Time for another update, for all you in blog land.
Here's some details about what we do all day. We wake up at 7ish, sometimes exercise, sometimes don't. We eat breakfast, then we'll study Chinese, tutor English, site see, go grocery shopping, etc. Then we eat lunch at 11:15. Then prepare lessons until we teach at 2:30. We teach 2:30 - 5:10, then eat dinner (getting yelled at by the lunch-ladies for being late), then we go to our rooms and hang out, go out, etc. It sounds like we don't do much, but I swear we are very busy. haha.
This is Grant typing now. We are splitting email duty.
You'd think that we had all morning to do whatever the heck we want, but it's hard to get going and getting in the grind of the day. But we are trying hard to make the most of the day, like we have about 5 hours of Chinese throughout the week, trying to do some tutoring to some Chinese students, and occasionally getting out on the town.
For example, Nicole and I went to the Rape of Nanjing massacre museum, which was when the Japanese invaded China at the outset of WWII. Nanjing was the capitol city at the time, and when the Japanese were coming the government kind of took off and said "Good luck!". Luck was bad, as it turned out, and the Japanese took the city without too much trouble. Japanese then gave the "all prisoners must be executed" order, and the Japanese ended up rounding people up in big groups and killing them with great efficiency. There were photos and stories of people who lived through the atrocities, like people who escaped being buried alive, or being mowed down by machine guns in a crowd, or women who were captured and made sex slaves, etc. It was just pretty incredible to learn about how bad people can be to other people. When all God asks is for us to be one, to consider other people as our equal and love them, Satan is pretty good at convincing us that we are better than those around us, that we are justified in judging, alienating, demeaning, hating, subjugating, harming, or killing other people. It's quite different from the Buddhist belief that a knowledge that all beings are common, that they share a love for life and a fear of suffering, and so we, recognizing that, should strive to end suffering for ourselves and all around us. So if Satan can convince us to be hostile against someone else, that is the first step down the path that leads to him raging in our hearts and committing unspeakable evil, like what happened at the Rape of Nanjing, or the Holocaust, or the Invisible Children, or many others. Yay for the gospel. Don't hate :)
Our kids are adorable, but often very difficult. We can't speak to them, we don't allow them to speak Chinese in class, and we couldn't understand them if they did. The class format is also very different than what they're used to. They usually sit in desks while their teachers harp at them. The teachers use stern verbiage and tone to keep the class in order, and we've seen them publicly criticize the kids to tears. Since we have no language, we end up resorting to pure emotion and/or physical force -- definitely less effective forms of discipline haha! For example, I teach gym, but instead of paying attention to my really cool printout of a skier, the kids are running in circles around the room. I'm pretty sure they understand the word 'sit', but I have to go around the room and touch every kid to make sure they know I'm talking to them (they know, but it's one way to escalate). Ideally, I don't resort to getting my angry face out, yelling, or physically picking the kid up and putting him down in his chair, but I'd be lying if I said that hasn't ever happened. I'm sure you child care professionals are getting your panties all wound up at hearing this sort of thing. Keep in mind I'm just learning here, and sometimes I get pretty stinking desperate haha! But I'm getting better and so are the kids, plus they're getting used to the routine and understanding more all the time, so discipline is improving. Why do we care about discipline? Every teacher does, I'm sure, but for us it's especially important that the kids pay attention as much as possible, even when it's the other kid doing push ups or cutting the paper. We have to constantly talk about what's going on so the kids learn the language. The end goal is for them to learn English, not do push-ups, so it just makes the whole situation more complex.
But it is fun a lot of the time. I taught the Gym activities for the last couple of weeks and think I made the most of it. Nicole and I had recently watched Rocky on a unencumbered night, and the Italian Stallion inspired my lesson plans. I had the kids do a warm up routine every day where I would play the "Gonna Fly Now" Rocky theme and they would follow me in running, punching, jumping, stretching, and end with a classic Rocky double fist pump in the air. All my activities led up to the last day that I would teach gym, and the activity that day was boxing. We watched the training montage from Rocky I, and when I would inquire "What is Rocky doing?!" They'd yell "He's running!" "She's doing push-ups" "She he's runninupastars! (running up the stairs)" Not perfect, but definitely an improvement. They spent the rest of the class punching a balloon, jumping rope, etc.
