Fidalgo Bay Coffee Tour

I took my class on a field trip to the Fidalgo Bay Coffee factory. The pictures below show the progression of coffee from bag and raw bean, to the roaster, coming out of the roaster, and then being stirred. During the stirring process the beans are actually being cooled by a fan underneath that is sucking the heat out. It keeps them from over-roasting. (P.S. Things might be a little jumbled in this post as I'm trying out some of the new features of Picasa.) Click on the pictures if you want to see them larger.

Here I am with my level 1 & 2 students Mon-Fri. for two hours a day. They are an interesting bunch. As they learn about American culture and the Western educational system, I also learn a lot about them and their countries. The students pictured are from Mongolia, Hong Kong, South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan. In this picture, one Mexican student is missing, and two other guys are hidden behind other students. The white guy in the picture is my teacher's aide whom I'm so grateful for. He really helps with trying to teach a class of such varied levels. It really is more like three levels in one, 0-2. One guy is very much a beginner!

After the tour, each student was given the choice of either a caramel or vanilla latte or a mocha. Below, Yuen from Hong Kong is watching our tour guide, Mindy, making lattes. It was a fun end to the tour for them. Most of them have obviously had coffee and/orn coffee with milk, but there were some who had never had a 'proper' latte.

These are various pictures of the tour showing the bags being filled and sealed, a different roast of beans being added to make a certain blend, and espresso shots.The guy in the black jacket I call the "Mongolian Gangster". He doesn't know what it means...neither do the rest of them for that matter! Gangster is not usually a word that they know at these levels!

Depressing Blog

Nothing too new is happening in our neck of the woods, but I figure that I should update the blog anyway!

I have been really stressed lately and am actually loosing quite a bit of hair which I think is linked to the stress. I've never lost so much before. : / The last two nights I've had insomnia pretty bad because my mind won't shut off with all that needs to happen. I pray...I read...I write things down but then still remember more later....I pray more.....I count my blessings so as not to dwell on the stressful things, yet it's still been difficult to fall alseep. Saturday night, I couldn't fall asleep until sometime after 4:15am!

I am really busy with my job, as I've mentioned before. As the quarter wears on, I am more worn out and I know that my students are too. They start to try to pull things on me like turning in work with someone else's handwriting or copying sentences directly from a news article online. Do these students whom I see 10 hours a week really think that I don't know their handwriting or writing ability? If I get a paper with no grammatical or literary mistakes from a level one student, something is wrong!

On a positive note, Ryan got his official acceptance to the business school at the University of Washington a couple of days ago. We are excited about that. He had been accepted to the U as a whole, but we needed that business acceptance to actually make the move to Seattle a sure thing. We plan to move a few days after Christmas. I'm starting to look forward to moving and to a change. I look forward to finding a new church and meeting new friends.

We're starting to look at places to live to get some ideas of locations and price ranges. It's hard to know where to look since we don't know where I'll be working yet. We don't want to have long commutes if we don't have to. We found a cute house for rent in Edmonds yesterday, but if I get a job in south Seattle, that will be too far to make it worth it. We can get more for the money outside of Seattle proper and probably quieter living.

I'm praying that I can get a good job with all of the budget cuts! I do have one interview with City University in a couple of weeks. It wouldn't be my first choice, but if that is the only door that opens, then I guess I'll take it. : )

I finish my current grad class in two weeks and my teaching quarter in a little under a month with Thanksgiving break in between. I am looking forward to a break!!!!

On Thursday, I'm taking my students on a field trip to a coffee processing plant. I'm having to do a last minute 12 passenger van license renewal tomorrow morning since my license just expired on Oct. 25th! Sheesh! One more thing to add to my schedule. I'm actually still in my Chinese class, but I skip some days and don't do much homework for it. I'm just auditing anyway.

That's probably enough rambling for this post. As long as I remember my camera, I'll take pictures of our field trip. Until then....please pray for sleep for me and good quiet time with the Lord for strength.