Scroll down to read about what happened. My commentaries are annoying. I know, i know. Let's turn t volumne to mute and just enjoy the beautiful scenery of Yukon, Canada. Yeah, let's focus on the beauty of nature and ignore everything else. 

Here's Part 1: 

Part 2: 

Part 3:

 

Enjoy the view (mountains and lake, not my face, i mean)

here's a list of random thoughts on my mind while waiting for my 10:30 pm flight. Warning: very random very boring and super disorganized. 

- Me now in Vancouver International airport using its free internet. We (my bro and i) are back from our 7-day cruise on the Norwegian Sun from Vancouver to Alaska (Ketchikan, Juneau, and Skagway). Wonderful trip, albeit expensive (more on this later). I had the time of my life. thanks to the trip and all the Alaska/wild life - related YA novels (mostly fantasy) i read before going on that cruise, i get crazy excited whenever i hear the word "husky" or "glacier" or "wild life" or "Klondike" or "gold rush" or "skin boat." Everything about Alaska draws me. I felt the same about Hokkaido when i was in Japan. there's something about the far north, i don't know if it's the mountains or the snow or the cold or the fact that it's in the far north, that draws me and makes me nostalgic for unknown reasons. 

-I spent a lot of $$. 1500 for the cruise (i paid for both me and my bro), 1000 for the round trip ticket from NYC to Vancouver (again, for me and my bro), 24 bucks of service charge per day (7 days you do the math), 660 for the cruise's "shore excursion" program (we did wildness boat ride, yummy Dungeness all you can eat crab feed, cannoeing and hose back riding), and a big big number for my spa treatments on board (haha i'm too embarrassed to share the amount), and of course we had to pay for those pretty concoctions they pull out at the bars on board... i'm trying to not think about it. did i spend more than i intended? haha yeah. but then i had to pay for two persons. trying very very very hard not to think about it. ... ........... ahhhh i'm broke.

- I remember in my first day of teaching in Nagano, Japan, one cute 7th grader asked me "Li-hsin sensei, are you a yama-person (mountain) or an umi-person (ocean)?" what he meant was if i could choose, would i want to live in the mountains or near the ocean. Without hesitation, i answered "yama!" then i explained that mountains have seasons, foliage, trees, forest, hills, volcanos, lakes, waterfalls, and you can do all sorts of fun stuff like hiking, skiing, cannoeing in the mountains... of course my answer made them happy because Nagano is known as "the roof top of Japan." truth is i love mountains. nothing else can inspire that feeling of longing, nostalgia and sometimes fear and reverence like the mountains. 

- the horsie that took me to the wilderness of Yukon territory is named "Bullet." He's a very gentle, very calm horse, but he tended to want to stop and eat. it was the first time i rode a horse on my own, but i didn't do anything really. Bullet knew his way around. he led me up and down the hills, through the woods and desert areas, streams and railroad tracks. The horsie was so smart he even knew when to stop for me to take scenic photos. I'm serious. How cute is that? Bullet is the gentlest, calmest and tamest horse i've ever met (and i met quite a few when i lived in Alberta). The tour guide made me lead the pack because my horse walks slow, and trailing far behind everyone else in YUKON would really freak me out. i enjoyed the ride because the scene was so pretty, but according to my bro, all the other hoses who had to follow Bullet and me on that narrow winding trail had gotten quite impatient with my horsie's leisure speed. and the fact that he'd take his time peeing and pooping his way got them all antsy. it was then that i realized those "scenic spot" stops were actually his pottie breaks. haha we were perfectly compatible (the overly relaxed horse and the clueless rider).

- the whole time i thought my horse's name was Spirit, and i kept commenting in the videos that it was a dream come true that i'm riding a "spirit horse" just like my storybook hero. it wasn't until we were on our way back from that i finally found out that Spirit is my brother's horse! i spent the rest of the way back apologizing to my horsie for calling him the wrong name. i was yelling "No Spirit! no eating!" the whole time. no wonder he was so confused. i just hope the real Spirit didn't hear me. 

- my brother sucks at cannoeing. i've tried cannoeing twice before in Buffalo, and both times the guy who shared the boat with me did most of the work. all i had to do was paddle here and there and look like i was cannoeing. never before did i to paddle so hard and yet moved so slow. we were literally inching against the currents while the other boats cruised through the Lake like knife in jello. they were literally a mile ahead of us. it was beyond embarrassing. my brother told me i should appreciate the fact that we at least did not perform any 360's. 

- i took quite a few videos with my 30-minute FLIP camcorder. i never realized how bad a videographer i am until i saw the vids i took. i wanted to share those videos but after viewing them myself i decided not to torture my poor potential viewers. they're all very shaky they can make you sick. i'm not kidding. maybe i can share one or two that aren't too bad.  

