Chillin' In China: Sept 12 2013

What a day!

Wednesday had been a swell day so I wasn’t about to complain this morning when I got up. Thursday, neither Katie nor I have classes until well after noon, so we ended up not going to the school for breakfast, or even for the exercise thing. We stuck around and read. She’s in the middle of the Game of Thrones series… and I’m rereading my old stories! It’s fun, and I’m hoping it’ll give me the motivation to start reworking some of them.

Anyways, we did that, tried digging into our literally frozen yogurt. Didn’t really work, so we had to use spoons which wasn’t as fun as the straws. Definitely learned my lesson! We did this until about 11, where we finally got dressed up and headed out for lunch!

Which was pretty good! Huzzah! I don’t really remember particulars. There was cake, though. Yellow cake, a little thicker like cornbread but still tasty. And I think they’ve started topping it with raisins or something, which, ehm, I may or may not take off… but hey, I DO eat it with chopsticks. It’s pretty fun! I may never use a fork again, you Americans.

Finished with lunch, we headed up to our office to chill out and plan lessons.

Speaking of chilling out… there IS an air conditioner in there. By the way, all Chinese A/C machines look like skinny fridges. Sometimes they even have flower stickers to pretty them up. Anyways, we have a rectangular room, stretched back vertically. Katie and I are at the far end, with the A/C and the two windows. Abby and Greg are close to the door and often get hot, so they like turning on the A/C a few degrees colder than they need, so it’s perfect when it finally reaches them.

Today, I forgot a jacket. That was silly of me. Very, very silly.

Katie had a morning class, so she headed off. I put together two presentations I could do, as well as turning in my final assignment for my online class [only a half semester course], and I continued to read The Hunger Games for a while.

Shortly after, Nicole gave me a call and asked me to come up and talk to her about train tickets in her office on the 4^th floor. We’d been hoping to leave town during the Autumn Festival next week and head up to Xi’an for the terra cotta soldiers. However, as Nicole showed me, there were no more tickets left that could get us there and back in the proper amount of time. Huge bummer! I’ve been pretty calm about it [I adapt!], but if I don’t see the terra cotta soldiers… I don’t really even know. I would probably go back to the states very upset, and possibly someday plan another trip to return just for that [which would be really inconvenient for me, and who knows if I’d ever have the time or money to do it again meaning I’d live regretting it for the rest of my life… oh dear]- anyways, I need to go sometime while here!!

I know Abby will be as upset, if not more, because she’d seriously been planning this trip in depth. So most likely now we’re going to stick around, see the festival, and hopefully hit up the nearby waterfall or other things around Guiyang, and do go to Xi’an some other time.

We also told Greg to tell Abby [she had a head cold and no classes for the day, so she got to stay home all day], and hopefully tomorrow morning we can try to plan anything to do next weekend- as well as our October Holiday!

We also asked Nicole after dinner about a visa trip- going farther than Hong Kong. She doesn’t think we’ll have a week for it, and I don’t think I’d put in all the money just for a day in Vietnam or anything, so we’ve really got to work on that as well. Hopefully we get things figured out ASAP!

Back to the day: It took forever, but my class started right before 4, so I headed out to my Grade 4. They’re pretty awesome, and decently well behaved. It always takes a few minutes to get class in order, because they love putting my things on the desk for me, and then they have to go through everything and try to help me do anything and everything more.

We finally got it sorted out, though, and I did the food groups with them! I don’t know if they group them like we do in the states? I feel like they cover something like that, but I feel this definitely helped with some understanding of things.

I also made an extra one for SUGAR. Because we all know that’s important.

So I went through all these slides, made another list on the board, and had some of the kids name the foods, then come write down certain ones in their category. I also showed them a shishkabob! You know, a skewer? But I call them a shishkabob and I know I’m not the only one, so… now they know that word! Yay! It was definitely a lot of fun.

Then I moved on to my next class, Grade 3 Class 3. This is Journey’s, where she wants me using the book. When I finally got class started, they had all their books out and as I finally found out, they had already done what I thought I would go over with them! I was just about to see if we should go onto another section, when Journey came in.

Apparently, there will be a teacher in one of our classes each week? So it was her turn, and I was fine with that. She had come in while I was checking with their books, so we talked for a minute, and I wanted her to clarify what she wanted me to really teach: review. So exciting!

Ehm. I even asked if I could include my slide of stuff at the end. She just wanted the book.

