Sept 5- Continued

Tuesday:

A little better prepared for teaching, yay!

Okay, only slightly. And this was my busy day: Four classes PLUS Activity Time [which of course is NOT a stresser. You could chase the kids around the whole time and call it a done deal any day], so that was a lot for me to try and prepare for. Of course, I kept things pretty similar, just introducing myself, and going over a few Greetings [“Yo! What’s up? Hey, Dude!”], and such.

I did the Grade 3 class 2 again from Monday, which was a little tricky but not too bad. The kids are helpful when it comes to putting things up on the screen, and we did a little more than before. But they were still pretty rambunctious!

Then Grade 4 [only 1 class, like Grade 5], and Abby was so bored since she doesn’t really have any classes that day, so she joined me. They were barely noisy and very well behaved that I had almost no idea what to do! It was really weird. So Abby helped me out with a few things.

Something particular about Grade 4 and 5: they have to have GREEN whiteboard markers. I don’t know why. They can’t tell me. But ALL of them freak out if I bring in a red marker or something. I didn’t have one for grade 5, so they finally decided blue was okay.

They were pretty quiet as well. I believe Abby was there for that as well, I am not too sure. I went through everything I had with them, trying to keep things a bit interesting. Grade 4 doesn’t really know anymore than Grade 3, but it’s hard to figure out what Grade 5 knows. Neither grade seemed to have any books yet either, but I had made a presentation about American manners which sort of pulled things together a little and kept us going to the end.

Right after that I taught the final Grade 3 Class 3. They decently well behaved, although I didn’t get through too much with all the kids moving about and none of them seem to ever remember my name. And some of them tattle on each other- some kids are always doing homework or drawing in my class.

But it was a decently successful day.

Activity Time was a little more confusing- Nicole had mentioned we usually pick them up from their classes, but some kids are left to clean there for a bit, and on other occasions classes get mixed up and someone is teaching them! Anyways, it’s usually a good bit of fun anyways and I taught some of the kids  Red Light Green Light- which they’ve definitely turned into a game of their own, haha!

On the way home, we treated ourselves to ice cream! Okay now this was good: there weren’t too many varieties, it was low at the small stand we went to. After all, it was a dreary day and we must look like such tourists for getting ice cream when it might rain. Not that it stops us, of course. Anyways, I got one I had already tried [they have frozen corn and frozen pea ice cream bar things. And yes, they really are just frozen vegetables like that], and Katie got a new… green…block…with KIDNEY BEANS.

Nicole says it’s a good seller in China.

I’m absolutely serious.

Katie has pictures of it, even. It was the weirdest thing. Neither of us could get over its weirdness. All the same, she finished it up to the end! But it was definitely odd.

OH and on our way into our apartment, Katie’s favorite part: they finally got us some water! Water coolers yay! No more buying water all the time! Because we’ve bought at least like 10 since we’ve been in Guiyang along. Katie’s loving it. And I don’t know how long all of them will last… less than a week, I can assure you. But we’ll see…