the offWhites

So, today is our third official day of teaching, and I’ve got no voice.  Every morning, I teach (well, attempt to corral) 9-12 3- and 4-year-olds, and that generally involves lots of repeated requests, such as “Please stand on the yellow line,” or “Get out your pink bowls, please,” and, to no one’s suprise, “No running - please walk!”  Of course, the need to repeat these sort of instructions is pretty common for kids this age - but sheesh, these kids don’t actually have much idea what I’m really saying.  I mean, they haven’t really figured out yet that I don’t know what they’re saying when they speak to me in Chinese! So, I’m sort of wondering how class will go today, since I can’t talk at all.  I guess I’ll rely on my Chinese co-teacher and lots and lots of motions.  Heh.  Wish me luck.

In other news, I’m still losing weight! During training, I hit my initial goal of reaching 185 lbs.  Since then, I’ve lost an additional 6 or so, putting me at 178.2 this morning.  Granted, some of this is due to dehydration, but I’m gulping down water as fast as I can! Some of the loss is likely also because I’ve hardly got an appetite - it’s so hot here! Hot and sticky, thanks to the humidity.  I wake up sort of hungry, but then by the time we can get breakfast, nothing really interests me.  Sometimes I have lunch, sometimes not. Same for dinner, really.  Usually, if I have lunch, I don’t eat dinner, and vice versa.  This sounds sort of awful, but I’m sure once I find more foods I really like and the temperatures come down (which should happen, oh, sometime in December, I hear), I’ll start eating more.  In the meantime, I’m well on my way to my second weight goal of 165 lbs - my high school weight (well, my 9th and 10th grade weight, anyway - after I began working at Dairy Queen, I packed on a few).  Also?  All of the new shirts I got look really, really good on me, although lots of the pants I brought are already beginning to feel a little big.  I guess this is a good problem to have.  But, I worry that even having lost this much, I still won’t have much luck finding clothes here - the market as a whole is just smaller all over, not just thinner.  Fair warning, mom - I may need a care package from the Gap in a few months!