Sept 13 2013

Friday the 13^th

Unfortunately nothing scary really happened today.

Although I did have the curiosity for a scary-ish movie, which is the closest I get to craving one because let’s face it, I don’t like horror movies. I refuse to watch them. But I brought The Sixth Sense, which yes, is scarier than I prefer [thrillers are okay, but not scary or horror or anything], and I kind of wanted to watch it… but Katie won’t so I’m not doing that alone so that’s not happening.

Oh, and then we ran into our friend Philip today. Not once, not twice but three times! Maybe four? We can’t really keep track, to be honest! Haha. The first time it was on our way home after school, where Katie said she wanted to hike a mountain and he texted us in Chinese so we could tell a taxi cab we want to do it sometime. Then another time he was actually in our building with some friends after we were coming back from dinner. We got up, grabbed money, then went out for ice cream and we saw him on the way there as well! Crazy right?

Anyways, so we didn’t go to breakfast there today- we’d bought a bit of yogurt so we had some of those this morning, and then headed out to the school just in time for the exercise thing, except all they did was announcements so we stayed in our office and fiddled around for a bit. I started writing out a new story ‘The Wordsmith’ [obviously a lot to be worked on, but the start is the most important!], and soon Katie taught her one class for the day. I glanced over my stuff before finally heading to my one class of the day.

Grade 5. Well behaved! They were all excited for the weekend- one of my kids really wants to play his video games- but they still behaved pretty well in the end! I’ve decided PowerPoints may just be the trick to keep the class a bit organized. Same as my Grade 4, we just went through the food groups, and I ended up stretching it out to go through the entire lesson. They wrote on the board a few times, and then I went around asking them their favorite dairy products, vegetables, and so on. They LOVE talking and always want to volunteer, so that’s something I always have to watch out for.

What I really like to do, and it’s a slight possibility it may even be frowned upon, but I like to keep moving around in my class and walk through the aisles- I don’t like just being in the front. So I’ll walk around the desks, [occasionally tap my marker on one if the kid is playing with something more] and talk to kids that way. That way no one really gets confused who I am talking to, and it gives me a good excuse to talk to as many kids as possible. It’s in this grade that the class helper can’t really speak English, but she always raises her hand, so I make a point to always try and talk to her and ask her questions. My second Q/A didn’t work out, but the first one did!

Anyways, so class went very well. It turned into chaos the moment I stopped teaching after the bell had rung, so I tried to calm them down and at least keep an eye before any real disasters as I started stepping out the door. I was accosted then by three girls. Lisa, her friend, and another one, though I don’t remember her name. But they’re starting to test me on their names! Not so good, especially because I know at least 3 kids have my name down pat [the Grade 3 kids always run up and ask me right before class starts], so I really have to start memorizing!

We talked and goofed around for a little, but their class needed to get ready for lunch, and I had to put my things away to do the same. However just before I was about to walk out of my office with everything, those three girls turned up again to talk to the four of us and walk with us to lunch. They’re very cute! I didn’t understand some of the questions they were asking me, however. Although YES, Katie IS my BEST friend. I understood that question and definitely answered that right! Haha.

Lunch was pretty good! They had these meatballs… the flavor was GREAT. But the texture was a bit iffy. Whatever the meat was, it was ground extra fine so it tasted kind of suspicious… but I still ate it- with rice, that helps.

After lunch, Katie and I returned to our desks to finish up on our computers for the weekend. I ended up pulling out my laptop that I had brought, trying to get a few more songs and other things on here, but it got super slow and I was trying to clean out my music library [okay, mostly just put it in order.  I have least 11 days worth of music on here and it’s not like I can just get rid of it!], so we ended up sticking around for an extra two hours. That got Katie pretty impatient, but I calmed her down with some slightly stale but very yummy koala cookies. They’re slightly chocolate with a vanilla filling- super delicious!

Finally, we walked home, ran into Philip and talked about our day for a little bit, and headed inside. I showered, continued fixing my music library, and Katie started trying to work out our holiday plans. We are planning for Xi’an for our October Holiday, and we were going to go to Tiger-Leaping-Gorge next weekend, but the cost was going to be about the same for Xi’an, which is still a good bit of money, and none of us really wanted that cost so we’ll think of something else to do.

We got that worked out finally, and through that we were doing our laundry! Our clean clothes still come out smelling like sweat so Katie took the initiative and wiped down our shirts with dish soap before putting them in the wash! Of course, just as we were hanging up our shirts to dry, I pointed out we wanted dinner and were only in our tank tops.

After trying to think of some idea and laughing through it all, Katie finally realized we hadn’t washed two shirts of ours which we don’t wear for school, so we changed into those and headed out. Dinner was just leftovers, where we had a ‘quality conversation’ about some of my stories [sometimes we’re both impressed with what I can do on occasion!], then we headed back, running into Philip for the second-ish time.

We were craving ice cream, as full as we were, so we grabbed some money and left again. Then we walked with Philip down the street for a bit [he’s very friendly, and says if we knew Chinese we would always be mad], then we parted and we entered the grocery store again for our ice cream. Katie had gotten a super delicious chocolate one the other day, so we both ended up getting that. 5 RMB so nearly a full USD which is more than I’ve spent on ice cream yet- but holy goodness that was quality chocolate and for a few minutes, we were in glorious heaven. We walked around the courtyard of our apartment complex to finish them before heading back up and settling down for the evening. Gotta love a peaceful Friday!