The End: Back home

Sorry for not getting this up sooner but life has been crazy.

The last half at school was kind of sad to watch as I fazed myself out of the classroom. I had a student give me a thank you card on the last day and I got quite emotional (at least as much as I get emotional...). I am so thankful for the experience that SAS, Ian and my host family provided for me and do not see how I could ever express my gratitude.

The driver picked me up at 4:30 and I was at the Airport at 5:00 for my 7:00 flight. The flight to Tokyo was pleasant. I watched some movies and ate some not terrible food. I got to spend some time in Tokyo. Then I got on my flight to Chicago...The entertainment system crashed before we even got off the ground so it was an 11 hour flight; entertanmentless. I finished my book shortly into the flight and so all there was to do was try to sleep and wait for the meals. I met up with my sis in Chicago.

Since getting back I have started my student teaching placement at North St. Paul and tried to get over jet-lag. It has been different and I am trying to get used to the new school but I just keep telling myself that there is only a few weeks left...but that is kind of a scary thought...

I got down to Decorah this weekend for my Grandparents 60th wedding anniversary and see people on campus. Seeing family made me so happy. My grandparents are so amazing and I aspire to be at least half the person on one of the. As for my Luther friends, I have missed you all so much and wish that I had gotten more time to spend with you. The concert was really fun (Ingrid Michaelson).

Well...I guess that is it. I have enjoyed writing this and thank you for taking the time to read it. I apologize for any rambling that bored you and any spelling or grammar errors.

'Til the future,
-Steve

Spring Break and Beyond

Hello all,
I have been super busy as of late and a little negligent in updating this. Lets start with spring break. My parents were here as well as my aunt and uncle. It was really great to have them here and show them around the places I been working and living. Some of the things we did:

Sunday-Bird Park-I put up the pictures from this earlier. It is the largest bird park in the world. It was really cool and you got to see some really unique bird up close.

Monday-National Museum of Singapore- This was a really intense museum that had a very complete history of the Island of Singapore and took us almost 5 hours to get though (that with me skipping some of the parts at the end because I was getting tired of reading so much). They also had some neat sections on food, photography, fashion and film in Singapore. Down in the basement was a traveling exhibit on Egypt.
http://picasaweb.google.com/dignst01/NationalMuseumOfSingapore

I know we did something on Tuesday but I am blanking on what it was...

Wednesday-Malacca-We went up to Malaysia on a bus tour. It was a really great trip. We picked up our guide in Johor Bahru (just inside Malaysia) and he began spouting great bits of information about the history of Malaysia, Singapore and Malacca. He was really knowledgeable and made the trip quite enjoyable. I have decided that if teaching falls though I want to be a tour guide because that looks like a fun life. Stopped at a pewter factory and watched as the people making cups and tea canisters by hand. It was real neat. Next we had lunch in a 5 star restuarnt (included in the trip) and then off to all the neat historic sites of Malacca. Overall I really great day.
http://picasaweb.google.com/dignst01/Malaka

Thursday (I think)-Botanical Garden/Little India/Arab Street-Cheryl wanted to look for fabric. It was a fun time wondering around.
http://picasaweb.google.com/dignst01/SingaporeBotanicGarden

Friday-Boat Tour of the Harbor-I stayed home in the morning to get some work down slash try to get over a cold then in the afternoon we went on a tour of the harbor by boat. It was supposed to have "High Tea" but that turned out to be a bit disappointing (bad lipton tea with dry date cake) but some of the views made it worth it (kind of). Stopped on a small island named Kusu which means Turtle Island named so because a giant sea turtle saved some sailors there or something.
http://picasaweb.google.com/dignst01/SingaporeHarborBoatTour

Saturday-Mount Fabier/Sentosa- Jeanette's guide book had a description of a great little 2 hour walk. Well it took us a little bit longer then that...When we finally got to the other side, well we were lost. We wondered around and finally stopped and dehydrated then asked for directions. Then we went over to the Island of Sentosa. They had just built a new Universal studios and the island is undergoing all sorts of development. We went to a museum that was called images of Singapore that had all sorts of wax figurines.
http://picasaweb.google.com/dignst01/MountFabierAndOtherWalkingAroundHiking

