“More Firsts in China”

Tuesday (HAPPY BIRTHDAY, NATE!!! I love you, brother!) was mine and Cierra’s first day at our new school. We were picked up at 7:10 from our school. The school we teach at is about 40 minutes away. When we got there we were seriously like celebrities! We were escorted into the school... we are the first American teachers to teach there, so everyone was enthralled by us! We were introduced to the headmaster and given a tour of the school. Then, we FINALLY started teaching.

This is the name of our new school... ya...

The number of students at this school makes it impossible for us to use ILP’s traditional teaching method. So, pretty much we had to take all our training and everything we’ve been doing up to this point and throw it out the window. We just had to wing it! I teach 4 classes of about 20 students. Cierra has about the same load. This is these kids’ first english class... it was REALLY hard. They literally had no idea what I was saying. However, it was so cool! By the end they could do Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes and the Hokey Pokey! They could also follow all my simple commands. I taught them about 10 commands and they were able to recognize them even when I mixed them up or asked them individually. Teaching these kids is a lot of repetition, practicing, modeling, and acting things out. It’s surprisingly fun! I’ve really discovered this trip that I love teaching. I think it’s a blast! The kids were really well behaved and eager to learn, which definitely helped. They also LOVED us. We’re the fun teachers from America!


Since this is their first english class I got to give my kids their english names. My first class is full of my closest friends and family’s names. I just did it randomly, but Nancy, Brian, Nate, Cheryl, and Dan are the smartest kids in the class! So, kudos to you family! :) Alli won’t listen, Madi won’t talk, Steph rocks the middle part, Dustin is STUBBORN, and Kye picked his nose all class. The rest of you were pretty normal... HAHA! I love having little Asian children counterparts of my friends and family. It’s quite entertaining.


My second class is all the ILP volunteers’ names with a few other random names thrown in there. Stuart will be thrilled to know that his namesake just sat and hit himself with the english book all class! My third class is full of my extended family’s names and my friends’ families’ names. To make it easy for me to remember I sat them strategically... Sherri, Robert, Morgan, Darren, Chase, and Tanner all sit by each other. I sat Mark and Janna next to each other... things like that! Haha! It’s excellent!


My fourth class... well, that class has Jim and Pam (the Office) in it, but then it’s mostly Harry Potter names (the simple ones). My Arthur is the goofiest looking kid you’ll ever see! Fred and George look alike... :) (to be honest, a lot of them look alike to me... ha!) I fear I may have doomed the kid I named Tom to a life of the dark arts! And my Harry.... he has round glasses!!!! I was so excited when I saw him!


Judge me for my naming technique if you want, but I already have most of their names memorized!! :) I’ll DEFINITELY remember Harry.


Once in the morning and once in the afternoon we get a break. Miss Tao (one of the teachers who we work with) took me to the teacher office (Cierra teaches in a different building). There was this teacher there who knew no english, but was fascinated with me! She kept having Miss Tao translate things to tell and ask me. She was shocked at how “big” my family is! Every time my water got even half way empty she’d go and fill it up. And during both breaks she gave me an apple! It was so funny. I wasn’t hungry, but I didn’t want to be rude or anything.... ha! :) We were asked SO many questions. Everyone wanted to know where to visit in America. We asked where in America they were going... their answer? “Um... America!” We tried to explain the concept of states, but they just weren’t grasping it. They loved when we asked them stuff about China. It was really fun! And I think I’m going to LOVE it there!


My group is still getting along SO well! We have so much fun! Right now we’re trying to figure out what’s going to happen for vacations. It’s really hard because everyone wants to travel together, but not everyone necessarily wants to go to the same place and it’s not really practical for ALL of us to go together! I’m stoked for our first vacation! :)


The other night Cierra and I came home to a surprise on our door. Heather calls us the Wizards... we don’t really know how it happened. It just did! But this is what we found on our door:

We LOVE it! :)

On Monday night Samantha so kindly let me use her Skype (mine wouldn’t work... long story...) and I got to talk to my parents for the first time since I’ve been here! It was so fun! It’s amazing that I was here in China on Monday night and my parents were just waking up Monday morning in the states... And we could just video chat! It’s so cool! I was so happy to be able to talk to them! I don’t currently have Skype, but I have Logitech Vid now! So if anyone has that I’d love to talk to you! It just either has to be early in the morning or late evening because of the time difference! :)


I hope things are going well for everyone back at home!!! I’m having a great time! It’s already been such a worthwhile experience! Stay tuned for more adventures and more firsts!! :)