BUT I adapt! And prevailed! Somewhat, anyways. To be honest, I hadn’t really gone through the book, but she showed me things she wanted reviewed so I ended up spending the majority of the class trying to teach them His/Hers/Theirs/Ours. They had a rhyme thing to go with that, so I had them working on that with me. We read it out, and then I asked them who the star belonged to- but the kids didn’t properly understand that. They just wanted to stand up, and say it aloud for me.

Their reading and memorization skills are incredible, don’t get me wrong. However, understanding it is the tricky part. And I’m still trying to figure out how to talk slower and get them to connect with what I’m saying, which can be tricky- especially on these sort of occasions.

But I let them read it, gave them a high five, then I had them help me draw on the board some of the things, like a pet and a star and a watch and a boy. I think this helped a little. They behaved pretty well, staying in their seats and everything with Journey in the back. Letting some of the kids understand the words and properly draw their pictures took up quite a few minutes, and I almost felt bad being patient.

I want so badly to know what the teachers are writing about us! I know they are very sharp with their kids, but I know they are always on good terms with one another, and I want to know so badly what they think of our teaching styles, and so on. Also, it would be nice if the other teachers told me if they want me teaching anything specific… My lessons are very random, because I’m still working my way into the groove.

Hopefully next week things will start coming together some more.

So classes went good, over all- When things are going decently well I forget to look at the clock and more than often, the bell rings when I’m talking or writing on the board. I’ve yet found a good way to close class in those circumstances, but I’m hoping I can get something good down.

Finished, I waited a minute for Katie and Greg, and the three of us went to dinner. Pretty tasty! They’ve had this bean soup Katie enjoys, and I ate mostly cake, along with some really good noodles that were getting cold a little too fast. But still tasty overall!

We didn’t have a chance to talk to Nicole at the meal, so once finished we headed up to Nicole’s office to ask her about a possible visa trip outside the states, and so hopefully she can sort it out with the school hierarchy bosses and maybe we can do something fun! We’ll see…

By the time we finished classes, though, it began to rain. Seriously rain. The kids were shrieking and running for shelter. We have cover for most of it, but there was one spot from the cafeteria to the office building that’s maybe 2 yards- little less. Anyways, we had to cross that and that mere two seconds nearly soaked us!

We were about to leave, when we got attacked- by some of my girls! Seriously cute ones, all in my Grade 4 I think it was? I’m finally starting to recognize some of their faces, thank goodness. Hoping I’ll know a LOT more names by Halloween, if not all [okay, big goal but it’s possible!].

They took the chance to play teacher with us, grabbing our large flashcards and showing them to us. They even taught me a few words- or at least, tried. It took about 10+ attempts for me to sort out Minnie Mouse. It was tricky! Haha. So they goofed about with that- Lisa got super serious, and was yelling at me to be quiet because one of the other kids was distracting me. I couldn’t decide if I should be a good example and shush, or just wonder if she even knows what it really means, I don’t know…

Anyways, they stuck around for 20 minutes at least, before Katie and I got out. Talk about rain! At least it was slowly letting up though, thank goodness.

Overall on the walk home, Katie slipped a total of five times. Not on her butt, but stumbled pretty close! This is why you should not wear flip-flops often. It’s very risky! In her defense, the day started out VERY bright and warm! But really, a teacher wearing flip-flops to school? Tut, tut! Hahahaa…

Before getting home, we stopped at the grocery store for snacks for the weekend. And snacks because we just like eating snacks. We’ve probably gained back all the weight we’ve lost… Haha. We spent about 125 RMB there on everything. It was a butt load! About $11 USD each, which honestly isn’t too bad…

We ran into Greg there, getting snacks for Abby on the way home as well. We shared ideas for snacks- Katie and I bought only a few things that we’ve had before- we’ve only tasted about 8% of everything we bought tonight. It should be fun!!

Yes, our nights are getting boring. We’re definitely have to find more movies, buy games, or- gasp- even go out! Okay, probably not. Not yet, anyways. The busses stop running pretty early, meaning more pricy taxi trips to a point. However we do need to go back to the Vegas street down the road, hmmm…

Oh! So we made an African friend here!

Did I mention Philip? From Africa? He’s teaching at another school as well. He called out to us on the street last week and walked over- super random! But we got his number, I finally texted him back, he gave us a second number as well, and then we randomly ran into him again tonight. He likes shaking hands, he has a cool accent [being from Africa and all], and it seems we may be getting dinner with him on Monday! Who knows? We’ve already told him we don’t drink, however, and he was okay with that.

I love our extremely random friendships here in China, it really is a blast!