I cannot remember much else but overall it was a really good spring break

Back to school I had my final observation on Wednesday and I have started fazing myself out of the classes so that it will not disrupt the flow of things when I leave this week (crazy how fast that went). Dad, Cheryl, Criag and Jeanette left on Wednesday and it was a short week because of Good Friday. Yesterday I went down to China Town again and today I went to see "How to Train Your Dragon" it was a really funny movie that took so me shots and Scandinavians and it was fun to see how movie theaters work differently here. Tomorrow is Easter and I am going to go to Mass with the family. I leave for home on Thursday and the School has arranged for a driver to pick me up and drive me there (that sound really cool to me...) Welp, that is it for now.

Pictures

I am a little short on time as I am meeting my family to go to museums today but I wanted to post a link to pictures. This week there are going to be a lot so I am just putting them in public folders on Picasa.

http://picasaweb.google.com/dignst01/StPatrickSDayInSingapore
http://picasaweb.google.com/dignst01/BirdParkSingapore

Missed Sunday...

Well, it has been a busy week and a half. I have basically taken over all the classes now so I have lots of planning an grading to do. Last Friday I went out to a hawker stall with Ian, his wife and two of their friends. It was a lot of fun to interact with him outside of school and get to know his wife and friends. Their friends were vegan so we went to a place that has all sorts of Chinese food made out of imitation meat. It was really tasty and I think that it is because of this place that I have started to really like the hawker stalls.

Saturday, I talked with a bunch of y'all and that was good. Just going to throw out that I miss you all and it is good to get a chance to stay in touch (hint if I have not heard from you...) Then I decided to go out on the MRT again. I hopped on the train going the opposite direction from last time. Got off eventually in China town and explored there again. Next I went to Dhoby Ghaut which is the station nearest to where my parents will be staying when they get here (they leave the twin cities today) I did not know which hotel they were staying at when I went there so I just explored and got some late lunch.

Sunday ,I got to talk with my sister which made me happy and then I went to the St. Patrick's Day parade. It was really funny. Mostly Asians dressed in green. The best was the mostly Indian bagpipe band. I could not help but laugh when I saw it. After the Parade (which it rained for) we went over to a Irish Pub where they had set up a stage and Rebbecca (daughter in my host family) participated in the Irish dancing. They were quite good. I have not had time to get pictures off my camera but I will post them when I do.

Back to teaching Monday and I have been very busy with that since. The end of the quarter is Thursday so I have to get all the grades in (making me wish I did not assigned so much...). I was observed again yesterday. I thought it went fairly well. I was reviewing the test I am giving tomorrow and so I gave out a packet of review note I had typed up, asked for questions, using the CPS and doing a short activity to find the speed of sound. The CPS software is really cool. I can put in a bunch of questions and then the kids all have remotes that they can submit answers to and then later I can look and see how they are doing and talk with them about the topics they are not getting.

Today I was mostly giving test, making sure the test for the conceptual kids is good for tomorrow and grading. When I was grading I came across some iterated answers and that lead to some interesting events but...

I am looking forward to spring break coming up and spending time doing the tourist attractions with my parents and aunt and uncle.

Chill week plus exploring

Well, I did not have a very exciting week. At school I continued teaching the Conceptual Physics Students and have taken over the AP Physics students but for AP I am working off of Ian's Lesson Plans until after break when I will be teaching and planning for all the classes.

Thursday was a little exciting in that I had my first observation. Rhonda (the Assistant Superintendent of human resources) came in to evaluate my performance. Initially, I was really nervous but once I got into the lesson I mostly just forgot that she was there. In the end she ended up leaving the class slightly early because the superintendent was not there and there was an earthquake in Taipei. A group of students are in Taipei for a international school cultural convention (art, speech, debate, drama...contest) so she had to make sure they were all okay (they were).

Her feed back was mostly positive; she did say that there were some students that were not listening to me but when talking with Ian, he made the point that even he had trouble with those students.

