Day 5 ~ 7/7

Today was really cool. I talked to the kids about life in America. I miraculously remembered our NHS lipdub video they made at the end of last year to welcome the freshmen. So I downloaded it the night before and showed them to my classes. They flipped out when they saw our pool. They loved it! And it's such a good video to show what school is all about in the US - at least in California!!

The best was that our program director wanted to come by to observe and the kids were so into the video and asking questions about it. And this is a big part of what we're supposed to be doing here - so I was very lucky to have Sally randomly pick THAT MOMENT to stop by!

One kid asked if we had wifi at school and when I said yes, the whole class erupted with freaking out, so cute! They're big gamers! 

I asked them to point out what's similar and what's different from school in China: they said similar: the students are humans. They sit in a chair. They have a desk. There is a teacher in the room. Hahaha. That was it! Basically nothing is similar!!!

 

Another awesome thing is that they cancelled the first period cause they were taking class pictures ... So I got one hour extra prep time which made me super happy!!!!  Very good day!!

Repeat: Mung bean ice cream

For dinner, I went out with Shana, Jennifer, Paula, Todd & Debbie. We went to the hot pot restaurant. Basically it's like fondue but very cheap!  You pick your broth and your raw food and they bring it and set the pot on a range in the middle of your table and you throw the food in, and scoop it out when it's cooked! You can order sauces to dip the food into also. It was delicious!!  The menu selection included some "interesting" options! We had beef and a collection if veggies. 

Todd ordered some Granade looking drink. It was an event in itself. It came in a sealed can and we had like 5 servers opening it for us! They said it tasted like cow-pies. But whatever to get a buzz. They were telling me the alcohol here doesn't get you drunk easily. Very entertaining!!

Todd and Paula with the Granade

Hot pot!

It was pouring rain so I just headed back home. Melissa went out to get her iPhone jail broken and put a working SIM card in for using it in china. When we're done teachin, she's going hiking by herself at a place called yellow mountain - so she wants to have service while being alone. 

Sleeping with the windows open and the rain was heavenly. We are so rain deprived in California!!

Day 4 ~ 7/6

I'm so behind writing about school that I'll try to fill in random facts. 

Greeted by Mr. Spider. 

The kids are sometimes cute and sometimes annoying (just being honest). 

I have a couple discipline problems and I have pretty much figured out how to pull them in. I'm down to 28 in one class and 29 in another and so that is very manageable. Even though its exhausting, I'm happy that I've figured out how to teach them and manage my class :)

Cindy, Kitty & Sweeny

Little crab in our lunch

I got a present - a kaleidoscope the kids made in another class. Two kids wrote their name on it and gave it to me as a gift. SOOO CUTE!!!

Today's flavor: Soy ice cream. 

After school, Kelly had found a Spanish restaurant so we ventured out to find it. It was tiny and the upstairs restaurant part had like 5 tables, so we stayed downstairs and ordered tapas de jamón serrano & paella. I asked for a coke and they brought it with 4 cubes of ice!!!!! I was sooo happy!!! I had not had ice Simce I left the US!!!! Ice is awesome!!!!!  (It's the little things in life!)

Downtown, walking to the Spanish restaurant 

Ice!

Jamón!! And real bread!!!

Paella!!

The paella was delicious and I loved having dinner there. 

Day 3 ~ 7/5

My masterpiece 

Getting more comfortable teaching. Today's ice cream was red bean. 

Had another cultural lesson to paint a Chinese painting. The teacher was an award winning art teacher and other than my paintbrush having too much water and making my paint bleed, she made it easy to make a good looking painting. 

Came back to the hotel and I was exhausted. So there were some people going to the Westin hotel for drinks and I decided to stay home and do laundry and chill out. 

I ended up making a sticky note countdown! (Can you tell this is a little challenging and I'm excited to get back to touring?!)

7 days left, 6 days left ......,

Day off ~ 7/9

Yeyyyyyy!! Day off. Woke up to a gorgeous day. I thought we were meeting at 7:30 so I woke up at 7. FAIL. We were meeting at 9!  Sleep deprivation is my area of expertise so, yeah. 

We took off for Purple Mountain with a large group. Melissa, Jovanni & I wanted to go to the gondola ride up to the top and hike down. The other people didn't want to hike so they went to the tomb and temples instead. 

We got off the metro and had no clue where to go!! There were these vans trying to recruit people and take them but we were too scared. So we asked some people and finally one lady helped explain to a taxi where we were trying to go and we got there! 

It was a ski lift and it took us to the top, where there was a look out. You could see the whole city and it was so gorgeous. We found a path with stairs and hiked down. Took about 45 min with us stopping to take pictures everywhere. The path was covered with trees so even though it was high 90's-low 100's it was shady and a little breezy!

