Sept 9 2013

Monday

Back to school!

Less thrilled than last week, but ready for more! I’ve been having fun with the kids but I want to see them learning, so we arrived at lunch time [we grabbed yogurt and yummy bread from the bakery for breakfast], ate some okayish food [now we’re settling in routine so the food is less exciting, but we’re working on it! And trust me, we’re still eating plenty], and planned some lessons for the day.

I taught my first two Grade Three classes. The first went well… because the teacher stayed. O.o That was my face. She never talked to me, she just took a back seat and took notes. In Chinese, so I couldn’t exactly look over her shoulder and read what she was writing, which was really a bummer. Hopefully I got decent marks! The good part about her staying was that the kids actually behaved a bit, which was nice. We went over greetings, I kept them talking, we went over shapes and the like [they’re really smart kids, but in learning things in English, they seem set back pretty far, no matter their grade].

Grade 3 Class 2, however, was something of a nightmare. Utter chaos. Uncontrollable chaos. I can work with controlled chaos, but not uncontrollable chaos. It was ridiculous. I don’t think we got anything done, to be honest. I have some kids that really try, however- I think that’s the class with Kevin. Okay, there are a lot of Kevins, but I think this is where Awesome Kevin is. He is very smart and very helpful! He helped me get the class through some tongue twisters and more.

So yeah, that definitely exhausted me. Not exactly how I want my week starting, but there we have it. We settled down for dinner, where Nicole told us that the round table in the teacher’s cafeteria is for us, the Americans, and it’s where other teachers can come talk to us. I mean, they could before… I don’t know, weird rule maybe? Haha. But now we sit there all the time- kind of boring, unless someone actually comes to talk to us.

Anyways! Activity Time went crazy. For Katie, anyways. The energetic woman she is [my energy is my head, hers in her body, that’s what I mean…ish]- SO the kids spend the whole time chasing her around, or she chases them. Tag for Katie, or as she titled it, um… I think it was Catch the Fish?

They’ve got her racing pretty hard, so she ended up slipping [TOMS don’t have a lot of traction, unfortunately], and totally messed up her knee. It was pretty ugly, but a nice battle wound. I mean hey, if it scares she can be like “Yeah, totally got that in China with them kids.” That’s pretty chill.

I was busy with the ladies, of course. Well, and some boys. I think I mentioned this before, but the kids are fascinated and very confused because my head is crooked. I even have some of them try to fix it for me. So I wrote down an explanation for the kids, and asked Nicole to translate. She wrote it up and gave it back to me, so that now I can keep it on me at all times for the kids- and I’ve been pulling it out a lot.

During Activity Time, I had to race up to the second floor and back down to bring them the paper since I had forgotten it [last time that happens!], and I was showing the kids- and once they saw I was carrying a piece of paper with Chinese characters, a ton of them flooded over and all I heard was “Ooohhh,” for a good while.

Eh, kids. Haha. After I put that away, I played around with a few of the girls- I have two who are very attached to me in the cutest way possible. So we would try to communicate, which is hard, but fun, and we just exchanged the English-Chinese basics. They helped me count up to 10 in Chinese [I knew some of it!], and then we sang the ABC’s- because they do it differently! It was very funny when they got all confused at me singing once it breaks off in another direction- but it really catches their curiosity, that’s for sure!

All good things eventually come to an end, so we said our good bye’s, Katie left early because we needed a new water jug and the guy was coming early [We downed that in 5 days! Or I should say Katie- I drank MAYBE 4 half-way/mostly filled water bottles. And that’s barely a dent]. I was trying to load a few things up on my personal computer that I had carried, but after that we were good.

Oh, and we started discussing a trip we want to take over Autumn Festival. It’s their Moon Cake festival or something next week. About a four day weekend! We’re going to take a train to Chongxing overnight on Wednesday, spend the day there and the night on another train to Xi’an. Check out the terra cotta soldiers and stuff on Friday, and that night catch a third train back home to be here on Sunday in case we have to teach then to make up for Thursday and Friday. I know, it’s a lot of train riding. But the TERRA COTTA SOLDIERS are there in Xi’an so really. Seriously. Come on!

I got home, aaaaand movie time! I’ve been choosing movies and surprising Katie and she likes it! Well, probably because I didn’t bring Scott Pilgrim and some other movies that she also despises [I know, she’s an oddball. Ignoring that, she is still pretty lovable!! Just… don’t mention that movie to her, hehe], so it’s all good. And I DEFINITELY picked a good one.

Rush Hour 2

Jackie Chan! He’s our favorite, no questions asked. He’s just the best. He’s hilarious. We love him. Katie’s finally understanding him a bit more as well, because she’ll still see posters randomly in China and be like “Is that him? Is that Jackie Chan?!” And I’m just like “Nope.” So… we’re working on her recognition abilities.

Kidding, sort of.

Anyways, we love  him, it was awesome- they started the movie in Hong Kong and we were just dying because everything made SO MUCH SENSE. It was crazy. OH and we watched Shanghai Knights on Sunday.

 Guess where it starts?

The Forbidden City.

AND GUESS WHERE WE’VE BEEN?

The Forbidden City! WOOOHOOOO

It was a pretty cool feeling, that’s all. Ehm. Anyways… oh, and remember all those little random candies we bought at Wal-Mart? We’re eating a few of those with every movie. There’s these cheap chocolate truffle things- Katie says those are her favorite, which is surprising because she never really likes cheap chocolate. But we are still enjoying them all! Another one we love is this caramel looking one, but it’s really coconut, and we like those. There’s a ton of these nutty ones, too! Super nutty. Intensely nutty, you guys. OH and Sunday, we tried the gummy corn-looking candy.

Shaped like a corn

Did NOT feel like corn

Smelled like corn [in a good way].

And guess what it tasted like?

CORN.

I know, weird right? Corn isn’t just a vegetable here [though I’m really not sure if they separate them in to fruits and vegetables, because I keep asking all the kids what their favorite fruit is and everyone says ice cream, so…], it’s almost a delicacy. They have frozen corn with the ice cream bars, after all. And one of the most popular- actually, I’m pretty sure it’s the most common- street food, where they kinda BBQ it or something. Katie wants to try one soon, but is waiting to make sure we’re up for the bacteria. Hopefully we’re almost done biding our time, because they are looking gooood!

So yeah, real corn candy. Who would have ever guessed?

And Monday closed on a decent thought. I even ate some chocolate Nestle ice cream. Not half bad :D