OT poll - what do you do for a living?

 I am an English teacher in central China.  I work at a local university teaching Oral English to freshmen.  I have been doing this for almost four years now.  (Can't believe I've been here that long!)

My plan is to give up teaching at the end of this year and do a Master's in Chinese here in China.  After that 2 year program, I hope to go back to the US to start another Master's before I turn 30.  

That sounds interesting.  I assume you already speak chinese pretty well?  That a kind of hard language, isn't it?

 In some ways Chinese is much easier than English, such as basic grammar, but in other ways it is crazy difficult!  Tones and advanced grammar are killer.  I do like writing in Chinese, it's kind of relaxing.  Remembering all of the characters can be very difficult as there are over 50,000 (though less than 10,000 are considered "daily use" characters).  To read a newspaper you need to be able to read at least 3,000.  I'm not quite there yet, but I'm working on it. 

My Chinese is at an intermediate level now.  In late 2007 after I graduated college I decided to go to China on a whim!  I didn't know a single person in the country or a single word of Mandarin!  Nor had I ever heard of the city that I was going to move to.  Here we are 4 years later and it has worked out wonderfully.  

I am a stay-at-home mum. I have a 14, 12, 9, 8 yr old. 14 yrs ago, before I had kids, I used to work at a daycare and help run a pre-school. I now foster parent for the Ministry of Children and Family for almost 6 years, and have two extra kids in my house between the ages of birth to 4 yrs. I have dealt with alot of children with FAS, and other issues, and I work well with difficult families. This keeps me pretty busy! I say I am a stay-at-home mum, but I really am not home alot lol !!
Rhonda

I work in Technical Support for a large cable/internet/phone company.  I worked in healthcare for 11 years in alot of patient care roles before burning out, it was rewarding but also very trying.  I figured it out in my 2nd year of nursing school that it wasn't for me.  I admire anyone who works in healthcare.  Somedays I miss it, but most days I'm extremely happy with what I do now, and it definitely pays better than healthcare did.  The biggest struggle now is that I sit at a desk for 9 hours a day...at least with healthcare I was "moving". 

I'm a surgical nurse :)

Fantastic weight loss so far Kris!!
Rhonda

I'm a critical care nurse in a hospital. My main duties are emergency management....ie...code blues and rapid response assesment. I carry a pager, and go wherever needed, and I love what I do!! I'm basically pretty social, and I get to know most of the staff. I work full time night shift.

CLEAR!
I did a 3 hour code the other night. I don't know how I did that before surgery.

Stay at home mom since 2002. Hoping to use my teaching degree again once the kids are more independent.