The Doyles take the Christmas spirit very seriously. Currently, in addition to the many strands of lights draped on the house and trees outdoors, there are four fully decorated trees in different rooms of the house, animatronic presents that light up and open and close on the front steps, and an army of decently-sized wooden nutcrackers scattered around. Right now Jenny (Sean's sister) is home and we are all eagerly anticipating (and appreciating) the products of her baking skills.


For both couples in the house (Sean and I and his dad and Marion), this will be our first Christmas as married couples. It has been a little stressful and new for all of us as we try and figure out what traditions to start or keep and how time will be split up between families. One thing is for sure - this next week will be very busy and jam-packed with family plans and gatherings. Add that to the list of people we want to see before we leave and the time is going to fly by.


I am especially excited for my sister, Sue, to come home on Christmas Eve. We usually go to the Christmas Eve service at church and then make a really tasty and special smorgasbord of food. So far the menu includes: stuffed mushrooms, shrimp, cheese and crackers, meatballs, homemade salsa and chips, pickles and olives, and lots of Christmas cookies. I can't wait! Merry Christmas!

Last weekend my parents flew to eastern Pennsylvania to celebrate the graduation of my sister. After attending Hope College for two years she decided to go to a small Bible college called Mount Zion School of Ministry. She completed a certification there and then decided to finish her Bachelor's degree at East Stroudsburg University after that. Most of her credits transferred from Hope and she managed to complete a B.A. in communications in a just a few years while working full time as a church secretary.


I am so happy and excited for her that she finished! She is not sure what she wants to do next but having this degree will open the door to whatever she decides on. Congratulations Sue!

Naturally, as soon as I posted about heading out West while waiting for Sean's work visa, it came the next day. We were already scurrying to make contact with ski lodges and parks to see about any available jobs after the holidays and I was starting to look forward to learning more about skiing. As soon as the visa came, however, we bought tickets for January 11 and are excited to head out to New Zealand after spending Christmas and New Years with family and friends.

I am unbelievably ready for this long-term substitute job to be over. In the span of a week there have been two school-wide lock-downs for reasons varying from a nearby shooting to theft. I've had a couple of close calls regarding girl fights and today after telling a student he could not use the restroom (as last time he never came back) he got up, walked out, told me to go to hell and slammed the door. These last three weeks have been . . . an experience. As soon as I walk into that building my blood pressure skyrockets. I'm hoping that tomorrow will be relatively painless as my nutrition students are going to watch "Food Inc." and my parenting students have a test.

Here are some of the questions I get around Holland when people find out we're going to New Zealand?

Why New Zealand? I've heard it's pretty, there's less people than in China and because we've never been before.

What will you do there? Any job we can find to eek out an existence.

Where will you live? Anywhere we can find that we can afford.

Where are you going? Christchurch (I know, I know, they just had an earthquake).

Isn't that part of Australia? Nope, but it's out in that general direction.

When are you coming back? Our visas last a year, but who knows. If we can't make it financially then it will probably be sooner rather than later.

For the past few months since we got back from NOLS, Sean has been working for Creative Dining at Hope College and I have been substitute teaching in about ten different districts in and around Holland. I initially thought substitute teaching would be a great gig: no lesson plans, no grading, and no parents and politics. I went into the substitute orientation meeting thinking really, "How hard could it be?" Oh, goodness, was I ever wrong.

I learned very quickly that I was not made to be a substitute or "Guest Teacher" as they now call us. You need thick skin, a loud, authoritative voice, intense classroom management skills and a poised, cool demeanor even when chaos ensues. None of these things come naturally to me and unlike my teacher friends who have had classes and classroom experience on behavior management, I had no idea how to deal with the little monsters; it was like trying to reason with and herd cats.

I soon realized that substitute teaching is essentially like re-living the horrors of middle school and high school. In many classes I was ignored, disrespected, mocked, and even growled at by a student pretending to be a wolf. It was insane. Insert images of crumpled up paper-throwing and rubber band firing here (seriously). I sweated a lot and my hand got tired from writing up piles of ISS and ASS slips (who names a program After-School-Study by the way, that's just asking for trouble!) Substitute teaching, unfortunately, doesn't involve any teaching (which is the fun part) it is basically just babysitting for 30 or so hormonally-charged adolescents. God help me.

