The Adventures of Ms. Welsh... Abroad!!: Last week in the classroom!

This last week in the classroom went by SO quickly, it was unreal! I was so sad to have to say good-bye to all of my students, and colleagues, but it was a really fun last week, and I got to see my first Chinese New Year celebration!!

Monday: Monday was my last day with the 3G students, we did a diffusion/osmosis lab practical, which was really fun and I was able to take lots of pictures!!!

In 1D, the students wrote presentation speeches for their Design lab we did last week, and would be presenting on Tuesday! I also asked them to write letters to me, or one of my teacher-colleagues back home, their letters were priceless! (I can't wait to share with everyone back home!)

Monday night we took it easy, did some work and lesson planning - I tried banana chocolate prata which was to DIE for... so delicious, we couldn't believe that we just now discovered it!

Tuesday: Tuesday was my last day teaching!! It was so sad to say goodbye to my lovely, adorable 1D students - but their speeches were so great! We did speeches, and then had a Q&A time where they could ask me anything about California, etc. I gave them a few minutes to edit and turn in their letters, reading them was so sad - I'm going to miss these kids so much!!

Tuesday night Katherine and I went to Clarke Quay for dinner, I had falafel again (so delicious) and we celebrated her last night in Singapore!

Wednesday: Wednesday was an easy day at school - did a few observations and watched the briefing on the House System here ... like straight up Harry Potter. :) There are 5 Houses at Westwood: Cedar, Ebony, Meranti, Willow and Cactus (see any pattern;)?)

I also had to say goodbye to my CT and Supervisor because they were headed out of town for the Chine New Year... it was such a hard goodbye!

The teddy bear's shirt says, "Forever a Westwoodian!" :,)

The girls were all leaving at some point Wednesday night (or early Thursday morning) so we all hung out, Katherine and I had dinner together, she went to the airport at 10pm. Elise, Rae and Katie were going to be taking a cab at 4am, so I stayed up as late as I could with them, but didn't make it the whole time. I miss you already ladies!! (it's so weird to be in the hostel alone! a lot of the students are gone for the holiday too!)

Thursday: Today was the Chinese New Year Celebration at Westwood! (and me saying goodbye to all the students!) It was a fun, but sad morning...

After school, I went to pass off the phones Katie and I had been borrowing from him during our stay here - another sad goodbye; Sunny has been nothing but helpful, welcoming and kind to us during our time here! I miss him already! (We're trying to convince him to take his family to Cali)

For lunch, I met up with Naeem and Sharon at this DELICIOUS buffet-style BBQ place where you pick whatever you want and grill it at your table. We ate SO much but it was SO worth it.

Afterwards, we walked around to a few touristy sites, Raffles Hotel, the War Memorial, and Arab Street.