China Experience

At the end of the Semester, Kelly (our coordinator), asked us to write up our feeling about our China Experience with a picture of ourselves. This is what I submitted: 

I struggle to find the right words to say to really describe my China Experience as a whole. I feel so many things when I think about the 6 wonderful, crazy, fun, hard months that I have spent this last year living in China. My China experience has been absolutely incredible. Ultimately, Words cannot describe how blessed I feel. I am only 20, yet I have had so many amazing opportunities to travel around the world and experience so many different things. Needless to say, although life has thrown many different curve balls my way, I know I am blessed and I love my life. I am so grateful that I made the choice to come to China. I can honestly say that my time spent in China has been the most meaningful 6 months of my life and could not have come at a better time. I needed to get away and find myself. There is no better way to forget about my petty problems then while serving the Chinese people. While in China, I found out so much about myself and met so many people who have made such a powerful impact on my life. When I left China the first time, I balled my eyes out. And now, just thinking about leaving so soon, I am so sad. I am sad to leave my friends, my coordinators and my kids. Yet, I leave with a smile on my face because being in China and learning so much from the Chinese people, has helped me grow in so many different way. I will always remember the friends I have made, the kids I have taught, and the amazing places I have seen. My Chinese adventures will always be such a special part of my life. 我爱中国 I love China!

Kiddos

--So I don't want to change everything to past tense because I wrote this while I was still in China... so lets just all pretend that I am still there for this post ;) --
                                        
                                            

The whole reason I am in China for a whole semester is to teach English. I feel like a lot of my post are more about the fun activities that I do outside of teaching everyday. So I figured I would designate this post to be just about teaching and the kids. 

Schedule: 

Monday-Friday

8:30- Prepare for Classes

8:45-9:00= Opening 

9:00-9:20= First Rotation

9:20-9:35= Snack Break 

9:35-9:55= Second Rotation

9:55-10:15= Third Rotation

10:15-10:25 = Water Break

10:25-10:45= Fourth Rotation

10:45-11:05= Fifth Rotation

11:05-11:15= Closing/Store

Our Classes are split into 5 classes. 2 are the Younger kids (First year in the program) and 3 are the Older kids (Second year in the program).

THE YOUNGER CLASS:

The younger classes are definitely quieter than the older classes. They are all just so cute and loving. Everyday after lunch, I always walk through their classroom to put my bowl away in the supply room. And everyday, I get flooded with "I LOVE YOU TEACHA CHERISH". It is the sweetest thing and is my favorite part of the day. <3 

Purple Group: Purple Group are full of sweethearts! They are all so cute and are always trying their hardest to learn English. At the beginning of the semester, the kids (all of them) would always say "Can I go to the Buffalo?" We were so confused until we realized they were trying to say "Can I go to the Bathroom?". How cute is that?! ;) This class also loves when I do ""High Five! In the Sky! Down Low! Too Slow!" It has gotten to the point where now the kids come up to me and do it to me! I usually on purpose go too slow so that way they can "win". 

Yellow Group: The Yellow Group are just so cute... I say that about every class but for real, I think ALL my kids are the cutest kids in China! These kids are all so sweet. Every morning when I walk in, Spencer runs over to me and says "Teacha Cherry I love you!" He then gives me a hug and says, "Teacha UP!" So I pick him up. He then says, "Teacha, sit down". It is so cute! This class also loves when I do the "High Five! In the Sky! Down Low! Too Slow!"

THE OLDER CLASS:
The older classes are definitely more rambunctious than the younger classes. It doesn't help that we have 10-11 students in each of the classes. But somehow, no matter how how crazy they can be, they still manage to pull at my little hear strings. Its so hard to stay mad at these cuties.

One day, one of the boys, Johnny, came up to me and says "Riley..." and then he motioned to his Wa-Wa and pulling on it. I put the pieces together and discovered that Johnny was trying to tell me that Riley kept pulling on Johnny's Wa-Wa... I brought the boys together to try to tell them that they shouldn't do that, when James Bond comes over and whispers in Riley's ear in Chinese and Riley then grabbed Johnny's wa-wa again! I called Kelly over and she talked to the boys in Chinese. Later, Kelly told me that in China they used to never talk to the kids about sex, but now in recent years, they started to explain to the kids that boys and girls have certain different body parts, which has caused a lot of act ups like the story I just told.