Saturday, I decided I had not used the mass transit enough so I went out exploring. First I went out walking. Instead of going straight to the MRT Station I went wondering back among the subsidized housing.They are all over the place. I cannot remember the guy's name but the story I was told was that they were all built with the restiction that they were sold not rented to the occupents because they would treat them better in they own them. As a result Singapore has the highest percentage of residence ownership in the world. You might be able to see that out of the windows (even the high ones) people are drying there their cloths. I was told that if you want to get a housekeeper in Singapore you need to pass an exam and the majority of the questions are on how to teach your housekeeper not to fall out the window when they are hanging the wash up.

So after wandering around I got the the MRT Station. The trains are the nicest I think I have ever been on. Next time I ride one I will have to talk a picture because it is just so unbievable how clean they are. Part of that may be that it is illegal to eat or drink (even water) on the trains or in the station or you must pay a $500-$1000 fine. I rode the train for a long time, just looking at the different things of the window. I saw a group of kids playing Ultimate Frisbee and then there was a bunch of kids standing outside of the Presbyterian high school in very straight lines (it is a boarding school) Finally, when the train switched to being underground, I started thinking about getting off. Looking at the list of stations I decided to get off that the city hall stop. From there I started wondering around. There was a large completely underground mall that I looked around in and got some lunch. Then I ended up outside near boat quay so I walked around by the river before working my way back to the station. On the way back I stopped off at the Woodlands Civic center and then caught a bus from there back up by the school and walking back from there. It was a lot of fun to look around and though I felt lost at times I was able to find my way around.

Ready, Set, Teach...

Well, it has been another crazy week. As of Monday afternoon, I officially completely took over the conceptual physics class. I am completely in charge of lessons. grading, etc. Ian (my cooperating teacher) has been really supportive and I feel that I was really luck to be paired with him. Random coincidence: Ian lived next to Ryan Walker, my former piano teacher's son, when he worked as a elementary music teacher at SAS. They used to hang out all the time and play video games with each other. I feel like most of my "it feels like a small world" moment have something to do with the Walkers.

Tuesday was my host sister's birthday so we had a special dinner and dirt cake (you know the kind of cake with pudding, crushed, Oreos and gummy worms) for desert. Not too much exciting on Wednesday except that I got a letter from Kristopher (I sent out a bunch of letters and postcards on Monday but have not gotten to everyone yet so if you don't get one, hopefully I will get to some more soon).

Ian had to go to India for a Tech conference on Thursday and Friday. The School is starting a program called 1 to 1, meaning that they are requiring all students to have laptops as of next year. Ian was going to a school that had a similar program to get an idea of how best to utilize the laptops. This meant that, though there was a sub in the room for legal reasons, I taught all the classes. It was a little stressful but overall I think it went really well. I did notice that having been around Ian most of the day for the last week and a half I have started to pick up his Canadian accent.

Friday night there was a little excitement her. Around midnight, the Air cons all went out and it started getting hot fast. To try and fix that, they tried resetting the circuit breaker. That got the air con back but then most of the house lost power (though it parts it would go in and out) and in the morning there was not any water pressure. I was looking forward to some good sleep as I had not slept well the night before but the heat in the room kept me up.

Yesterday then, feeling very sleepy from the poor sleeping conditions, I went over to county fair. Just to be clear, Singapore does not have counties. It only has one city. County Fair is just the name of a fundraiser put on by the school where they do county fair type things; fry foods, carnival games, bake offs, etc. It was a lot of fun. I ran into a lot of the students I have in class working at the various stands and they tried to get me to do the activities at their booths. I did some but some, like the nail painting stand, I had to pass up. Rebecca, the middle child in my host family, performed in the talent show thing with the Irish Dance group and they did a really great job.

Last night I walked over to the hawkers stand and got some bubble tea, played around of authors (fun game like go fish except with books) and went to bed early in the nice newly fix AC. This morning, we went out to eat at chili's for Kat's birthday and wandered around the mall a little. I have some work to get done before tomorrow otherwise I plan to just have a chill day.

Pictures of the school

I took some pictures of the classroom and courtyard outside the classroom (eco-garden) today and thought I would post them: