Last Friday was my 24th birthday. Unfortunately, I had to work Saturday morning at 7:30, so I didn't really do anything special. Now that I'm approaching old age and will soon be retiring and getting arthritis and adult diapers and all that fun stuff, I decided not to make a big deal of it. My ridiculously expensive concert tickets from the last blog post were my birthday present to myself. My students all remembered and gave me some things I'm pretty sure they stole from their house as gifts, but it was incredibly sweet nonetheless. My Saturday morning was filled with a performance by my very nervous 2nd and 3rd graders. I wrote a simplified version of the story Rumpelstiltskin into a play fit for young ESL students with allusions galore to Jeremy Lin and Michael Jackson.
They seriously go apeshit for this guy here.
They sang two Glee songs and a Bon Jovi song too, and were super adorable. I'm pretty sure the Brothers Grimm originally envisioned their fairy tale being accompanied by Pat Benetar Glee-remakes, hence the songs. Being the rockstar teacher I am, I knew the true way to getting them to work to their full abilities: I bribed them with promises of pizza, ice cream, and soda in class on Monday.
Also, as some of you know, I have officially told everyone in Taiwan that I'll be leaving sometime in August. I applied to work as a language assistant in Spain, specifically Madrid, from October - June. My dear friend / ex-roommate, Erica, currently works in Madrid and told me about the program. It's not so much a competitive program, but rather first-come first-serve for positions. Based on previous year's data, I thought for sure I'd get in and that I'd get placed in Madrid. However, due to Spain's financial crisis, they cut funding to the program and only a fraction of the people got in this year compared to last year. I haven't given up hope yet, as I'm officially wait listed and could hear back in the next month or two (or later), but I'm anxiously wanting to figure out what I'm doing next year. Taiwan is out. Really, I'm kind of Asia-ed out, so Korea or any other country here is out. I'm looking into doing a year-long work holiday in Australia now as a back-up plan. I'd like to do a program like this, though this is in Sydney and I'm thinking of Melbourne instead.
Who knows. Maybe seconds after I post this, I'll get an e-mail from the Spanish government offering me a job. Or maybe they'll never e-mail me, and I'll end up in Australia. Or back home, living in a cardboard box.
In other, more exciting news, I've lost some weight! I recently got approached to do some modeling - just for fun, not for money or anything, and just got the pictures back. I think you can really see the difference in my face, so I'll post them here.
Here's one the fattest pictures I can find of me. EW EW EW. Taken maybe... September 2011ish?
And here some of the photos from my shoot (taken at a "haunted house!") taken last week.
Woohoo! I've still got plenty left to lose, but I've been spending about 15 hours a week working out to get rid of those last stubborn pounds. I stopped eating all Taiwanese food (ughhh did it fatten me) and drinking (temporarily, though my birthday/Gaga was worth an exception).
Dude, you are soooo going to be haunted.... Who wouldn't haunt you?! ;)
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