Can I just say, I am so proud of myself and so thankful the man upstairs has my back! So this morning I got up and all ready for the day. Wore my USA Shirt and brought a dollar store american flag that I stole from Rachelle's room. (wish I had brought one) and as I was double checking, a thought popped into my head “grab some paper” I have paper on my desk so that I can do stuff for next weeks ELE class but I put it in my back pack and met Rachelle at her room and hurried her along because we were on time and that makes me nervous! So we got down and met Kelly and Sam (so many sams... Sam is from the primary school we are going to) and waited for Hannah and Maddie who were late .
While we were waiting we talked to Sam and he told us that he is an English teacher at the school and he teaches grades 4 and 5 and thats when the students at that school get their first bit of english. So our students don't have any english at all. Nor do they have english names, but I am getting ahead of myself. So we get in the van and head to the school and meet the head teacher you guessed it, SHE is pretty nice ;) well we sat down and after tons of Chinese and Rachelle and I trying to pick up some words we sorta get but not making sense of anything Kelly leans over and says:
#1 you are 24 or 25 and
#2 the Kindergarten kids need to Love ILP and want to come to our school so they have fun.
The kids here? Better learn to speak. And the Chinese teachers will be checking on them...
in my head... (don't have fun, speak, 25, crap.) then she continues on. You don't need to be at the gate until 8:30 and they dont have english names. You need to teach them “my name is” “nice to meet you” “how old are you?” and they need to speak. Oh yeah, your classes are 40 min not 45....
So as I am sitting there I pull out a paper and rewrite my lesson plan, I write our schedule on the back of it and then each teacher gets someone to help them out, Sam took me under his wing and took me to the library. I asked for a chalk board so he went and got one and I took off and started my lesson. I passed out the paper that I was prompted to put in my bag and we folded and tore etc and I collected the extra pieces so I could have enough for the next 50 students and we made name tags. I started out by saying “my name is miss Dell” and who wants an english name? These kids have zero english. And with more time I could have just handed them name tags like I did at the other schools but I had to try. So with the blank stares I decided to try again but then I heard the teacher in chinese say english names (I can say and recognize those words in Chinese) and 25 little hands shot right up in the air. So yeah, I cheated but after that the class was awesome! I went along and wrote names on the papers as fast as I could and had them all line up and say my name is … shake my hand and say nice to meet you. I wrote it on the chalk board and picked individuals to stand and say the phrase “hello, my name is _____ nice to meet you” all this was done in 40 min. yeah pat me on the back thank you. ;) haha most of my students walked out of my class saying Hello, My name is ______ nice to meet you. Its not everything that Kelly said but after talking to the other teachers... ill be just fine. I had them keep their name tags and told them to practice. Those kids are amazing after class I had every student who was struggling just a little ask me to repeat the name on their tags and by ask I mean point to their name and when I said “whit – ney” she walked away “whitney,whitney,whitney” over and over till they walked out of the door. But my favorite part is when they turn and say “nice to meet you!” Sam left for awhile and I later find out its because he made us a copy of our schedule and put our names in the slots etc. but the teacher came in and said are you tired? And I told her “no! Im good! The next class comes in 5 right?” and she looked at me wide eyed and I was freaking out a little. Did I just ask something stupid or offensive? Then she says “you have so much energy!” haha uh... thanks? I just get excited I guess haha but it was no secret I guess because they brought me water here too! And had some guy come in with a nice camera and video camera and taped my lesson. Normally I think I would be intimidated, but I was so in the zone and proud of what I was doing, I made sure I stood a little taller and squared my USA shirt at the camera :) I love this so so so much! Sitting in the headmasters office with Kelly spouting things off to me, I was feeling pretty overwhelmed like is there anything else you need to tell me?? but its situations like those that make you grow. You never know what you can do if you don't push yourself. Day 3 and I whipped out a lesson plan in 30seconds flat and taught a 45 min lesson while being recorded with paper and a marker! So there was something else that we learned.. Sam came over after class and handed me a topic list of each thing he wants us to teach (there goes my other lesson! Haha) but also tells us that next week we wont see the same students but in fact we get another 75 … 150 students in one school. Then the week after, I will see the students I saw today... hahaha. Good to know! Lunch was pretty good there and then we went back to the school. Sam said to memorize the license plate of the van and the driver because that is who we will be picked up by every friday. K- C 7768 … I got it ;)
