Mikan's latest biking pics

These are the latest pictures from Mikan's blog. I emailed him to find out where and when he had this race or biking trip. I haven't heard back yet, but the pictures were so awesome I just had to post them. For some original pics from his blog go to http://achazi.blogcn.com/

More pics of Mikan's biking trip

26 years old

I have been 26 years old for 4 days now. My birthday was Monday and it was great. My mom was so sweet and called different friends of mine and family friends and asked them to send me a birthday card. Then she surprised me with having some of my friends over for supper. We always have a special meal we pick out for our birthdays. I had thought of friends possibly coming over but didn't really think they would. It was all very special. My mom even brought me breakfast in bed. I kept telling people that she "made me breakfast in bed" and I got too many comments from the peanut gallery about how that would be messy in my bed. She made me french toast. My mom knows how to make someone feel special. I think I get that desire from her because I like doing stuff like that for people.

I am into the "closer to 30 than to 20 stage" now, but I am okay with that. I still have people think I am 18 and have people at school confuse me for a junior high student instead of a teacher. I just say that I will look like I'm 30 when I'm 40 and that is fine with me. At school, one of the other special ed aides made me a chocolate cake. It was awesome. A good majority of my gifts were cards to Starbucks or Target. I was thankful for the Target cards especially because I was able to go buy some clothes for China with it. The Starbucks cards will just be an extra special treat since I haven't gone there in a while since I haven't had the extra money to. I have been working on spending my money on what I need and not other excesses. I did have a great birthday though. Thanks for everyone who was part of making it so extra special.

My Chinese class from last summer

This is me and my English class in China last summer. When everyone was there, there were 31 students total. It was great to get to know them better as we did activities together after school.
Alisha (on the left) was from our group from Northland. She was an assistant for two of us teacher's from Northland. She would switch off between our two classes and team teach with us. Kay (on the right) was our Chinese teacher's assistant. Alisha and I both were able to get to know her outside of the classroom and talk together.
Leo was one of the best students in my class. He knew English especially well because he is friends with an American who lives in China. Nick is his American friend, and Nick's father teaches law at Sichuan University, where we taught English. Leo was such a joy to have in class because he loved to hang out with us after school, and he was very involved in class by asking questions and joining in discussions.This is a group of students from my class, and Hitty had a birthday party while we were there. Alisha and I went with some of our friends from Northland to her party. We found out an interested Chinese tradition that some people have at birthday parties. We had an icing fight with the icing from the birthday cake. I loved hanging out with this group of girls. We went out to eat, went shopping, and just hung out in either one of our rooms sometimes.
Anita was another great student. Alisha and I treated her to Haagen Dazs one day after school. The restaurant was so fancy for an ice parlor, and the deserts were so incredible.

Special Olympics Bowling

For the last 8 weeks, our two special education classes at school have gone bowling every Thursday to prepare for the Special Olympics. This weekend is the Summer Special Olympics in Columbia, SC and our group will be competing in bowling. Each Thursday trip included eating lunch at the bowling alley and each student playing two games. The first game was played with bumpers. The second game they played without them. Their scores were averaged together for them to be properly placed when they get to the Special Olympics. Our group of 8 students and 4 coaches left today just before lunch.

A few weeks on our Thursday bowling field trips we would go out to eat instead of bringing a bag lunch from the cafeteria. A few weeks ago we went to KFC. Alan had the barbaque chicken....can you tell?