Our lake

From there we took another taxi to the botanical garden. It was somewhat of a bust. It looked like they planted every species of tree and plant and said: grow. It wasnt manicured or landscaped how I had imagined it. But they had a restaurant so we ate there. What an experience ... Only Chinese on the menu and no pictures. Melissa had her book of phrases so we used that. She got shrimp, Jovanni got beef and I got green beans (after he said they didnt have 5 other things I wanted) and a tomato soup with egg. I also asked for orange juice. 

We got: a pitcher of OJ. It was fresh squeezed, so that was cool but didnt match our dinner at all. So we shared it. Melissa got a PILE of shrimp. Jovanni got a platter of beef. I got a PILE of green beans. None of us wanted each other's food either so it was so hilarious!!! Hi, I hike in 100 degree weather for an hour and eat a plate of beans ... And you?!?! Ha ha ha. The soup got shared a bit. It was a GIANT bowl. I guess we didn't think that everything you order here is "serves however many people are eating" rather than individual servings. :)

We left there and went to the place I was wanting to go to the most - the place with the large animal stones. Wowwwwww!!!! It was soooooo cool. This tomb is guarded by men and animals. They line a path that leads to the tomb. The humans are like soldiers, captains, generals. The animals are elephants, horses, camels, unicorns that don't look like our unicorns - and lions. They have them standing and then, sitting. I took so many pictures because they were sooo cool!!!

The tomb was also cool. The grounds have Mexico pyramids looking dragon heads that are left from what must've been an impressive structure the Japanese destroyed. We met these Chinese guys there - college age and so friendly and they hung out with us for a good half hour or more. Then these younger French girls were also walking around so I encouraged them to go after them since they were around their age!! They were all shy about it, it was fun to watch!!

When we were done, we tried walking out and getting a taxi home. Two taxis stopped and wouldn't take us. We would  show them the address to the hotel and they said no. It was so frustrating, I was soooo tired!!! So we walked and found a helpful man who told us where the metro station was. It was like 8 blocks away. And we took the metro home. (Found out later the taxis have shifts. When they are going home ... They'll only take you if you're on their way. At least that made me feel better. 6-7pm is a bad time to get taxis.)

We went back to the hot pot dinner place since Melissa hasn't been yet.

What a GREAT day off. 

Day 2 - 4th of July!

Just like that! 4th of July in China. I'm glad we got to see fireworks at the opening ceremony :)

Today, my morning class is still good and Elaine still ignores me. I still sweat like crazy. I got my technology to work so I can show video and do PowerPoint. Yay!! It really makes a difference as far as student engagement. 

Today I taught half a period about 4th of July and wore red, white and blue. 

So I teach 3 periods in the morning (40 minutes with a 10 min break in between) and then there's lunch. After lunch I have 1.5 hours to lesson plan and then I teach a different group of kids for 3 periods. During that 2nd period in the afternoon they bring us ice cream :) EVERYDAY. Today's was Mung Bean. Green. So weird!! Haha. 

Mung bean - yay?!

Enjoying some ice cream with Vivien, Wendy, Willy, Johnson & Wilson

Whatever my teacher did ... My afternoon class was TOTALLY different. They changed the seating arrangement and separated the problem boys. They were really good today!

I am feeling better but still am overwhelmed at how little time we have to prepare. And they are squirrelly 7th graders!!

I'm so happy to have this guy Todd in our group. He kind of organized us to come up with one killer lesson plan that we can just all share with each other to help ease our work load. I love that!! Some people opted in. I think there are two who didn't. Probably cause they already have all their own stuff and don't need it. But everyone is pretty open to share what they have and offer ideas and suggestions. It's a good working environment. 

Class is done at 4:20 and we jump on the bus at 4:40. But tonight we had a culture class. I guess we'll have 4 of them: knots, painting, calligraphy & paper cutting. Tonight was knots. 

We learned to make Lucky Dolls. It was easy and very cute. 

Jennifer and Jeannie's lucky dolls (of course mine is head banging!)

I loved our culture lesson and carry my doll on my purse now. :)

When we got back to the hotel, some of us went to the lake for a walk. It is such a pretty lake!!

We walk up and there are these groups of women dancing with same t-shirts and a choreographed dance. Then we saw a coconut vendor. He had a screwdriver and hammer and would poke a hole into the coconut and stick a straw in ~ fresh coconut water!! So we got one :)

Our coconut water! (Brensi, Margarita & me)

We ended up walking about 5 miles. The lake is huge and the atmosphere changes as you pass different parts. We saw people digging for cicadas - yes, digging, cause they fall out of the tree and burrow. I guess they use them to feed chickens or birds cause there were a lot of people out there with flash lights. Reminded me of a grunion run or snipe hunting!

Yuk!

Then we passed Salsa dancers. Dancing salsa music with Chinese lyrics!!!  And these roller blade/skate board things ... Lots of like 50 year old women and even like a 70 year old guy!!

