Victor's Day!

It's your day, Victor! Happy Birthday! We had an extremely exciting day filled with a lot of joy and laughter. And also a lot of cake in the face.

UNO, a very addictive card game.

We have all been playing a lot of UNO. It's a great game. I haven't played so much UNO since I was a child. We play it with a lot of good cheer and a lot of scream. "AHHHH!!! +4"

Let's Welcome Tait!

Here's our new intern, Tait. He's very helpful and very nice. We went out to dinner to celebrate his official first day.

St Patrick's Day Celebration

Everyone wear green or get pinched! Listened to some irish music and had some sandwiches.

Mitchel's Going Away Present

We made a photo book and filled it with drawing and notes for Mitchell. Each of us had to write two pages worth! It was quite a large book.

Mitchell's Going Away Dinner

Mitchell you've been a great teacher. We're sad to see you so. Mr. Popular had two dinner that night :p

Kevin and John's Surprise Bday Photos

Kevin & John's Surprise BDay Party

We had a surprise birthday party for Kevin and John. We had hot pot. It worked out great. We finally had enough food for all the monster eaters in our group. Two large pots and one mini pot and tons of food was finally enough. One event where I actually got enough to eat :D.

Spring Outing 2009: Pirate Ship

I was only present for the 1st round on the pirate ship. This has to be their favorite ride. Wendy and Helen were definately the thrill seekers of the bunch. Ivy would be voted the loudest screams. They *ahem* convinced Victor to go the second round, which I was happy I missed.

Student President: "We enjoyed the pirate ship the most. Ivy and Victor had many rich varied faces."

BBQs in China are very dangerous affairs...Victor was victorious is finally getting a BBQ plate to work. It was a very interesting affair for me. The students showed a lot of strength and perseverance in cooking their food. ;)

Student President: "Cooking the lamb skewers was very difficult, but the lamb skewers were very delicious. We were very proud that we finally cooked all the skewers. There were large quantities of smoke. I suggest we were goggles next time!"

Spring Outing: Spring 2009 : Paintball

It was extremely wet and muddy out, but the boys(and Ivy) braved the harsh weather to go play paintball against each other. The rules specified NO headshots, but the ONLY shots that hit were headshots...too much CS...

Student Body President: "We only played a very short while. They should have let us play longer! It was unfair!"

Spring Outing to Gong Qing Forest Park

It was a cold rainy day, but I really enjoyed Gong Qing Forest Park. Usually it's crowded with a million people (especially a million brides taking wedding photos), but yesterday it was only us. We saw one other group with 5+ people BBQing during lunch, but the whole entire park was empty. It was just a great feeling to be out in the woods with nobody else there but us. :)

Student Body President: "Even though the weather wasn't very good, we still had a great time."

Tomorrow! Spring Outing: Gong Qing Forest Park

Gong Qing Forest Park is the second-largest park of Shanghai.

"It has grassy meadows, fir and bamboo groves and bird trills are very real. Horseback riding, roller coasters, merry-go-rounds, go-kart rides and a rock-climbing wall are among the entertainment options. To get around Gongqing, you can walk, catch a shuttle, ride a tandem-bike or boat."

We are planning to play paintball, do a BBQ lunch, then do some rides. Looking forward to some awesome photos. 

Valentines Day Celebration

Lucien: Everyone had a good time. We played touch man in the dark this time. It was more fun in the darkness. We were sad that Victor was absent.

William: I am very happy, because I caught Ivy.

Online Guide for Papers and References

I will also use this blog to post useful resources for students:

The follow is an excellent online guide for MLA writing and references. It's an easy way to look things up when you don't have a MLA style reference on hand. It gets into details about how exactly to format your paper.

Please use this guide for ALL your work and references in the future.

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/557/01/

Electronic Resources
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/557/09/

Enjoy! :D

Have a Happy Chinese New Year!

I hope everyone has a safe and happy Chinese New Year!

I know there's some homework, but I have tried to make it more fun and interesting rather than more dreary work. Ex. calculating soccer teams costs, stock prices, etc.

Have a good time!

Viewing College Videos

I prepared videos from Monash, RMIT, University of Iowa, etc. etc. to show in more detail what the Universities are like.

Students were a bit confused about the University fo Victoria bunnies situation, but were amused anyways to watch videos of bunnies.

Old School Video Games Competition

That is Steve the winner of the Super Mario portion of the Old School Video Games Competition. Everyone died mostly because they were used to playing on a keyboard. You only have one life to lose, so the games went quickly. Steve though defied all expectations and made it to level 1-3.

Kevin had unreal luck in level 80 Tetris and narrowly beat out the other leading candidate Mitch. As a group we suspect he's hacked the program (joking) ;)

It was a lot of good wholesome Old School fun

Thanks to Kelvin for Organizating it

Creative Writing: Jedis and Fashion

Running out of ideas for your essays? Check these out from our students!

The Champions of the Wall Team Ping Pong Tournament

Okay....so I've never played ping pong before. It was pretty bad.