Green Group: The Green Group started out as the worst class, a vast majority of the kids were CRAZY and never listened. However, as the semester is coming to a close they have been passed by the naughty Blue Class. On the first day of classes, Vivian hissed at me. From the very first second I met her I knew that she would be trouble. Justin, another kid who usually gets at least 3 strikes a day, was sooooo bad in the beginning. There were a few times that I had to have him sit on my lap during class and that would usually help him pay better attention. Now that the semester is almost over, Justin has improved, he still isn't necessarily "good", but he isn't as bad anymore. Now the teachers have started to tell him that if he is being reallllllly good during class they will erase a strike. That has helped. One of my favorite Justin stories is that at the start of one of Autumns classes, I was telling Autumn something before class started and he stood in her spot and acted like the teacher and started going over the rules. It was precious. 

Blue Group: The Blue Group has a few kids with major attitude problems, and now that they have become the naughtiest class I have to have daily chats with a few of the kids. Ryan is one of the worst kids because he has a terrible attitude. Most of the time, if a kid is being bad, they'll stop when we get upset at them and give them a strike.. not Ryan. He just gets mad and pouts and then doesn't care and keeps being bad. It's been rough trying to get him to be good. One of the blessings of the blue class is Charlie. Charlie is the sweetest kid, no lie. He is always good and always tries his hardest to learn English. Seriously, even in the picture I took of the whole class he is standing sweetly with his arms folded.  

Red Group: The Red Group, don't be fooled by their cuteness, they still have their share of rambunctious kids. These kids are so freaking cute. Lets be honest, these kids are like 5-6 years old and so it is expected that they would be a little rambunctious and full of energy.. Oscar was one of the worst kids at the beginning of the semester. However, randomly about a month into classes, he didn't get any strikes. When I saw that he didn't get any strikes it made me soooo happy because this kid was one of my favorites and now I felt like he could legitimately be one of my faves because he suddenly became one of the "good" kids. The Red Class has been "the best" older class since the start, and they continue to be. 

OPENING: During opening we line all the kids up outside, we go over the rules, sing songs, tell the date and weather and then each teacher takes their first class off to their teaching area. 

CLASSES: Every teacher teaches 1 lesson, 5 times a day (the same lesson to all 5 classes). Every teacher has 1 SPE (Synchronized Play Episodes...basically a category for the lessons) that teach for 1 week. For example, one week a teacher would teach Drama, then the next week they would teach Arts and Crafts, then Kitchen.. etc. As head teacher, I am usually going from class to class and helping teach and helping out where ever I see the need. I also have to talk to the naughty kids when they get 2 strikes. If they get 3 strikes, then I have to take them to a coordinator and she has some words with them.. and even sometimes fake calls there moms. That's pretty funny, but the kids find it terrifying. Another thing I do as Head Teacher is evaluations. Every Wednesday, I watch the teachers teach and do an evaluation. ILP gave me an evaluation form that I use to help me figure out where the teachers need to improve. My teachers have been awesome since the beginning, and have improved so much! Almost all of them have gotten a perfect score now that the semester is almost over. :) 

CLOSING/STORE: After the kids go to all 5 rotations, it is time to close up and do store. The kids take out their tokens, count them, tell the teacher how many they have, the teacher then adds that amount to the number of tokens the kids have in "savings". Once the teachers show the kids how many tokens they have they can then pick an item from the store. The store is set up kind of like Chuck E. Cheese's, with different prizes for a certain amount of tokens. The kids have the option to pick an item or save their tokens. The younger classes love getting stickers and putting them on their name tags, the older class like saving up as much as possible to get really cool prizes! 

AFTERNOON CLASSES: (4:45 pm-5:45 pm)
Besides our every day classes, we also have afternoon classes. The afternoon classes are HARD. We have 2 groups, Monday/Wednesday and Tuesday/Thursday, and we only see these kids 2 times a week for 1 hour. Only 2 hours a week is not enough time to get the kids to remember anything. In comparison, we see our main kids for around 15 hours a week. It's the end of the semester and most of the kids still barely know their names. Sigh. At the start of each of the classes, we have them each say their names and then jump into the lesson. One of the hardest things is that we don't token the kids.. in our morning classes, tokens help motivate the kids to talk more.. Without that the kids don't have a reason to talk to us or behave...It's been a little rough, but these Chinese kids are still the cutest <3
We still do opening but only 3 rotations (so the teachers rotate each week what classes they are teaching..either M/W or T/TH), we also have "store" but we only give the kids who didn't get 3 strikes a sticker. 

