Sept 11 2013

What a Wednesday!

Who needs Disneyland when you have such crazy roller coasters in teaching kids English?

Okay, you can’t up Disneyland, but you can get pretty close.

Katie and I do not really enjoy the breakfasts here at the school. We’ve been at least five times, but are never impressed and don’t really like it. Personally, I think it comes partially from the fact that in America, it is a very separate meal from the other two, while here you can still eat rice with it, and still have random spicy dishes and such, just like for dinner. Sure there’s an egg dish or two, plus hash brown-like ones, and the occasional rolls- but it’s not really doing it for us.

My point being, we ended up just eating yogurt we had bought at the bakery on our way home last night.  I had the berry one Katie had the first time around, and she had that also. Yummy! Still adjusting to the fruit bits though. But otherwise, yum! Plus I finished off my loaf from Monday. Delicious! We spent our morning mostly in bed with yogurt and reading… That is, Katie was in her bed, I was on the couch, separate rooms, and enjoying the quiet morning.

It was so pleasant! Except for outside- last night it started smelling like people were BBQ’ing or something and the smoke and smog and smell lasted through the morning. That wasn’t particularly fun, but luckily it was gone by lunchtime.

We eventually dressed for school and headed out. Since Nicole’s asked us to be there for the kids’ morning exercises or “gymnastics” we’re now always there about 9:45, so that’s a steady time to arrive seeing as we don’t want breakfast there but still structured enough to plan for later classes.

Our things were put away and we headed out to watch the kids. Katie was all ready to join them!

When it all CHANGED.

Well, they stayed in formation. And they sort of started with their stretching. But there was no line dancing today. For this second round, they did speedy Tai Chi moves in beat with the music. It was pretty impressive! The cool moves made us want to join right away but we have no idea what is said over the loud speaker and half the kids don’t know what they’re doing, so I refused to go join them just yet, meaning Katie hung back as well. Hopefully next time, though!

I sorted out my lesson pretty well- it was Grade 3, and I can usually do pretty similar things throughout the week. Plus I’m trying to ingrain more than “Hello” and “Hey” into them. Oh, and “I’m fine, thank you.” Some of the kids know “Terrible” which is silly because I think they’re mocking me but there’s the possibility they don’t even know what that means…

Anyways, I fiddled on the internet for a while afterwards, and then headed off to teach Grade 3.

Guess what?

More chaos! This time it was really out of hand. The kids wouldn’t stay in their seats or anything! I tried doing a few games we had done in the past, but literally nothing ended up happening for the entire class. I was breaking up a few fights, giving high fives when I actually got a few answers out of kids… One girl latched onto me, which was cute but I couldn’t stay right there and she was still sitting, so that was a tricky and long 45 seconds. I pulled up my picture of Spiderman and that helped for a minute or two… then chaos again. It’s just chaos. There is no other word.

The thing is, I don’t really speak Chinese and they all know that. To them, they have all the control in a way because they also can’t really understand what I am trying to tell them. The concept of ‘Quiet!’ doesn’t really even exist to them. So I’m definitely going to collect a pile of some words to use in class to get them to behave a bit better for later on.

Luckily, that was the only class I really had to teach because that was exhausting! I sat down, watched Katie head out for hers, and wanted to never teach again. Just for a few minutes though- then I was reminded I signed up for this- literally and mentally. And sure, there are going to be low points. But I shall rise!

Of course that didn’t help with Katie coming back and telling me about her angels- they started out as monsters but now they’re perfect. Not fair! Haha, but she does have younger kids, which means fewer to a class and they’re a lot more willing to sing, and that’s in Katie’s favor. I can get maybe 5 kids to sing in any of my Grade 3 classes right now- obviously something that must be worked on!

Anyways, she taught a few more times as I sat around, tried to watch a thing or two on youtube, went over my SUU assignment a lot, started reading the Hunger Games for the hundredth time [it’s the book that everyone has, it’s weird. Basically, it’s handy everywhere I go. So that’s what I pick up once bored, you know? But this may have to be the last time. Seriously… ]

Oh, between that, or something, there was a yummy lunch where Katie and I pulled out the Grade 9 book, because on Wednesdays we teach Nicole’s class. She wants us going a bit by the book so we had to check that out. After that, I headed home to see if we could get the repairman to come fix our wide screen TV [movie nights!], but unfortunately at the last minute they couldn’t, so I walked back to the school to hang out some more.

Eventually, Katie finished her classes and we went to dinner. Now this was good! They had one random dish out that looked like dough balls… I smelled fish when I walked by it, so automatically I thought they like dipped fish eyes in the dough. Makes sense, doesn’t it? Please say yes, because Katie laughed at me. Anyways, she got two and it’s got meat in it! Not too bad- but the dough is so undercooked and odd and there’s too much of it to get any meat so overall, I don’t really think it’s worth it. But they had the chopped and cooked potatoes with green peppers, and I love that dish. They also had out some spicy rice with pork- I added in white rice with it to mellow it out and that really helped. It was extra tasty! So tonight, very good dinner! [Did I just sound Chinese??]

Oh! Don’t know if I mentioned, but one of my girls from Grade 4, Nancy, came by to see us. Katie, Greg and I were in our office. Yoyo mentioned the other day, and Nicole stopped by this morning to remind us, that Nancy’s parents would like us to spend some of Saturday with Nancy, and we’re going to play badminton with her? Anyways, she came by and she had made cards for each of us! She got confused on my name with Katie [even though she is going by Kate here, it’s still tricky], but that was okay. She is such a sweetheart! She scampered out of there with her friend after that.

