friday, june 9, 2006

thursday
- thursday was the first day i taught at the school. but we didn't teach for the whole day. we only helped out when there were english classes. So, we taught the grade 3's and the grade 5's, and we sat in a bunch of classes. it was pretty funny... because when we sat in with the preschoolers during their chinese lessons... i was actually learning it with them.













- there's a couple of distinct diferences between schools in north america and china... for example, this school starts at 7:50 am, and ends at 4:30 pm. super long days.. but to compensate, there's about 6 recesses during the day (varying from 5 mins to 20 mins), and a 2 hour lunch break. the recesses are really fun. during the 20 min one, i started dribbling a basketball around the court while some kids tried to steal it off of me... soon, about 30 of them started chasing me all over the basketball court.. it was fun. oh ya, and the kids here are super tough. this one kid (maybe 6 or 7 years old) fell 3 times in a row on the pavement while he was chasing after me... and he never cried.. he just got back up and kept running. as well, during some of the breaks, they have eye drills. a tape plays on the speakers, and in unison, all the students rub the same areas of the eyes (over the eyes, pinching the part b/w the eyes, under the eyes.... etc). they also have an exercise drill where they all line up outside and follow a tape.. and they do a 5 min "dance routine".. all in unison. it's actually really impressive. what else... oh ya, they all have kung fu lessons.. so all the kids know kung fu.
- in the middle of the afternoon, we got a call from a guy who is an E.M. here. he's the general manager of this organization.. and the reason why he called was because he's the uncle of a friend of kat's. he invited us for dinner, and we talke.d.. and it was pretty cool to hear his story. ummm.... and yeah i can elaborate more later. really tasty dinner though - i had fish and chips!
- after dinner, we went to the Canaan bookstore. the owner of the store was a C-------. she was super nice... kat met her the last time she went. we browsed around the store... and she invited us to stay with her in her store because it was pouring rain outside. so we talked for a long time with her.. yeah, just really nice. all the C---'s we've met hre have been so hospitable to us... kat and i both bought some pretty cool stuff from the shop.. and when we were leaving, she gave us these knitted bookmarks that look pretty neat.

friday
- today was fun. since it rained the whole day, all of the physical education classes were "cancelled"... and the students had to stay in their classes all day. so for those PE classes that were cancelled, we helped out. our first one was the preschoolers... lawrence just asked that we sing songs with them... we thought it would be easy, but the kids were so rowdy! we sang songs like "deep and wide", "london bridges", "row row row your boat", "twinkle twinkle", "head and shoulders", etc. we had to sing so loud... because if our voices didn't overpower theirs, they would all just start playingw ith each other. so.. by the end of it.. our voices were really scratchy. haha. but it was fun anyways. oh ya, and when they sang their chinese songs to us... i think i almost went deaf. they're just tiny little 4 year olds.. but when they all sing.. dang... it's crazy how loud they can get. they were piercing my ears!
- we also played 7-UP (i remembered it from our pca days!) with the grade 3's adn they loved it. we played it for the entire 40 mins..
- with the grade 5's, we did some conversation stuff with them... they showed us some of their kung fu moves, and at the end, we played sherades. during the conversations, they asked kat if she knew how to dance... she said yes, but all they had was the kungfu music they used for their kungfu presentation... soon, all of us were chanting "dance, dance, dance" (led by me, of course).. haha. err, i guess you just had to be there to find it funny :P.
- oh ya, and one other cool thing. whenever, the kids want to come into the teacher's staff room to talk to a teacher.. they have to salute.. and then when we nod or say ok, they say "b-uh-gao"... and then they come in