Two weeks ago on Monday I got a call in the wee hours of the morning to cover a class for a local high school for the entire week. I arrived at my post 20 min. ahead of time like we are supposed to and was informed by the secretary of the disheartening news. I had thought that maybe a teacher was out due to surgery or death in the family, but alas, this was not the case. This was the first day of a new trimester and the district still hadn't found a teacher for three nutrition classes and one parenting class. I was to be the fill-in for the week and was also informed that there were no lesson plans or even books as this was a new class offered. They gave me the rosters and wished me good luck. If you want a true nightmarish experience, try spending four 95 minute (95 minute!) class periods winging it with a bunch of 8th-12th graders regarding subjects you know next to nothing about. It was heinous.

But I rallied. I dug around in storage bins, talked to other teachers, researched on the internet and started lesson-planning like crazy (along with wishing that I hadn't accepted this job in the first place). Day by day things got a little better but the classes were by no means smooth which caused a lot of stress. Some other things that caused me anxiety were: a) I had no room of my own and had to "float" from other teachers' rooms using a rinky-dink cart, b) while I taught, the other teachers remained in their rooms as it was their planning hour, and c) I had many aides who stayed in the room to help with the plethora of kids with mental and physical impairments. Not only was I trying to pull a class together, I was doing it in front of an audience of certified teachers as well. It's safe to say that I was in way over my head.

Here's some of the things that I learned about secondary public school education:

1. The administration is not always behind you
2. How to use a Scantron machine
3. What EI means (emotionally impaired)
4. The basics of dealing with: Autism, Asbergers and physical disabilities
5. How to use an Elmo (gone are the days of the overhead projector)
6. The incredible amount of paperwork and phone calls that are required if you send a student to ISS (In school suspension)
7. That the morale of teachers is pretty low right now
8. That racial and socioeconomic tensions are high in the classroom even in 2011
9. How to lesson-plan at the middle and high school level
10. That we can't call it "Christmas Break" anymore but rather "Holiday Break"
11. I have learned a LOT about nutrition and parenting (if you have questions about your daily caloric intake, contraceptive options or the legalities of child support, just holler)

Currently, it's Sunday night before week 3 of this long-term sub. job. They still can't find a teacher who wants this position (not a huge surprise if you ask me). In fact, on Friday the principal called me into her office and offered me the full-time job on the spot until the end of the year (no matter that I am not certified nor have any background in these subjects). For $218/day I could continue this daily insane challenge. I thanked her for the opportunity but politely declined. I'm sticking it out until "Holiday Break" after which Sean and I are hoping to head out West and wait out a New Zealand visa working at a ski lodge. To all you other "Guest Teachers" out there, I applaud you and to the next person who has my job, I wish you the best of luck.

Just about every week I get a few emails from previous Chinese students. Some of them are just asking about how and what we are doing, others want to know more about the recent and upcoming holidays and still others have very specific reasons for emailing like this student:


Hmmm. That's kind of a loaded question. How would you respond? As for me, the reply makes for a fun little project on this rainy and dreary Sunday afternoon.

For the first time in a couple of years, Sean and I were home to celebrate Thanksgiving and all of its deliciousness. We spent Thursday with Sean's family and Friday with mine.


The Doyles take food very seriously and there were menus for each meal tacked up on the fridge. Breakfast: sausage and egg casserole, pancakes, coffee, and mimosas. Appetizers: deviled eggs, stuffed mushrooms and drinks. Lunch: turkey (cooked on a charcoal grill), honey-baked ham, rolls, mashed potatoes and gravy, yams, carrots, green bean casserole, cranberries, jello and stuffing. Dessert: apple pie, pumpkin pie, lemon meringue pie, berry pie and ice cream. YUM!


