andy's BBQ birthday!

complete with hamburger art





























and creepy faces




james, kiffy
















mom, daniel















colie, christopher
















ashley, stella
















toni, mia












daniel, micheal










so, who wins for best "creepiest" face?

the ranch

We took a short trip to the ranch (June Mountain) this weekend with Mark and Kate Lockhart and Kate's pregnant belly to celebrate our freedom from school for the summer. We were there for about 24 hours and had lots of fun. I followed Kate's lead and ate like a pregnant woman. We stopped by Denny's on the road there and ate heart-attack-inducing grand slam's for breakfast, and Connie made us some A-mazing potatoes, creamed corn and ribs for dinner that night. We also ate delicious gas station candy. It snowed. The boys fished. I snapped what few photos I could without my fingers going numb. Oh, and we sat in the spa. Lovely.

misery

This is how I feel about finals:
(That's yours truly on the bottom right)

milhouse van houten

tristan & isolde

Honestly, need I say more? Yeow ...

meet barkley, the 13 inch beagle

She enjoys tug-o-war, sunbathing, fetch, and cuddling. Though she doesn't belong to us per se, she probably should. My parents are her rightful owners, but Kiffy and I probably love and play with her much more and are therefore her better friends. Seriously, who needs human babies when you can have doggy babies?




The dogs as children bit is a joke. Relax. We'll have babies, just not for 15 years.

field trip

 

I took a few of my students from my ESL class on a field trip to the Long Beach aquarium. They loooooved it. It was pretty cute seeing how excited they got. They are all international students from either Vietnam or South Korea studying abroad. Most of them hardly travel out of the areas where they're living in California, so I figured I'd show them around a bit. After the aquarium, I took them to my favorite Mexican restaurant, Pancho's, a little hole in the wall I've been going to since birth. Everything on the menu was rather foreign to them. It was good practice for them to order in English and they loved the food. It was a fun day. Pretty long, but overall it was an interesting experience. 

I'm really enjoying teaching ESL. I learn a lot from my students as well. Por ejemplo:

1. In South Korea, all men must serve in the military.
2. The legal number of children you can have in Vietnam is 2.
3. Karaoke is an American-modified word derived from the Japanese words "kara," meaning empty, and "okesutora," meaning orchestra. A favorite pastime of Vietnamese and Koreans, and especially my students, is singing Karaoke. 
4. They sure know how to pose. Especially the Korean students. I felt pretty boring with just a smile to offer up to the camera.