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What we did on the weekend Blog Index Dalian integrating technology blog at DAIS integrating technology grades K - 12 tofu

Because the weekends disappear on us and we forget what we did I am going to track each weekend this year to see what we do with all that time.

Date	What we did
September 16	Our Itinerary for this weekend. I will add to it when we get back International Club of Dalian is glad to invite you to join us for a trip to one of Dalian’s best getaways destinations – amazing Bingyu Valley! Beautiful scenery, exciting white water rafting, fresh air and interesting people are totally not to be missed. Tour along the river offers similarly stunning views. Tour schedule: Bingyu Valley 冰峪沟 About 150 miles (240 kilometres) northeast of Dalian is Liaoning Province’s answer to Huangshan. Picturesque Bingyu Valley Scenic Resort Area offers one the same idyllic views, peaceful atmosphere and unblemished nature as it’s sister mountain to the south has on a smaller scale. The area, which covers over 42 miles (110 kilometres) of land, consists of a resort on the shore of the Yinggua River surrounded by the towering peaks of Longhua Mountains. From the valley there are a series of trails that lead up into the mountains. From these trails you have breathtaking views of the valley as well the neighbouring mountains. Alternatively, rather than hike up the mountains, you can tour the valley via a boat.
September 09	We started off with the question of whether we are staying another year – signing another contract. The school wants to begin putting in for a visa for me as I am over 65 and in some provinces that is an issue. We said we would think about it for the next two weeks. Contracts here are not really due until about December and it would be good to have that much time to look at options. The idea of teaching in India or Cambodia or Viet Nam is appealing but the security of not looking for another position, especially when a lot of countries will not take someone over 65 is appealing. We did not come up with any decisions and probably won’t for a while. On the more definite side we put in for and got a personal leave day for a day and a half before Chinese New Years in February so we could get to Australia. Narda’s son Stu turns 30 and her granddaughter is getting christened that weekend. I will go mid-week to Melbourne to see Sacha. Now the tickets are paid for and one more thing is sorted out in our life. We have our tickets for three weeks in Viet Nam for winter break which we got a couple of weeks ago. And to save money we are just staying in our province for the October break going up to Dandong and some remote places north. The rest of the weekend I spent at school working on setting up portfolios for the upper school.
September 02	As weekends go we did not do a lot. Another stay around home. On Saturday took the shopping bus into Dalian, bought a month’s supply of foods from Metro, mostly stuff we cannot get out here: tetra pack low-sugar soy milk, butter, cheeses, peanut butter; doing better, bought only about 1200 RMB this time, last month it was almost 3000 ($500USD). Had lunch at Ikea – only place to get a good Western meal. Ikea in Dalian is actually good. I like the veggy wrap and corn soup. Last year we would go to the one in Jersey City, across from Newark Airport but it seems every time we went there it was worse. The fat servers were always grumpy and the food was shocking – so we stopped going there. Took the light rail back to Kaifaqu, stopped at the Western food store (Harbor Deli) and got molasses and more cheese and caught the school’s shopping bus back home. some sort of protection for whatever is behind the door in this shop in Kaifaqu - we didn't go in. Sunday we went over to school; Narda worked some on her After School Activities projects and I wrote a school in India I may be doing some projects with; http://neuage.us/edu/blogs/collaborative-broadcast.html and worked on my school’s Google Sites for my Broadcast Publication’s class, which I can only get using my VPN; bloody China – drives me nuts trying to get stuff done - https://sites.google.com/a/daischina.org/drneuage In the afternoon we rode bikes, with one of the new teachers, from North Carolina, to our favourite local area to shop and bought vegetables and fruit for the week. And now it is bed time and another week starts in the morning. I finally got my editing suite for 20 computers in my lab, Power Director 10 Ultra, so I am excited about teaching my students that and getting us really going with our school’s television set and hopefully we will be doing a collaborative project with a couple of schools in India. My son, Sacha, in Melbourne, sent me a Happy Father day’s email so that was nice as he usually never does – forgets my birthday too.
August 28	It was not really a weekend but school was closed to the perceived threats of Typhoon Bolaven that yesterday looked like it was going to give us a bit of a look-see, but no, it is now headed toward North Korea – Bolaven was a fizzler. We should not call it a weekend because it is Tuesday but it is a day off from work, so what did we do? We looked at the weather report way too much, thought I would have a video to put on youtube, http://www.youtube.com/tneuage to be exact, a story about being 65 and still working that I dream of the New York Times printing, or maybe I would cook some dynamite tofu dishes, or maybe do some work on my rubric for a special project my Broadcast Journalism are doing. But we did little to speak of so I will write about it so when we say what was it we did on our typhoon day we will remember. Well I wrote this – ten minutes of the day. Actually I am writing this while watching Dexter. This is 8:30 PM. The rest of the day? I did make a good vegetable and tofu soup, some peanut butter cookies, worked on standards for one of my courses – I am not really into all this using American type of standards, my students will learn beyond what the standards will say, and to have such planned out nonsense is, well nonsense… We sat on our third floor balcony for a bit to see if the winds would pick up but they didn’t. We did some Facebooking and I read some educational blogs which is all somewhat frustrating sometimes here because we have to use a VPN to get must sites. Lately we are not even getting Google without a VPN. When we go to Google we get some Chinese site with stupid music and it is impossible to get anything else except Bing.com works. Go figure. This also means I am unable to get gmail without a VPN which is not good because Narda and I share a VPN – meaning only one of us can be on Facebook or Google at a time. And that was our day off – not really sure what we accomplished but we are ready to go to school tomorrow.
August 25 - 26	Ordered tickets for Hanoi they will deliver them Monday – 6800 RMB about $550 each. Narda Google+ with 3-sons; Atlanta, Adelaide, Hanoi – started trip planning for three weeks wandering around in Viet Nam at Christmas, booked a place in South Australia for us all to be together for a few days in February during Chinese New Year break. And we decided to save money during October break and stay local so we will go up to Dandong and northern China by train and just cheap-around for a week. We did little else – rode bikes to shops for groceries and spent a lazy weekend home for the first time probably this year. Narda painted her shoes; I worked on some web stuff, and wrote to several teachers who were at our school last year about sending short clips for me to put on our in-house tv shoe for my broadcast publication class. I am having my students add a new segment called “where are they now”. Teachers who leave a school after a few years are forgotten for all their work and contributions. Our teachers went to new places: Brazil, Dubai, Istanbul, India and several other countries. I want this to be a real global-collaborative year for our school and build on those who we worked with last school year. Also, we want to think about where we would like to teach next if we can find schools that will hire people past 65. We always seem to be moving (4 weeks in Australia as usual we moved our belongings from one place to another), here we spent the first week back moving apartments, last school year I would spend way too much time planning for the upcoming week lessons. We took a week-end off from school preparation and I am sure we will do fine. It was a great weekend, just like a holiday – a holiday from our life.

Blog updated February 15, 2014 K - 12 technology (updated February 04, 2014). Travel Site (2014) updated February 15, 2014. Videos/Blogs on Youtube, Twitter, Wordpress, Photo albums. Updated 15 Second Street, Round Lake, New York and photos from parent's 1943 wedding as well as Leigh's page. Farmville page updated Thursday, March 17, 2011 5:58 PM. neuage.org updated February 11, 2014 10:31 PM neuage.us updated February 05, 2014 7:21 PM. Resume updated February 05, 2014

Today working on picture poem links starting around "better" (February 14, 2014). Picture poems are the digital format of work I did as a street artist in New Orleans in the 1970s, as well as New York City, Honolulu, San Francisco and Adelaide South Australia. Follow @neuage

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