The champion team played beautifully though and here they are in their team photo.

Preparing for the Choosing an Overseas University Seminar

Whew! We have all been going crazy preparing for the seminar. Everyone is working on it including me, Cecilia, Victor, other staff, students.

It looks like it is going to turn out really good though. I can't wait!

Looking forward to New Years!

Our New Year's Celebration is going to be great!

We are holding a party on December 30th from 5.30 pm - 6.30 pm
The events include:

I. Playing Hot Potato

II. Singing

Seminar: How to Choose An Overseas University

Seminar: How to Choose An Overseas University (In Chinese)
Speaker: Jade Fang, Shanghai Pudong GAC Director of Studies

Discussion topics:
- How to choose a Country to study in
- University ranking
- Size and characteristics of University
- Location and climate
- Matching Your English language ability with the University
Time: 2009 Janurary 9th (Friday) 12:00 to 2:00 p.m.
Address: Shanghai Pudong International GAC University Center
Nanhui District of Shanghai
Gong Ji Road No. 2151 in the third floor conference room
Tel :021-68023398
Email: jfang.gac@gmail.com
______________________________

如何选择海外大学研讨会

主讲：方钰（上海浦东GAC国际大学预科中心总监）

研讨专题：
- 如何选择留学国家
- 大学的排名、
- 规模及特色
- 大学所处位置及气候
- 选择英语能力匹配的大学

时间：2009年1月9日（星期五）

中午12时至下午2时

地址:上海浦东GAC国际大学预科中心

上海市南汇区惠南镇拱极路2151号 三楼会议室

电话:021-68023398

Mrs. Cecilia's Foundation Class

Mrs. Cecilia is one of the talented teachers at Shanghai Pudong GAC Centre. She is an excellent teacher and I am very lucky to be able to work with her. :)

Christmas and Birthday Excitement

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Thanks for all the help putting the Christmas party together. We had lots of incredible food. We had what it feel like 2x as much food as we did for Thanksgiving.

We celebrated Ivy's birthday with singing and lots of presents. Along with some cake in the face and pretty much everywhere else...

Had lots of fun opening presents from our secret santas and exchanging Christmas cards.

Then played Touch Man. 5 seconds and then you have to freeze and they have to find you while blindfolded.

Whew! I am exhausted. Everyone is incredibly efficient at clean up though. I wish they could be as efficient doing homework as cleaning up!

Christmas Punishment

I decided this morning that I would enforce the St Patrick's Day tradition of pinching those who were not wearing green for Christmas for fun.

Only 4 people were caught not wearing red, white, or green. (underwear and stripes on shoes did not count) :P.

Crazy Pinata Christmas Eve

We had quite the exciting Christmas Eve. During the student organization meeting we decided we would do something related to food, so I suggested getting some candy and making a make-shift pinata. We were also going to play Touch Man, but never got to it.

I think I made the pinata too difficult. Since it was make-shift I just wrapped the candy in some plastic bags and ruffled newspaper in about 3 layers and Ivy painted on a face. Well.... it was almost impossible to break.

By the time we broke the "pinata" the candy had been crushed by the multiple beatings into a fine powder.

It was still a lot of fun though. Perhaps we'll do something more Christmasy for the next Christmas Eve

Jump Rope Madness

This activity was organized just this Tuesday. It was a jump rope and hackysack competition.

The jump rope competition was done in rounds where the one who stopped first was eliminated. The winner in the end was Sarah since Ivy ended up chasing Helen down while jumping rope and taking her out for the team.

The hackysack competition was won by? The rules were that once you had a multiple of 3 it canceled and went back to zero. Ivy's team had back luck quite a few times even though Ivy's quite an exceptional hackysack player. Lucien's team was noted for incredible performances as when Lucien kicked the sack 3-4 times at the ceiling and then still making the next kick.

I never knew hackysack could be played like this....

This is a bit of relaxed jump roping occuring after the main competition

Musical Chair Insanity 2008

This was organized by Sarah. She also MCed the Competition.


The game was Musical Chairs. Whoever lost each round had to drink a special drink mix that consisted of what the winner tossed in. It was a combination of PEPSI, coconut milk, Sprite, SIMPLICITY?, and crackers. Most losers thought the mix was delicious.

Victor was the final winner by sheer ingeniousness.

The round below was the most hilarious one, but we redid this round after since you obviously can not move the chair in musical chairs.

Thanksgiving Celebration 2008

We had a very nice Thanksgiving. Feel free to click on my slideshow and check out the rest of the photos at my Piscasa web albums.

There was a ton of food including: mashed potatoes, beef & tofu, green peppers & beef, vegetables, rice, corn cakes, KFC, cake, turkey legs, turkey wings, fruit, chips, soft drinks, apple pie, etc.etc. But the food all went very quickly.

Then we played Thanksgiving jeopardy on the big screen. Our contestants were Spiderman (Victor/William), Batman (Steve), and Superwoman (Ivy). Superwoman ended up winning this very close game of Thanksgiving jeopardy.