Monday and Wednesday Afternoon Classes: These kids are usually kind of interested and attempt to copy what we say. They are younger than the Tuesday/ Thursday class and therefore better behaved. For the first month of afternoon classes, one kid, Hunter, would cry and cry and cry for the whole time. Poor kid, but now he sits quietly in class and tries to copy what the teacher says. One funny story about this class is that one kid, Ethan was originally named Tommy, until we learned that his parents wanted his name to be Ethan. Well, the day we changed his name tag and had him say "My name is Ethan" He looked at us with a super sad look and said, in the cutest voice ever, "... My name is Tommy". IT WAS SOOOOO CUTE!

Tuesday and Thursday Afternoon Classes: These classes are generally, Terrible. No LIE. The usually don't listen and don't care and just run crazy. It is always really hard trying to make the activities extra extra extra interesting to keep the kids as calm as possible. ;) It is hard to be mad when the kids are so cute, especially when the kids start doing kung fu during opening and class! (Thankfully they don't actually hurt each other though) 

Love these Kids :) 

Billy

  

Charlie

Riley

Oscar

  

Spencer

Jimmy 

Flowery Days

November 30th, 2013 

One awesome thing about Xiaolan is that they have this beautiful park, Longshan Park. At Longshan Park, there was a flower festival. Carmen invited us to go with her one evening and it turned out to be a blast. Originally, I thought that this would be just a few flower bushes and not that big of a deal. Boy was I wrong. There were masses of people there and there were massive sculptures made out of flowers. It was pretty incredible and a really fun day. Carmen had a fun time taking pictures with us and thought it was "so funny" that everyone wanted pictures with us. It's so hard being this popular and famous ;) Here are some pictures:

We also found this guy who was selling umbrella hats, we didn't buy any but the guy thought it was hilarious that we wanted a picture with them on! 

And there was this guy selling balloons... :) 

And of course I had to take a lot of pictures with my favorite Chinese lady, Carmen! :) 

House Visits Galore

One of the coolest things that I get to do while living in China, that I didn't have a chance to do in Ukraine, was going to visit my students at their homes. House visits here go two different ways. With the younger kids, we usually just visit one at a time either at their house or at a restaurant. With the older kids, they generally have a huge party where 5-9 kids are present with all of their families. We even went to one party where the whole class was present. 

Personally, I love house visits. They are usually a lot of fun and it is so neat to be able to see the homes of my students and to be able to play with them there. As a note, not all of the parents know English... in fact only a few sets of parents know any English at all.. Thankfully, we always bring at least one of our AWESOME coordinators with us to translate for us. I love these visits because usually the kids are super excited to show their parents how much English they have learned. The parents love us and love taking pictures of us with their kids. Not to mention, one of the great things about house visits is FREE FOOD! Sometimes we just get an apple or two and other times we are fed a giant buffet of food.  

Here are the a few pictures and a brief description of the house visits/parties/field trips that I went on this semester. :) 

November 6th, 2013
Lucia: 
Lucia is a super sweet but pretty shy girl. Her mom was really nice and was really invested and interested in what Lucia had learned thus far. For the visit with Lucia and her parents, we went to this AWESOME restaurant around the corner from the school. At first I was a little worried because it was a seafood restaurant and I don't like seafood, but they had a really good variety of chicken (with its head), goose, pork, steak, beef and some super delicious dessert! There was soooo much food and it was a lot of fun eating out at this restaurant because they had the cool spiny thing in the middle of the table for you to put the food on so everyone can share.. and then you spin it until the food want is in front of you! I had a good time playing with that and laughing the night away with Autumn. 

Jim: 
After we left Lucia's family, we headed over to Jim's. HIS HOUSE IF HUGEEEEE!!! Seriously, it was super nice and his parents are for sure RICH RICH RICH $$$$$. Jim has a baby brother who is about 9 months-a year old named Will. He is such a cute little guy. He looks just like Jim but smaller with fatter cheeks. Jim's family kept feeding us fruit but I was so stuffed from Lucia's visit that I thought I was going to dieeee from eating so much. 

