Now that I've caught up our trip to China I'll try to catch up the past three weeks.

Week one was getting us, and our students, back on track to finish the last bit of school. When we got back from spring break we had eight and a half weeks of school left. That's a fair amount of instruction time in a classroom. Too much time to just let the kids slide into the end of the year. The first few days back were spent whipping them back into shape, getting some grades into the gradebook, threatening them with parent-teacher conferences coming up in a couple weeks.

At home, it was time to re-stock the fridge and make the beds. Leslie and Cady arrived in Kaohsiung on Thursday (April 14) and our niece Amanda arrived on Friday. We did a whirlwind of city touring for the next little while. Tours of KAS, shopping at the jade market, a walk-through of the night market. Leslie and Cady were only in Taiwan until Monday morning, but Amanda stayed until the following Friday (April 22). It was nice to have an excuse to do some things one more time, but also nostalgic to think they we may never do some of those things again, like going to the former British Consulate.

But time does march on. I got another wisdom tooth pulled last weekend, stitches came out today. All is healing well, if a little slower than I'd like. (The first one was such a piece of cake that I have no patience for this one taking longer to heal, even though Dr. Jason had explained to me very carefully and clearly that this would be the case. I'm just being a baby, an impatient whiner, to be exact.) The week was full of end-of-the-year activities. We had a day of parent-teacher conferences, got rid of some extra furniture, went to the school's spring concert, bought boxes for packing.

Tonight we're going with a dozen or so friends to a baseball game, Kaohsiung's Eda Rhinos vs the Lamigo Monkeys. It will be incredibly loud and raucous, with lots of opportunities to eat baseball stadium food and people watch. Oh, and see some baseball too. Then tomorrow morning we'll join many of the same people at the playground at our apartment building for a pair of two year olds birthdays. It will also be loud and raucous, and fun too.