- according to the BCA (body composition analysis) result i got from one of the spa visits on board, i need to lose about 10 pounds (gasp!), which got me all depressed for a while. when did i become over-weight? and not just over weight, i am 10 pounds overweight. however, according to the result, 6 of those pounds are from "water/fluid retention." i'll need to get rid of those water weight by detox. sigh.. long story short, after some thinking ("no i'm not getting any younger" "yes, like cars, our bodies need servicing.." "right, the body is the temple of the Lord"), i emptied my wallet and spent some big money on detox products. i'm working hard on looking at it as an investment. so yup, i'm back in detox mode. let's hope it works. isn't it annoying that we have to pay for everything? 

if i get comments, i'll type up a part 2 when i get back to NYC. tee hee...  

My kids can't write. They can't write!! They were all born here, and they can't speak proper English. Seriously! I'm beyond frustrated. After a year of labor, i look at their writing and feel like i've accomplished nothing. 

they cannot use "many" and "much" properly.

they don't know the difference between "a little" and "a few."

they don't know how to use past perfect.

their tenses are all over the place.

subject-verb agreement? i don't even know where to start.

they still tend to mess up the gender pronouns. "My sister's annoying. He always bothering me." 

you see weird expressions like "too less homework" (what they mean is "not enough") all the time.

they don't know how to form a complete sentence. ("What to bring? Seven days until Vermont field trip!!!") 

and they simply don't make sense! 

it's not just bad writing. it's writing that doesn't even make sense!

and they were born here!

and they want to go to Stuyvesant! 

Seriously!

and now it's end of the year. i'm trying to put together a "6th grade year book" type of thing. i'm supposed to inlcude every single student's work in there, but the kids have become so lazy that i've only collected a handful. Not only that, most of the work i saw is simply not presentable! Simply toooo embarrassing.

i've not worked my magic.

ARRRRGGH.. WHY?! 

This is ENGLISH! not some exotic foreign language they are forced to learn in high school. and they were born here! right here in the big apple. born and raised and have gone through PreK, 6 years of elementary school and they're still not proficient. If their chinese is anywhere near passable, I'd well, pass. 

but NO, English is what they feel the most comfortable using. their chinese is even more of a mess.

AAAAARRRRRRRGH. What exactly is missing?!!!!

and you can't fix it. their English, along with all its appaling mistakes, has fossilized. FOSSILIZED! something that should only happen to adult learners like me, who started learning English at 13. 

and it's their NATIVE language i'm talking about!

i'm beyond stressed. the deadline is less than a week away. i've got tons of work to do, and the kids are simply not there. it's the end of the year....  how can i get 30 lazy 6th graders to produce something extraordinary (or simply not embarrassing) when they all know that the grades are in. now i'm beating myself up trying to get a group of sneaky, lazy, summer-fevered preteens to produce something presentable to end the year strong?

and they don't care. 

they don't care at all whether this year ends strong.

ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh this is infuriating. 

my head hurts. i can feel my hair turning gray.  

i asked them what they want to be when they grow up. one girl said she wants to be a judge, not a lawyer. she wants to be the one they call "your honor." her friend said well, if you'll need to go through 7 years of college to be lawyer..it's gonna be hard, but "i think i want to be a doctor, which will take 11 years of college." and then they kept on talking: it takes 4 years of school to be a teacher; ____ years to be a nurse; only 2 years to be a policeman; 4 years min to be an accountant, but their mothers told them they'd need an MBA (from Columbia business school or Harvard) to find a good job, so that'd take two more years. i think someone also mentioned that it'd take 12 years for a teacher to become a principal or something. anyways their first career choice would be doctor, lawyer second, or maybe a journalist or a writer, and if all things fail, they'd be a teacher, or maybe they can be a teacher and a freelance writer at the same time (if all other options fail, that is). they are 11.

when i was their age, i wanted to work in a chocolate factory. when i was 15, i wanted to be Mariah Carey. for a while i dreamed about to be a journalist with a bulky camera hung around my neck interviewing some unknown endagered animals in a jungle far far away. and then i decided to be a business woman in a sexy business suit watching sunrise from my own office in a high rise building. it wasn't until i was close to my mid-20's when i finally had a legit career choice. and now, at age 27, all i want is a long summer vacation. hearing my students, who are not even teens yet, talking about Stuyvesant and SAT and college and how long they'd have to spend in college to get to where they want to be makes me sad. for reasons i don't even know. 

really. i'm really very sad. so sad my head hurts. so sad i don't feel like seeing anyone today. not only sad i'm feeling a bit mad. why? i don't know don't know don't know. sigh. what am i doing with my life? and really, who cares anyway? argh! i need some OnSen. i need some mountains. 

man i want to move to Alaska or something.