When I got back, I could help but be excited! I am too legit to quit! Hahaha naw im just kidding. I got back and headed out for a run. I ran for quite a bit and then headed back up stairs to my groupies coming out of their rooms telling me to hurry cuz the bus leaves in 15 and they want to go to the city! Haha so I hurried and changed so fast and we headed off to the bus stop! We take bus 38 which comes every hour on the 15 for about 45 min and then hop off the last stop in the city! Its really fun. And this time I made my group promise I wouldn't get left behind! Haha but then we also decided that if we do get separated then we will just take a taxi and go home cuz there is no point in wandering around looking for each other. We were going to establish a meeting spot but we wander around the markets, up and down streets and in stores. I have a pretty good sense of direction and after our last ditch dell party ;) ben and I have become pretty familiar with the area, but the other girls wouldn't know how to get to the meeting spot if we were exploring so the easiest thing is get a taxi and go home. Tonight was an exploring night and we had so much fun! We started out by me finally finding a little booth with finger nail polish so I got a few colors! I have been trying so hard to search for some nail polish!! I got a cool sea green and a blue :)
we then moved on and found ourselves at “the noodle place” at this place, they make the noodles right in front of you and the whole meal comes out to be $1.50 score! Not only is it cheap, but its dang good. I got this noodle dish that came with potatoes and some sort of meat who knows what kind. And some sauce and it was so good!! love it! I am excited to eat there again! :) after that, we found some little shop that had all these rows of some sort of dried something so we went in and found a good little treat! We found some dried sweet potatoes so they are like chips but hopefully healthier. We all got to taste test the different things. Well, we think it might all be sweet potato but dried and/or cut a different way. But after our taste testing, we found our favorites and all got a bag. Then we were off to … you bet it was good ol KFC! Haha Josh and ben really wanted to eat there so we went there and I got myself an ice cream cone. Holy cow I miss ice cream!! and they only give you maybe 1/6th of a dellany serving of the stuff in a cone but I guess beggars can't be choosers right? Haha after KFC we all decided to wander, Rachelle really wanted to climb “the temple” but the rest of the group was kinda over stairs for the day and we still hade 229 more to climb to get to our beds so we decided that we would try to catch the bus... but which bus was the question... hmmm. Ben said he remembered seeing a 15 but the stop that we were at didnt have a number 15 so we pulled out our little school card and hoped that someone would know! We handed it to one guy and he said no no and then walked off so we knew that it wasn’t a bus at this stop but which bus do we go on and where is it?? wll this other guy saw us trying to figure it out so he took our card and called the school and asked the school which bus gets us back! It was so so so nice of him!
He told us we had to go down the street and turn left? Or at least thats what we thought so we headed off and found a stop but not one with a 15 bus. After then we kinda gave up. We wandered the market and got pineapple on a stick which was so delicious! We found a cute little bakery that was so american we couldn’t get enough of it! Then we explored a kareoke bar and then kept on walking! We were in the middle of asking a street vendor if she had hot chocolate when we saw a bus 15!! our group is so good at spur of the moment things! Haha it passed us and Crista says “should we run?? RUN!!” and there goes 6 crazy americans chasing after a #15 bus that got away! Haha but hey at least we knew it existed! Haha after that, we headed back to what we called
“the temple” we had no idea what it was but Rachelle REALLY wanted to climb up the stairs and see it so we wandered over there and found this massive group of people all around the entrance of the temple doing what seemed like a flash mob or something! They were all marching in a line and it had music so Rachelle and I ran over and got into
the back of the line and followed along! We then thought hmmmm temple, maybe we are doing some religious routine or something.... eh, whatever! Then we saw the leader lady look over at us and laugh and then gave us a thumbs up! Haha well, whatever we were doing, it wasn’t insulting! Later on we guessed that it was a public excersizing class! Like they were all in lind the leader would call out the moves! How cool is that! They definitely don't have that in America thats the truth.
Crista and Sam didn't want to stick around so they went off and they did their own thing while me Josh, Ben and Rachelle climbed the stairs and found out “the temple” isnt a temple haha in fact, its just a complex built forever ago and it looks cool so they keep it up pretty much haha. It looks like they have tours there during the day so we are going to try to go back there and take a tour!
But instead of a tour we just kept climbing and we got to “the eiffle tower” which is basically just a giant tower thats lit up and looks cool haha. But the walk was nice and I took some fun pictures :) we headed back down getting ready to go because by then, it was getting late and everything was closing so Rachelle and I took pictures of us in front of the Complex (still going to call it “the temple” it sounds way cooler haha) and we got asked by a guy to take a picture with him, so we did! Haha he was with a group of his buddies and some could speak some pretty good english so we talked a bit and I have a date with one of them next week! Im so excited! … please tell me you didnt believe me! Hahaha Psyche! Jokes on you! We really did talk to them and they were 19 and 20 so it was fun to finally talk to people our age! They were really funny. After we got done talking to them we realized Ben and Josh were gone! We were like what the heck?! Are you kidding me?! Until we noticed a few dark creatures lurking in the shadows haha stupid boys. After that, we were all pooped and decided to take a taxi back and now it is definitely bedtime! We are excited though because tomorrow is our first day of having nothing planned!!! I wish I was going on a home visit but I didnt let the head teachers know in enough time and the Zoo is rescheduled to April to when it will be warmer outside so who knows where the bus will take us tomorrow!! adventure is out there! ;)
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