Last day at Daguanghua

Yesterday was our last day teaching at the public school. Today is our last day teaching at Daguanghua (our main school). Tomorrow will be our last day teaching at the EDK kindergarten.

Yesterday we went out and got some "last week in Weihai" souvenirs. Katie got a hair bow for 2 yuan (30 cents). We also got a surprise for Jonathan and Pamela Ramos. Then we went to the public school for the last time. The kids were all excited, and I wonder if they knew it was the last time they would see us. We watched Shrek 4 with them, and Bruce fell asleep. During the movie, our ADHD kid Tyler was really active: when he saw Shrek for the first time, he started yelling in English, "Green head! Green head! Monster!" Then when the donkey came on the screen he pointed at it and said, "Teacher, what is this? This is a cow?" I said it was a donkey. After pointing at it and calling it donkey a few times, he started pointing his finger at the other children and calling them a donkey, too, and laughing. Afterward we played and took pictures, and said goodbye.

This morning we walked down for the last time to see our Daguanghua kids. It was really kinda sad, knowing that we would never see them again. First we played with them while we set up chairs. Bruce took turns throwing the kids up in the air and catching them on the way down. Katie googled over her girls' new jewelry and toys. Then we started Shrek 4. We thought maybe the kids would all get into the movie, but they only sorta did. In between interesting parts, the kids would talk to each other in Chinese, play pogs, and climb all over us teachers. During the good parts, though, Bruce thought it was fun that a few kids would choose to sit in the back of the room just so they could be next to him. One boy, Chase, sat on Bruce's lap for about a half hour. We gave the kids cookies, and they had a lot of fun. After the movie (in English), we took them into our classrooms one last time and gave them prizes - balloons, pogs, erasers, etc. They understood when we told them it was our last time to be with them, and we took a few last-minute pictures and videos.

This evening we went to teach at the EDK kindergarten for 3 hours. It wasn't going to be for that long, but the school pulled some last-minute schedule changes on us. They have come to be infamous for giving inconvenient schedule changes without any notice. We taught our cute little kindergartners, who still don't understand hardly anything we say. Bruce made paper airplanes with them, and Katie glued together an island scene collage with small foam animals (talking about all of our actions in English). Today was sort of our last day actually teaching the EDK kids, too. Tomorrow morning we will leave bright and early at 8am to go have their end-of-semester party. We'll watch (drumroll please...) Shrek 4. Again. We got them cookie cakes, too. I hope they have fun!

After teaching today, the school took us out to dinner one last time. We chose to go to Hot Pot. It is one of our favorite Chinese food places to go. Basically the restaurant provides a boiling pot permanently in the middle of your table. You order potato slices, meat slices, tofu, etc. and as the pot gets empty you add more food to it. When you add something, it usually only takes about 30 seconds to a minute to finish cooking. That way you get continuous fresh hot food all night. It's a lot of fun. We did toasts, thanking the school for hosting us, and they thanked us for being great with the kids. Afterwards we went to JiaJiaYue with Kelly, and she helped us buy packets to do our own hot pot when we get back to the USA!