There were about 16 of us in all for dinner and we had a good meal and a relaxing day catching up, napping and watching football.


The next day we took a hike to the lake with my parents and then after another nice dinner spent the evening playing games (Cribbage and Farkle) in front of the fire.


This past year has been full with returning from China, getting married and doing NOLS. As we try to figure out what is next for us, we are thankful to be happy, healthy and surrounded by family and friends. Happy Thanksgiving!

Sean and I finally got around to developing the film from our disposable underwater cameras that we used on our vacation in Bali and the Philippines. As the weather turns colder here in Michigan and there is actually snow predicted for Friday, it's nice to think of the tropical weather we had about a year ago half a world away.


Some of the pictures are when Sean and Daniel went snorkeling in Bali. They were taken out in a boat and given lots of food to attract and feed the fish that swarmed around them.


The gray blob with spots are the best pictures we could get of snorkeling with whale sharks near Legaspi, in the Philippines. Trying to swim along with a huge fish who was moving pretty quickly while simultaneously trying to snap pictures didn't work out so well. Here's a picture of what the whale sharks really looked like.


The other pictures are of me and Sean snorkeling and swimming while we stayed on the island of Palawan. For most of the days we took boat tours around to hidden coves and lagoons and were able to snorkel in really clear water.


Sitting here in my sweats and wrapped in a blanket in the Doyle basement, it's hard to remember being that warm and carefree. Developing these pictures brought back some good memories - I hope we are able to make it to New Zealand while it's still summer.

Contrary to what some people might think, there actually is quite a few fun ways to experience art and music in Holland and Grand Rapids. One of the coolest way to check out some art is Art Prize. Art Prize is a relatively new way to experience art around Grand Rapids. It's rapidly growing in popularity not only because it's fun to traipse around the city and join in the festivities but also because there are so many different artists and types of art displayed. Anyone can enter and there are prizes for different categories.



This year, Sean and my parents and I went the day after we got back from our trip out West. It was gorgeous weather and we had fun walking around and looking at all of the art. Though we spent the whole day at the event, we didn't even see half of all of the entries. My favorites were some of the huge sculptures, paper cuttings and all of the creative art which involved things ranging from magnifying lenses to recycled materials. The winner was a huge mosaic with a Christian theme.

A month later in Holland, there is an event called Groove Walk which takes place down town. Groove Walk is when ten different bands play in various bars and restaurants off 8th street. With one wristband you can sample lots of different genres and groups for the whole night. This year, because of great weather, all the venues were packed and people were in high spirits. I went with my friends Becky, Emily and Misha - we had a great times!

A couple of weekends ago I got to go on a retreat with my friend Emily's accounting firm. It was a lot of fun and really cool to meet everyone that Emily works with and at the same time a really relaxing and delightful getaway!



The retreat was held at a really nice lodge a few hours north of here. The lodge was homey and cozy, sat overlooking a lake and was surrounded by miles of trails in the woods. The great room had a huge fireplace and lots of comfy places to hang out on. The rooms had their own little fireplace, kitchen and dining room - it was pretty deluxe!


The retreat started off with a group trail run followed by a cornhole tournament. After that, everyone moved inside for a really nice dinner cooked by the resident chef of the lodge. In the evening we made s'mores in the outdoor fire pit and then played games when we got too overloaded on sugar and cold.


Breakfast the next day was pretty fabulous and nobody seemed to want to leave after that. It was a weekend of luxury at the lodge and I was happy that I got to hang out with Emily. If anyone else wants a buddy for a weekend retreat just let me know - I'd be happy to oblige!

The pumpkins are carved and out on the doorstep and the bags of candy are sitting on the table ready to be handed out as well as consumed. It's been really fun to be around for Halloween this year instead of teaching about it halfway around the world. This weekend I went to a Halloween party given by my college roommate and Sean played in a Halloween ultimate frisbee tournament. Sean has also been receiving cute 'Happy Halloween' emails from students back in China (they are all particularly excited about the Breaking Dawn vampire movie coming out - the vampire craze hit big in China). Happy Halloween everyone!