                   

              

Jessie: 
After we left Jim's, we headed over to Jessie's House. She lived around the corner in a small apartment. Her apartment was still pretty nice though. Jessie was such a fun ball of energy. She is also so so so smart and really knows English. We didn't even have to prompt her and she knew "I threw the ball". Amazing right?! I think it helps that her mom knew a good amount of English and had different "English" things around the house. Jessie has the cutest giggle and is so loud and fun. As we were leaving her apartment building we could hear her yelling "BYEEEE TEACHA!!!"-- She was on like the 15th floor of the apartments, it was really cute and so funny. :) 

November 14th, 2013
Older Class Visit #1: Jessica's House
Kids that were there: Jessica, Oscar, Gordon, James Bond, Lilly, Riley, Nina and Lesley
This House visit was crazy, but awesome. We ate soooooo much food (I told ya house visits were amazing because of all the free food ;)). They even had some pizza hut, along with some delicious dumplings, rice, fruit and cookies. This house visit was great because I really got to bond with some of the kids. Gordon, Oscar, Riley and James Bond were all sitting on my lap/right next me, watching Riley play angry birds on my phone. 
After a little while, Jessica brought out a ton of balloons and so obviously, we blew them up and attempted to make balloon animals. Shelbie was really good at it, but I

sucked and couldn't even blow them up or tie them. haha but it was fun seeing the kids so excited. ;) 
Later on in the night, Nina's dads was SOOOOOOOO drunk, it was really funny but also really uncomfortable. He kept sputtering at us in Chinese and then saying "happy, happy, happy" and grabbing our hands and even kissing them at one point and wanting pictures with us. Straight up he was kinda a drunk tool. I felt bad for Nina because she is such sweetie. Even though that awkwardness happened, the night was still very enjoyable. 


November 16th, 2013

Younger Class Field Trip:
One Saturday Morning, we woke up at the crack of dawn and met up with the younger class to be bused to Guifeng Mountain for a field trip. On the way there, I sat next to Autumn. Spencer came and sat on my lap and was talking to us. He kept asking us the rules and saying "Rule Number 10... there is no rule number 10." It was so cute. It was also darling because on the way back from the Mountain he sat on my lap for part of the ride and kept saying the rules in random order but he would quickly count "1-2-3-4-5-6 Rule number 6" and then "1-2-3-4 Rule number 4" and so on and so forth. He's so cute. :) 

When we got to the Mountain we all hiked up some monster stairs for probably 40-45 minutes.. that wasn't fun... then we took at tram/train type thing for probably another 10 minutes. We then walked and enjoyed the fresh air and beautiful mountain scenery. Finally about 20 minutes later we arrived at an open field. We had a fun picnic with the kids and their families. I felt nice and full and that's always a nice feeling. :) After eating, the kids went to go play around in the field while some of the other teachers and I passed out into a nice food coma. After waking up a little bit later, I enjoyed watching the kids fly kites and hula hoop. At one point, Carmen (one of the Chinese teachers) kicked a giant beach ball and it smacked into Joshua. He fell down and sits back up and exclaims "Whoa!" It was hilarious!! That kid is such a goober. :) Later we joined in on some relay races. Shelbie and I were on a team and totally beasted it. We played a game where one person has to jump from hula hoop to hula hoop, but you only have one hula hoop.. so she would jump and I would move it. It was a lot of fun. :) 

                       

On the way home, Carmen sat next to me on the bus. It was super sad because she typed up a message to me on her phone in the translator and it said "I don't want you to leave". :'( I love all the Chinese friends that I have met here and I know that it is going to be super hard to leave. 

November 27th, 2013
Nicole:
Nicole is a super sweet, and super cute girl... but she is also superrrrr quiet. So it was a little awkward when her family asked her to speak some English and didn't speak... haha.. Thankfully they were understanding and know how shy she can be. Nicole's family lives in a nice apartment and both of her parents are super nice as well. Nicole's Mom speaks English pretty well but her Dad doesn't know any English. They had this cute but scary cat that Carmen had fun attempting to pet. It was a pretty funny sight because Carmen would build up the courage to pet it but then last second would get scared. After scarfing down some fruit, we said goodbye and heading to Jacky's house.

Jacky: 
Jacky's house was a blast!! I love that kid so much. He was so freaking adorable handing out drinks and food. His Dad and him were playing checkers and I wanted to play so I played against Jacky... He won.. that's right... I lost in Checkers to a 5 year old. For the record, he is Chinese... :/ It was still a super hilarious time. 