All of us have home room students, which only means that they start and end with us. But since our name is attached to them, we start to take them as our own. I really like my class. Each of us has six students, and they all have English names. My class is in the middle row in the picture. My first is Sunny. Oh Sunny, Sunny, he is the toughest kid in our whole program. He's the one in the hat. He is an attention craving, hyperactive, albino kid that can only see as far as a few inches in front of his face. I'm sure he gets all sorts of grief from his fellow students, so he has cause to have some angst, but all these things combined make it really hard to teach anything when he's in the classroom. He is very intelligent and gifted with art. He's had a few melt downs in my class, but I think we're starting to come to an understanding. He skips everywhere he goes, every day tells me that he's a wolf (in English) and proceeds to maul me with tooth and claw and is never sitting for more than 4 seconds in a row. One day we had a fire drill and after we had evacuated with the kids, Sunny was running around and jokingly saying "Oh no! Oh no! It's the end of the world!!!" I held his hand as we went back to class, and he said "Cheacha! Cheacha! (Teacher)" and when I looked and said "Yes Sunny?" he wiped his brow with the back of his hand let out an exaggerated "Whew!" since, after all, it was all just a drill.
The next one to the left is Jason. He has the cutest scratchy kid voice on the planet and is my highest token earner. The kids get tokens for speaking the certain english grammar pattern we're focusing on for that day, and Jason always takes home a ton. At the end of the day they set out all of their tokens and buy something from a 'store of knick-knacks and candy that we put together. Every single day Jason lays out all of his tokens and throws back his head and laughs with sadistic glee when he sees what they sum up to. He usually doesn't even buy stuff, he just loves having a lot of tokens. It reminds me of Rhett's bag of Halloween candy that would molder in the bottom of his closet all year. He wouldn't eat it, he just liked having a lot of candy. Eventually I would convince him to break it out so I could help him eat it, but all the chocolate would have turned white, and all laffy taffys were stale. So much candy gone to waste... Jason is also a really good student and tries to kiss me sometimes. We try to be as affectionate with the kids as possible, since they probably don't get enough of that anywhere else in the school (it's a boarding school, they're 6 year olds that only see their parents on weekends), but I'm never quite sure how to react to big, slobbery, puckered lips. I usually just laugh and give him a big hug.
Honey is the next one to the left. She is one of the cutest girls that we have. Every Friday the parents pick their kids up right after our classes and so we get to see them. Seeing adult versions of our kids is one of the funnest things, and they're always so excited to watch their kids carry on conversations with us in English. Honey looks exactly like her mother, and must love her a lot, because she cried most days for the first 4 weeks. I did get her to light up when I busted out the jump rope though, she can do forwards, backwards, and on one foot. Sunny actually drove her crazy. One time when I was in the process of throwing Sunny out of my class, she got out of her seat and started to help me push him haha! We ended up transferring her out of my class and she's doing lots better. She didn't really go for the Rocky stuff. The kids personalities form early, I guess.
Garrett is the next kid, and we found out that his name is actually Gary and we've been calling him the wrong name. Oh well. He lost both of his front teeth this semester, and I got a bang out of trying to figure out if someone had punched him in the face.
Rain is the next student to the left, and the poor kid is a constant victim of Sunny's violence. I often have to pull him out from underneath Sunny, or stop Sunny from sticking his hand in his face when he's trying to glue something, but he is an extremely sweet and patient boy. He's very good in class and his English has come a long way. He is a good pal with Jason, and has recently started to save tokens like Jason. He always exults in his wealth with several "Oh yeah!"s. I try to kick kids out of my class as soon as they are done with store to they can meet back at their normal classroom and get out of my hair, but Rain always waits around until I'm done cleaning up so we can run back to his classroom together.
Vera is my last student, and has quite a regrettable haircut and face structure that made us think she was a boy for the first few days. She generally doesn't pay a lot of attention, but has a really cute lisp and makes me laugh sometimes. One time I was trying to get everyone to sit down, and she was especially perpetrating by having another kid's stool on her lap. I told her to put it down, but before she did she started lapping up pretend food on the stool with no hands. I had admit she got me on that one. I laughed in spite of myself and had to take extra time getting the class focused.
So there you have it, a little update on the life we've been living for the past month or so. We have loved being here, while at the same time we love and miss you all. We are always praying for you, that you'll have success and feel the love of the Lord in your lives. Until next time, Zai jian!
