A Skip and a Hop to China!

Today was so fantastic!!! It rained all last week and was really cold so I was so ready for a change in the weather. When I looked outside it was sunny and warm without a cloud in the sky! I woke up in a great mood too!! You know those days where you wake up in a great mood for really no reason? That was today! I think it partly could be that my birthday is on Thursday but also because the weather was so great. For some reason I just felt like today and this week was going to be great! As I got ready for the day I started to sing really loud "Oh, What a Beautiful Day" from Oklahoma. I have always liked this song and the words fit perfectly to today. Everything was going my way!

My 10:30am class in room 229 was amazing!! When I walked into class there was a gift sitting on the desk with a card. My students had bought me a gift!!!! They also had on the computer the Happy Birthday song and they sang it for me!! By the end of them singing I was teary eyed! It was so sweet of them to get me a gift! I didn't expect any of my classes to do anything for my birthday. I opened the card, which was funny because on the front it said "Happy Birthday!! We always wondered if we were cut out to be parents." I don't know what that means coming from my students but it was very sweet. The gift was a snowglobe! It has little angels in it. It is so cute!!! After I thanked them for their gift we had class. I taught my students about adjectives and we played a game. We played Catch Phrase. They really liked it.



My next class didn't start until 2:30 and the weather was so beautiful I decided to go on a bike ride. Sam played basketball so I went by myself. It was great! I headed out of town the same way that Sam and I went on a bike ride before. The scenery is so amazing! Not even 15 feet out of town and it is country. The mountains are close to the road. All along the road are rice fields and some old houses. Trees line the road and there are little patches of trees here and there but it isn't until the montains that there are more. Right now the fields are green with the sprouts of rice. There are also yellow flowers growing. A little bit past the bridge in the picture on the right there is a road that goes to the left. I saw a few cars go on it today and I decided to see where it went. I also wanted to get away from the cars on the road. It is scary to be riding my bike as they pass! I'm so afraid that one will hit me! Once I turned onto this little road to the left everything seemed to go quiet. I turned off my ipod and just listened. There was nothing! Just the rippling sound of stream close to the road and the wind in the trees but nothing else. As I took in this beautiful sight I realized how much people miss. We go about our day to day lives with ipods on and phones to our ears, that rarely do we stop and just take in what is around us. I couldn't believe just how peaceful it was when the busy road was just 100 feet away.

I wish I could have stayed there for another hour or so but I had to go back and teach my classes. Hopefully this weather will last and I will get to go out and take more pictures (knock on wood!)