November 27th, 2013
Older Kids BBQ at Kaycee's:
Kids that were there: Kaycee, Oscar, Aubrie, Cavan, Mia, Sammy, and Tony

For this older kid party, we went to Kaycee's Dad's factory and had a BBQ... and by BBQ I mean a legit BBQ. We put the meat onto a spire stick thing, glazed it with honey and then cooked it over a fire pit. It was a cool experience. Also, I ATE SNAKE!!! and Snake intestines. It actually wasn't that bad... well the intestines were gross but the snake wasn't too bad. You just gotta pull the scales back and eat the little bit of meat that is left between that the bones. 
At one point, well actually at many points, the Dads wanted to drink with me. They offered Beer, then whiskey, and when I kept rejecting the alcohol, they settled with giving me some type of Chinese tea. We had a few chugging contests... the tea was gross but the Dad's were loving that I was hanging out with them. haha it was an interesting experience. 
So apparently Kaycee's Dad works in making fashion underwear. I saw all the kiddos  playing in a back room so i walked back there and died laughing. They were playing in a room full of men briefs. Some were really crazy with snake skins and cheetah prints, even some with pink and yellow flowers. I took a few pictures of them so people would believe me when I told them the story and as I was taking pictures, Kaycee took some and put them in better lighting and held them up for me as I took some more pictures. 
Man, that was a funny and unexpected surprise of a house party.

December 4th, 2013
Joshua: 
We went to eat at a restaurant with Joshua and his parents. He is such an energetic little karate kid. Seriously, all during dinner he was hopping around the room doing karate moves. It was so cute and funny. :) Joshua's mom was hilarious. When I first met her she kept shaking my hand really fast at everything I would say and she kept saying how nice it was to meet me and how beautiful I am. That was flattering. Dinner had some good food. I ate a mini lobster/jumbo shrimp/maybe it was a crawdad. I also ATE A PIGEON... it was kinda weird tasting but now I can check that off my "random animals that eaten" list. 

                  

 

                  

  

Calum:

After visiting with Joshua, we headed over to Calum's apartment. Calum's family is also SUPER WEALTHY!!! The little bench/stool thing that I was sitting on cost over 2000 Yuan that's around $350. Insane. They also showed us lots and lots and lotssss of photos from a vacation they took to the Maldives. That vacation cost over $16,000!!!!! CRAZYYY.. The funniest thing about the House Visit was the ENDLESS AMOUNTS of Alcohol. They had 2 whole HUGE casings full of bottles of wine with huge bottles of vodka on top and a lot of other types of alcohol on the shelves around their gorgeous apartment. It was sooo crazy how much they had but pretty funny though. 
Calum is such a sweet, sweet kid. I played cars with him and raced the cars and had a good ole time. :) His family gave us lots and lots of cherries and grapes which tasted amazing. :) 

                 

 

December 5th, 2013
Older kid party #3:
We went to a fancy hotel restaurant right next to the RT Mart around the corner from the school. Almost all the kids from the older class were there so it was insane. We got our own huge room that had 3 massive table in it. The food was really good and there was a lot of it. Nothing too epic or funny happened, it was just an over all enjoyable night, with a lot of good food. 

December 11th, 2013
Cindy: 
Cindy's house was nice and had a beautiful and big garden with a little fish pond. I accidentally fed the fish (which were pretty big for such a small pond) a little too much and Carmen goes "oh no!" but then Cindy's dad threw the whole cup of food into the water, so it wasn't that big of a deal after all. :) We enjoyed eating some KFC and PIZZA HUT! Yummy!! I also tried some amazing passion fruit punch. and then got to eat some actual passion fruit. That was a first! haha 

Spencer: 
After Cindy's we went over to Spencer's House. No lie, I was a little disappointed because I thought that Spencer would run and jump on me and hug me like he does every morning at the school but he didn't.. and he was distracted by the TV almost the whole time we were over there. We still gotta have a few cute moments though. I teared up a little when I told his parents about how great he is doing and how much I love him. I also got to "read" him a bedtime story. It ended up being 5 little monkeys swinging from the tree, which is one of the songs that we taught the kids, so I basically just ended up singing the song with him. I love that kid so much. 

December 13th, 2013
Older Class #4: Brinlie and Dori's house. 
(All of the Older Kids were there)
Brinlie and Dori are twins, but not identical and they have a MASSIVE HOUSE. It was HUGE and ALL MARBLE. We ate A TON of meat and had a lot of fun hanging out with the kids. One really funny thing that happened was while we were eating, I was at the table with Oscars mom and a few other Moms and they were asking us if we had boyfriends. I told them, "My boyfriends name is Oscar, Oscar is my boyfriend". Man, Oscars mom thought that was hilarious and we all got a good laugh out of that! Another funny thing happened later in the evening. We had all wandered inside and Autumn and I were sitting on the couch. Autumn, who's birthday was that day, knocked out on the couch and took a nice nap. The kids thought it was soooo funny that she was sleeping so they covered her with stickers. Moral of the story, don't fall asleep when there are kids running wild with stickers.