I miss that place. It’s Ruth and I’s favourite local haunt with its artsy dingy diner look and alternative mismatched chairs. Its so funky. I wanted to see some live music in HK but I was told that HK lacking an active arts and culture scene. I’m going to miss hanging at The Moon on Thursday jazz nights with Ruthie while shes gone. Ruthie you’re my jazz music appreciation buddy!

So lifes started back up again and I am hanging out for church this Friday night! I can’t wait to see everyone and be under the covering of Sunset Coast. Actually this whole week’s going to be pretty awesome, God’s going to do something amazing and theres alot to be expectant for! Tonight going to PlanetShakers with some of the girls (it will be also good to see all our crazy youth down there tonight), Friday night church – YAY!!, Saturday – leaders seminar and retreat, and then Sunday we have Reggie Dabs preaching both services!!! Sooo exciting! Soo blessed! Can’t wait to see everyone! Somewhere between I need to find time to start doing some work – I have a tonne of planning and programming to catch up on!! Booo.. but I’m really looking forward to seeing my kids in a couple weeks! Oh, and back into ballet class! The first week back should be interesting! I had brought my pumps to HK to stay in practice, but yeah it didn’t happen :S Plus the few kilo’s I’ve gained whilst away is going to make it extra fun doing a plie! :S

Just been unpacking all the boxes I had left unopened when I moved in and my suitcases… its turning out to be quite a mission!

Maybe I should procrastinate and go to bed now instead. YAY!

I’m not sure if it’s made a difference or not but i’ve recently upgraded wordpress – i was having problems with my RSS feeds and am now using RSS 2.0 which means the new feed address is: http://www.annatsang.com/?feed=rss2 and not http://www.annatsang.com/feed

Well school is pretty much over for the year! I can’t believe I made it through alive! I survived my first year teaching and boy, does that feel like an accomplishment! Looking back I can’t even comprehend how I did it, but time goes forwards thankfully and here I am in December with one year under my belt.

You know, I really feel blessed. I really love my job as hard work as it is, I really love interacting with the kids. Getting to know their personalities, having fun and being cheeky with them, seeing them grow and mature (well some of them!). Its also been an interesting year for me to try and establish myself as a teacher. After leading youth for 2 and a half years, coming along side youth and seeing them flourish spiritually, being a teacher is definitely a different type of ‘hat’.

Being a teacher I had to learn to lead from above, from a disciplinarian point of view, rather than leading sideways like a friend. I feel its taken me this whole year to sort of have an idea of what a balance looks like where I am firm, fair but friendly (the 3 F’s!). Its made me have to be more assertive and clear about my expectations. I’ve really had to learn to lower my tolerance level as well. Sometimes I found myself letting things slide in my class behavior management because to me personally, it can take quite a bit before something irritates me but I’ve had to realise that my indifference to certain things affect other students in the classroom – so basically I’ve had to learn to be alot stricter! Hmm, yeah ALOT more stricter…

But I’m learning to have a balance. I’m learning to not over compensate my phelgy-ness with a nazi regime. I’m learning more to be more of myself in the classroom, only with defined and clear boundaries. Ah, got to love that word.. boundaries..

I had some fun with my year 9 media class on the last day of school. They came bumbling into the computer lab saying “What are we going to do today, Miss?? Can we do something fun?? Can we play games on the computer?“

Ha. Unlikely.

After I got them all sitting down and listening I told them that today for our double period they were to sit quietly and write a 1500 word essay (1500 words is alot for year 9′s – I have trouble getting a paragraph out of some of them!) about what they have learnt this year in media studies and that their ENTIRE year’s grade is going to rest on this essay.

Needless to say he class burst into a tirade of “What?! Miss, this is our last class can’t we do something fun?“. I continued to watch bemused as they logged onto the computers and opened up Microsoft Word, grumbling and all dagger eyes till finally I burst into a giggle and told them I was just joking and that we were just going to watch Shrek 3 today. “Miss!!!” and sighs of relief!

Hehe, I am such a comedian. I like being a teacher, its so much fun

I’ve been on a brief hiatus from the blogging world, but as schools coming to a wind down and things are getting a bit slower I’ve been able to pause for a bit and collect my thoughts on various things.

Its interesting when I am busy, things just seem to fly by. Situations and circumstances are happening all around me and in that busy period I’m basically doing what I can to survive, to do what I need to do to get from point A to point B. I have to admit, its not really living but for a short season it was reasonable. Its been a full on year, but also a very rewarding year!

I’m reveling in the fact that in a weeks time i’m going to be free from the intense pressures of lesson planning/learning/behavior managing. I’ll be moving in with a friend whilst Ruth goes to Queensland for work which is going to take alot of financial pressure off me (my accommodation and budgeting was a cause for concern to me in the past few weeks leading up to now, but its all been sorted!), and along with that not having a boyfriend anymore, also makes for one less thing I have had to worry about.

Lately I’ve been feeling quite free, staying up late past my bedtime, spending time with friends and feeling quite addicted to Scrabulous on Facebook…

Its so nice to come home to quietness.

After about an hours worth of barraging from some disgruntled teachers over lunch at statewide PD, I couldn’t wait to excuse myself and leave. All they could talk about was how busy they were, how unfairly they were being treated by their superiors and how naughty the kids were.
One of them was supposed to come along side and help me strategise for next year’s combined class I’m teaching, and apart from basically just telling me “its really hard” and that all I can do is “jump in there and hope for the best”, she basically didn’t seem to want to offer me any advice or help at all. I did manage to get a weblink for some resources off her which I haven’t checked yet, so I’m not even sure it works. I left feeling gross, weighed down.
I felt sad that for them that teaching was so ‘cut throat’ and there was so much politics involved. Maybe I feel this way because I’m still a new teacher so I’m still fresh and hopeful, but even so I never want to end up with that sort of attitude with teaching. Its so much more than just lesson planning and marking!
I was at the shops a bit later and the guy at the counter was really friendly and sweet, it was like a breath of fresh air after the auditory beating I had received just earlier!

I’ve had a few things swirling in my head lately. I might share them with you if I have time