Salsa dancers

Skate thing. Has one fat wheel. 

We also passed a group of young kids. They were playing EDM and dancing, it was dark so I couldn't get a pic. 

Got home, worked on my lesson a bit and sleepy time!!

First Day of School -7/3

Wow. I'm on day 4. I lost what I had written about day 1 :( so ill try to fill in. There is so little time to lesson plan (and I'm usually fast) so it's hard to find down time to write lately. 

The elementary and middle school teachers are on different campuses. So there's a bus that picks us up from the hotel and drops off the elementary teachers and then takes us to our campus. 

We got to school and they had water fountains going, awesome!

First Day ... Middle school teachers: Todd, Melissa (not my roommate), Chris, Julie, Chris, me, Leslie, Annette, Robin, Kit, Jennifer, Paula (Todd's girl) and Shana. 

Day 1 - met my morning class and they were everything I hoped for. Really cute and friendly kids. They listened and reacted to things the way I hoped for and anticipated, so that made me happy!  The helping teacher, Elaine, was just sitting there frantically working on something ... She's kinda rude cause she doesn't talk or interact with me at all for some reason. 

Lunch was fun, we were all talking about our classes and kids :)

Then my afternoon class has so many more boys than girls, which means its a much louder class. They were a little bit of a handful. There were a group of 5 boys that were really hard to control and I thought: THIS IS WHY I don't teach middle school!!!  But I got through it. 

One boy flat out told me "no" when I asked him to do something! I really didn't like that, even more so on the first day! So when the class was over, I talked to his teacher, Sally about it. She said she'd take care of it. 

None of my technology worked out when I tried it the day before so I made my lesson work with no computer. And really, for squirrelly 7th graders, that is not the best option - so I decided I need to be over planned and heavy on the tech and games that are at their level. My morning class is a little more fluent than my morning class also. 

That night we got back to the hotel and my roomie, Melissa, needed a VGA cable for her computer and I calculated it would cost me $46 to do the laundry I had to do ... So I went with her to buy a bucket to do laundry in and some comfort food (chocolate and Pringles) ...

Well, I felt like I was on The Amazing Race for the next 3 hours. Trying to explain what we were looking for at electronic stores. The mobile phone stores were the best cause the employees would just pull up a translator on a galaxy 4 and we could sort of communicate. 

We were unsuccessful and we decided to go for dinner. We walked around and found a place that looked crowded and good. We went in and there were pictures of the food but no description so we were trying to figure it out. This guy chimes in in English and starts telling us what everything is!! We were soooo happy!!! His name was Andy and he ended up joining us at our table while we ate dinner. It was his dad's restaurant and he was from Taiwan. We asked him about the adaptor and he sent us to this electronics store that was a Nordstrom version of best buy or fry's!!!! Huge!

There, we finally got someone to understand what we needed but they didn't sell it!!! I think the guy helping us was willing to pull the adaptor off the floor model but his manager walked over and got mad at him. So Melissa left with a picture of what she needed and a description written in Chinese but no adaptor. By now I was EXHAUSTED!! I still had to come home and do laundry but it was a little but of a rush to have found what we were looking for and it was soooooo great to chat with Andy and get his help!!

Got home. Did laundry for FORTY minutes - ugh! And lesson planned till 1 am. If all the days are like this one, I'll pass out by day 8!!!

Oh. The rooms have a JOKE of an air conditioner, you only feel it if you're standing right next to it!  So I sweat like pig in class when I'm teaching. It is sooo gross. And we have to use a squat bathroom and carry our own toilet paper in. But I'M IN CHINA and that's pretty amazing!!

(This is ugh! So scared to have to poop!!)

Gum looks like ibuprofen bottles!

(Snickers!)

Sunday 6/30

Woke up today and went to a mausoleum with lots of stairs. Dr. Sun Yat-sen is buried here

Roomie pic

From there, we went to a very sad place. It's the site of a mass burial for 100,000 Chinese that were brutally slaughtered and mistreated by the Japanese at the beginning of WW2. All together there were 300,000 victims. And this museum was 100 x bigger than the museum of Tolerance in LA and just as sad, if not sadder - cause there were lots if photos depicting what happened. And lots of first hand accounts from survivors. 

After our touring, Sally showed us the grocery store, fruit store & food street. 

Melissa and I went to get a foot massage. It was an hour long and included a neck and shoulder massage! Super cool! We were in a little room and they served us watermelon and tea. 

Massage with wooden massagers ending (they made a little cadence out of it)

Happy after the spa treatment

Then we went to dinner at a restaurant Sally suggested. It was good. The menu had pictures and descriptions in English, so we picked out some things we liked and it was delicious!! They also had a musical performance. 

First dinner on our own - we did well!!

Then we walked around the lake for an hour. The lake is beautiful!!! I'll take some pics later ... Went to bed so exhausted!!