Activity Time was fun! I had brought the camera. The kids love it! They ask to be photographed all the time, and then they say thank you! It’s so silly and cute. I got pictures of kids posing, playing jump rope, and so on. However, I do not believe I grabbed a picture of Katie- one of her kids randomly started giving her a back massage! Can you say jealous or what? The kid knew what she was doing, too! And that got about four other kids enthusiastic to pound on her back for another minute as well! The kids are so sweet and adorable!

After that, we had our Grade 9 class!

Katie was not excited for it. I had been earlier, but I’d started getting doubts myself. However, it turned out a lot like I had thought a while back. There’s a DVD set with the books, so we put that in after we introduced ourselves [we didn’t use PowerPoints this time. Not sure if that was better? We still talk too fast for the kids, yikes!], and we played that for a few minutes. And I could have sworn Michael… Michael… the guy who plays Marty McFly. Michael Fox? Anyways, I would’ve sworn he was in there. Just saying…

So we watched that, and the kids filled out the Activity Page. That took a few minutes- Katie tried to help a little, but I figured they’re smart enough they could sort it out. And they did! We called out the answers together, and that was pretty helpful.

OKAY CUT!

During Activity Time, I was taking pictures… and this older Grade 9 kid comes up and suddenly says. “Teacher. What’s up?”

I’ve been trying to teach all my kids to say it, and he’s all smooth and yes, one day he will be a looker. BUT it threw me SO offguard after all the kids never getting it. I was stunned- Katie could even tell. I just froze for a second! “Uh, good, good. How about you, what’s up?”

“Nothing much.”

I didn’t know much else to say, so I asked his grade, which is a word they still don’t totally understand, but yes he is in Grade 9. His friends grabbed him, I think, or it got awkward enough that he just walked away… I don’t know. I was still pretty stunned, haha.

BACK to CLASS.

After going through the answers, we had them look around at the side of the pages- like in CliffsNote books, it explained things like California [Holla!], police officers, other ways to say “Thank You” and so on. So we made a game out of that. I got all the boys! And some super smart girls! After a short while, we had one from each side come up and start trying out the questions. My girl got funny- the girl from the story was living with a Hispanic family [people who speak Spanish, says the definition] so she asked how do you speak Spanish? And we had a boy from the back of my class call out “Hola, Muchachas!” That was pretty funny!

So we went through that for the rest of the lesson, basically, until it was really worn out. We had just a few minutes left, so Katie asked the class what they would like to learn. One of the talkative girls said songs, and music. We talked about that for a while- funny songs, real songs, etc. Luckily I had my thumb drive on me and luckily I still had Taylor Swift on it, so we played “Love Story.”

I stayed up front, singing along. We got some of the girls doing the same, and Katie took my cell phone around playing it as a microphone, which definitely embarrassed some girls, but it had everyone laughing and we were all having a fun time! That was about the end of class, but we had them quickly write down any songs they would like to learn in English, or get the lyrics or anything. That got them excited! Justin Timberlake, Avril, Adele, popular ones like that… but the boys don’t know rock ‘n’ roll! That is blasphemy!

I’m totally bringing them Bon Jovi, Elvis, the Beatles, and more. We’re only going to teach them like 15 times total, which is a huge bummer, to be honest. They do whisper to each other a bit, but overall they are well behaved [possibly because Nicole was in the back, I don’t know], they enjoyed the game and a lot of them were willing to talk, so that was great over all! Katie and I both really liked teaching them, and we’re already excited for next week!

And we’re already preparing for Halloween! Shh!

The walk home was nice, cool, and pleasant. The people love their evening music and dances! There’s at least two spots of people doing their dances. Once was just getting started, but there were two parents with babies dancing with them in their arms, and that was adorable! The second party was in the open square area, doing a synchronized aerobic dance. Most of them were women. As in all, but maybe 2 men? I only saw one, however- a tall, thin, older gentleman heartily attempting to copy the women. He was so adorable! He was my favorite of the dancers, haha.

We stopped for some snacks, and I got a pineapple soda so we’ll see if that’s any different from the states. I’m also excited for some steak potato crisps, and we also got something new and random… squareish treats that may or may not be hazelnut? I had to say no to the ones with the corn- sorry, but the corn gummy candies are still weirding me out! Haha….

Quick Note: I have over 15 bites covering my two arms. Five of which are just on one of my hands. As you can imagine, this isn’t very fun. Definitely bring anti-itch cream and more! I tried wearing a little bug spray last night and it may have worked, but I don’t really know. Anyways, Katie’s figured they’re most likely spiders as well as mosquitos trying to eat us here. So far they aren’t really coming under the covers, which is nice. 

But we might try asking Nicole if there’s such a thing as mosquito netting here and see if that works at all.

Oh, and the hazel nut things? They’re like blocks of nutty powder cubes. There is no other way to describe it. The blocks are about as big as my thumb. Katie stuck a half and just kept saying ‘Powder…Powder!’ 

That was pretty funny. They don’t necessarily taste bad, it’s just… odd!

^Pictures of some of our fun in Beijing! Slowly getting pictures up, it might take a while.