We decided against breakfast. Well, mostly I did. My
appetite had yet to return and I didn’t fancy waking up early by any means. So
we spent a few extra minutes in bed before making it up to the school. It was
sprinkling more so we huddled under my little umbrella as we went.
Our first classes included the ones we were trading. It was
my first time with first graders!
It started off great, they were super excited to see me.
Shouting out “hello” and running up to find out my name and more about me. Not
that it translated very well, but still, they were very cute and enthusiastic!
Kind of like kindergarten, little tables set up around the
room without desks. They’re not supposed to have anything on there, either. I
put up a powerpoint which kept the attention of most of my kids, with Halloween
and then mazes. Like I said, that kept about half the kids busy.
The ones in the back were pretty chaotic, running around,
grabbing umbrellas, arguing with each other. I didn’t really know what else I
could do, so I chose to ignore them because then I’d lose the attention of the
rest of the class and with kids, usually, once you lose it you don’t get it
back! We went through everything and they had some fun. We did a lot of review
because I finished up a little early. Then I packed up and headed out!
Katie apparently got my class to sing and to behave very
well, the little stinkers.
She went home after lunch, and I returned to my desk to
fiddle around and try to plan some lessons. I covered Good, Better, Best, and
other similar terms for my next class, finally, Grade 4. When the time came,
they mostly did all right, but not good enough for a DVD if I remember right.
Still, it was fun adding some pictures- they love it and it always grabs their
attention.
Grade 5 was about the same, although this ran a little bit
better. They were tied for a DVD which I wasn’t about to do, except towards the
end I completely lost their attention except for like two of them, so I figured
it couldn’t hurt. However then it couldn’t get set up, so they listened to part
of ‘Teenage Dream’ by Katy Perry before time was up.
Grade 3 Class 3 was final, and I sort of covered the topic
with them but they lost interest because I may have made it a little extra
complicated, so I had them open their books. They were a bit chaotic through
that as well- definitely not an easy week by the looks of it. But it helped
because one of them gave me the CD so we covered quite a few pages and a song
or two from their lesson, which helped them pay attention, and though there was
no DVD, class still ended well.
Afterwards, I was exhausted and my eyes were dying at the
sight of the computer although I persisted through a few files to plan for the
next day.
Shortly after that, however, Greg came over and said Abby
wasn’t feeling well and so asked us to switch days to teach lessons with them.
The goodwill within myself won over and I agreed we could. But then it got very
complicated with us two tired girls trying to plan a lesson and having no
inspiration to do just that.
Still, we got something planned out a bit. We missed dinner,
trying to plan that out. Fortunately we got a few things planned out- at worst,
end early and begin a movie- and headed up. When we arrived, the classroom was
locked so we stood in the cold, waiting for Nicole to come. She came almost 10
minutes later, when most of the class had come around, and then she spent
another 15 minutes trying to find a way to unlock the classroom. But the keys
had gone home for the day! So we didn’t do it!
Our former plan had been to go to the corner, so we left the
school [sighing in relief] and headed to the bus stop. Just a few minutes later
it came around and we boarded it to the busy corner. Our first time there
during the night- we don’t usually go out after dark- but it was pretty fun and
decently busy. We crossed over and wandered.
Katie looked for an iphone case but I think what I got from
them they sounded very expensive, though hopefully I was wrong. We continued to
walk and looked around at several shoes and a few coats as well before
wandering on. We found a DVD stall, and tried to translate to the guy about
American movies or at least English subtitles. Finally we realized even with a
few Chinese covers, there are the occasional American movie on back- each DVD
carries like 10 movies. Legit movies, too.
I bought 2 for 10 RMB which is quite the bargain. I don’t
care so much for the movies to be honest- they’ll have Chinese voice overs with
English subtitles of course- but it’s quite the experience, is it not?
Anyways, we walked on, looked through more stalls of
jackets, and then we got me a blanket! Abby bought one and says it’s a Couples
Blanket apparently… Hahaha…. But I really liked it and I love, love blankets so
I bought one. Had a hard time with the old lady selling, though- she put it in
the bag just as she told us the price and it was a little more so we tried to
get across our meaning but I don’t think she did for a while, but eventually I
walked away with the blanket and that’s the important thing!
We headed home and we’d barely been an hour! So we grabbed
rolls and noodle bowls for food for the night, and ate those and read until we
were tired enough to go to bed.
Haha, this is Jake from Grade 3 Class something. He loved the camera!
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