Thursday morning, I woke up to Katie cheerfully facetiming
her family for a bit. That gave me time to chill and slowly get ready for the
day. Still, we were out the door soon enough and on the 9 o’clock bus into
town! Gotta love Thursdays with no morning classes right? Anyways, Abby had
told us about this one place with a bin full of sweaters and such for 10 RMB
each. Freaking cheap! Less than two dollars a piece- hard to find that at American
thrift shops these days!
Anyways, Katie knew what Abby had been talking about so we
headed over that chilly morning and checked it out. Cute tiny store with a
decent selection [Chinese style of course], so we went through the bin a few
times, and checked out the other jackets.
Katie ended up getting a motorcycle-like jacket, super
chill, and we both grabbed a few sweaters from the 10 RMB pile. We looked
around a little after that, but were quickly bored and headed out.
However!
I needed another yuan to get on the bus back home… so we
started wandering around for a quick bite of cheap street food so I could buy
that up and get a one back, if not two. We ended up getting almost lost and off
the route into unfamiliar territory [that’s been a while], so we ended up
turning around only to realize we were next to the DVD store!'
Which we didn’t go into. I grabbed some dry baked bread thing-
empty inside but with a thin honey glaze or something… weird but not too
shabby! Anyways, we were able to get on the bus and then we ended up stopping
at the corner for dumplings and nabbing a quick Christmas gift for someone
speciall who might read this blog so I can’t say anymore shhh!
Soon it was about noon, we went home- took the bus to the
end and stepped into our apartment since we had the time. We tried on our new
sweaters and stuff [lots of small shops don’t let you try on which is LAME]-
everything was a little big but still looked good- and then I started gathering
things together for Grade 9. Again, I know. But Nicole was out of town and we’d
offered to teach for her.
Katie’s first class was before mine, so she headed to school
before I did. I spent a while finishing up the quick fun lesson- okay it was on
movies so it wasn’t too hard. But the internet access is just so VALUABLE and I
appreciate it so much more now sometimes seriously I can’t wait for good
internet access in America…
I got to school only to soon find a QQ from the lovely
Crystal, letting me know my Grade 4 were doing something else so I wouldn’t
need to teach them! Again!
All the same, I had four of my Grade 4 girls come in a few
minutes early to grab me, but they got distracted when they saw me cutting out
snowflakes! They got pretty fascinated with that, so I ended up giving out the
ones I had just made, and ended up showing them how to do it! I was a little
worried about passing out the scissors [holy crap I’m acting like an adult,
help!], but there was adult supervision the whole time [yikes! That’s me!].
Then because they hadn’t been told about the… other thing,
they dragged me to the classroom, to find it was empty! Nancy was in the group
and super sad about that, and she tried not to cry, the sweetheart, and showed
me where the other kids were out on the big playground area. They had to go, so
I watched them run off, and then return to the warm office.
Forty minutes later, I still got to teach Grade 3 Class 3,
and that was fun. And very crazy with kids running around! Silly gooses…
anyways, I had to stop the trivia presentation, which worked with just about
every class but this one, and we opened the books because those at least
capture the majority of the kids attention.
We worked on a few pages and with unscrambling sentences-
which is tricky because they could change meaning on some just fine and there
is no answer book and I love English but that’s just a bit barbaric and then
there was a spelling riddle. ‘There’s the letter in doll but not in bell’- I
mean, really? REALLY? So all my kids were spelling CLDCK not CLOCK. Poor
confused souls…
Then dinner time! In one of the dishes, something basically
like bit my tongue, it seriously burned and I have no idea what it was but I’m
pretty sure I was in pure agony for a good 3-5 minutes and I couldn’t really do
anything but suffer. Just saying.
After that excursion, we went back to the office to review
things before heading to Grade 9.
They took a bit longer than usual, and were very confused
why we were there yet again. But we wrote it up on the board to explain and the
kids got the idea that Nicole wasn’t there after all and we were helping out.
So! We taught about movies. Because who doesn’t love movies?
I gave them the basic genres from documentaries to thrillers to chick flicks,
and of course we watched a few movie clips which they enjoyed. It was fun
seeing the American movies they like and that sort of thing!
We weren’t done with our day yet!
Katie and I went over to Abby and Greg’s after we finished
at the school. The two of them had bought a cute little Christmas tree and they
invited us to help decorate it! So that was fun, the four of us, and seeing the
ornaments they were able to get at the Chinese Wal-Mart, that was pretty good.
All the way home for some reason we were in fits of giggles
for no good particular reason and yet every great reason possible. Katie was
doing the cancan, I was trying to choke her, she locked me out of the
apartment, and I could barely stand up straight. Good times!
To conclude the day, we ended up watching Edward
Scissorhands. And guess what? She liked it! Yay! Because it’s a wonderful movie
so she couldn’t help but love it, of course. Of and we also tried some really
really weird candy that was kinda like sweet Styrofoam. I don’t really know. I
just know we ended up tossing it out because it was too alien.
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