spongebob saves the day.
just finished our 4th day of camp. we had to work on saturday. our only day off is sunday. we are so excited to get a day off tomorrow. we spent all our free time on tonight at kfc and walmart.
it's been nonstop teaching, meetings, and preptime. i hardly have any stephtime to unwind and think to myself. every waking hour is spent with the team and then i'm desperately trying to zzz so i have enough energy to teach kids who don't even know what "hard or easy" is in english!!
i have a kid in my class named freedom. and jeff has a kid in his class named elephant. and in benson's class, there's this really small boy named bruce lee. and he looks like a sunbeam. when he smiles, it makes you feel so happy and it makes your heart melt. he looks like a giant baby and he's really cute. haha.
the first day, the kids were so quiet that i was dreading the second day. they were so unresponsive. their english level was super low.... but after these few days, the kids have warmed up and i'm starting to really love them more...even though they laugh at my chinese. i'd say their english is equally bad, if not entirely worse, but i don't laugh at them.
yesterday was the toughest day. it was storming here and the electrical room got flooded, so there was a blackout in all the classrooms. the lights went out, the a/c went out, no sound system... and so it was dark and humid and muggy while we were trying to carry on teaching and the kids were all acting weird. but we got through it and we cheered when the electricity came back.
we're doing this thing where we modeled a challenge after the complaint free world campaign for the students...except we're supposed to do it too. except now every time we complain, we simply say that we're stating a fact. or right before kevin gossips, he quickly says, "fun fact of the day!"
haha but our team is learning to be more conscientious of having an A+ attitude and we're learning how to work together for sure. and it's really gratifying to see people pick up different roles on the team.
i'm glad i'm not m.ha though. he took us off campus today for dinner and herded the 13 of us around...and i think he was stressed out the entire time while the rest of us were having fun. i think it runs along the lines of how i feel when i take my kids out on a field trip. i always have a perfectly horrendous time while my kids have the time of their lives.
when we went to kfc today, i heard someone call out, "miss stephanie!" and there was this boy from my class two years ago. he was much taller. i could barely recognize him. but he happened to be eating at kfc with his family/friends. i haven't seen him since summer of 2007. it felt really nice to be like...walking around china on our free night and be able to bump into old students randomly.
also yesterday, some of our kids from the last two years came by to visit. lich told us he changed his named to evangelich. which we thought was freakin hilarious. these kids are just so crazy and funny. it's so weird to see them growing older. we live across the world from them, yet this is the third/fourth year i've been able to maintain a friendship with some of these kids. it's amazing. and humbling.
so basically, so far so good...besides the millions of swelling bug bites. couldn't ask for more. because of the storm, today's weather actually felt like cali weather!! nice, cool, and dry!! it was weird! i wasn't sweating! it was my first time experiencing weather like this in all my summers here.
okay. it's time to sleep now. whenever students are done talking here, they always state, "over." so here you go.
"over."
it's been nonstop teaching, meetings, and preptime. i hardly have any stephtime to unwind and think to myself. every waking hour is spent with the team and then i'm desperately trying to zzz so i have enough energy to teach kids who don't even know what "hard or easy" is in english!!
i have a kid in my class named freedom. and jeff has a kid in his class named elephant. and in benson's class, there's this really small boy named bruce lee. and he looks like a sunbeam. when he smiles, it makes you feel so happy and it makes your heart melt. he looks like a giant baby and he's really cute. haha.
the first day, the kids were so quiet that i was dreading the second day. they were so unresponsive. their english level was super low.... but after these few days, the kids have warmed up and i'm starting to really love them more...even though they laugh at my chinese. i'd say their english is equally bad, if not entirely worse, but i don't laugh at them.
yesterday was the toughest day. it was storming here and the electrical room got flooded, so there was a blackout in all the classrooms. the lights went out, the a/c went out, no sound system... and so it was dark and humid and muggy while we were trying to carry on teaching and the kids were all acting weird. but we got through it and we cheered when the electricity came back.
we're doing this thing where we modeled a challenge after the complaint free world campaign for the students...except we're supposed to do it too. except now every time we complain, we simply say that we're stating a fact. or right before kevin gossips, he quickly says, "fun fact of the day!"
haha but our team is learning to be more conscientious of having an A+ attitude and we're learning how to work together for sure. and it's really gratifying to see people pick up different roles on the team.
i'm glad i'm not m.ha though. he took us off campus today for dinner and herded the 13 of us around...and i think he was stressed out the entire time while the rest of us were having fun. i think it runs along the lines of how i feel when i take my kids out on a field trip. i always have a perfectly horrendous time while my kids have the time of their lives.
when we went to kfc today, i heard someone call out, "miss stephanie!" and there was this boy from my class two years ago. he was much taller. i could barely recognize him. but he happened to be eating at kfc with his family/friends. i haven't seen him since summer of 2007. it felt really nice to be like...walking around china on our free night and be able to bump into old students randomly.
also yesterday, some of our kids from the last two years came by to visit. lich told us he changed his named to evangelich. which we thought was freakin hilarious. these kids are just so crazy and funny. it's so weird to see them growing older. we live across the world from them, yet this is the third/fourth year i've been able to maintain a friendship with some of these kids. it's amazing. and humbling.
so basically, so far so good...besides the millions of swelling bug bites. couldn't ask for more. because of the storm, today's weather actually felt like cali weather!! nice, cool, and dry!! it was weird! i wasn't sweating! it was my first time experiencing weather like this in all my summers here.
okay. it's time to sleep now. whenever students are done talking here, they always state, "over." so here you go.
"over."