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!

Funny Stories to Replace Pictures.

Ok, so we've been trying to upload pictures for the last two weeks (hence the lack of new posts) but it isn't working!!! Grrr!!! SOOOO I'm gonna write a few stories.

1. After teaching at the public school one day we noticed a group of 70+ year old women standing in a circle doing Sponge Bob "Around Town" hip rotations. Then they moved down to their knees and shook them out. After observing for a few days, Michaela and I decided to join them. Together with the old Chinese ladies, we knocked our wrists together and jogged in place. When Tim came to tell us it was time to go back to school I asked him why they do the exercises. He said it was to exercise their brains . . . It must work because the oldest woman there looked to be about 95... ?

2. This week we had to teach the public school kids at the beach. Tyler, our ADHD child, was fascinated with everything around him. Everything that is, but the lesson. I was his designated attention buddy, and I helped keep him on the blanket with the other kids and teacher. At one point during the lesson he spotted something on the beach. With out warning he took off running! I chased after him until he spotted and picked up a chunk of sea weed out of the ocean. I was able to coax him back to the blanket, but he brought his seaweed with him. Then he smelled and licked the seaweed. After growing tired of it, he handed it to me.

3. Again on the beach, Teacher Michaela was drawing sea animals on paper. She drew a walrus, and asked her kids if walruses eat people. 4 out of the 5 kids said "no." The 5th kid, Sky, said "Yes! Hao chur!"- "Yes! Very delicious!"

"I know of many kinds of hose..."

So yesterday (Monday) we had a water games day with the kids! At 10am we led them all out to the soccer field, split up into four groups, and started playing. Bruce and Sam got a lot of squishy balls that you can dip in water and throw at each other. The kids made two teams and played dodge ball. Each group made it about ten minutes before someone got hit in the face and started crying. Katie played the game where you fill a cup with water on your head, and have to pour it into a cup on someone else's head behind you. After going down a line, the last person dumps it into the team bucket, and two lines of kids race each other. That was also a big hit. After only two rotations, though, we threw all the water equipment into a big pile and just had a huge water fight. Balls and buckets and frisbees and bubbles were flying everywhere, and most of us got soaked. Although all the teachers were in our swimsuits, the kids were just in their school uniforms... oops. But they loved it. They also knew that the semester is coming to an end, that we're leaving, and vacation is starting. I think they appreciated the day as a kick-off to vacation. We gave them all popsicles while they dried off before heading back to their Chinese teachers.

The Principal Wears Tighty- Whities, We Saw Them

We made it through our last week of regular teaching at our home school, Daguanghua. (Next week we are having a water day and a goodbye teacher party.) I can't believe it's been almost 4 months! Wow how time flies!! We have 8 days till we leave for our trip to Guilin and then we are on a plane home June 28th. Our last teaching has been a busy one. We taught the kids a new song that they love. Some of you may recognize it from Girls Camp: "Singing in the Rain." They especially love the part when they stick their tongue out. We thought we'd teach it to our other classes (the public school and the EDK) to see how they like it. No surprise that they loved it also. Even Tyler, our ADHD boy, willingly participates. We are experiencing technical difficulties, the internet will not let us upload the pictures, so we will get those up as soon as possible!

There's an ant in my burrito.

Today was not our usual day in China. Bruce was woken up by a phone call at 9am. It was our school's foreign affairs officer. She said that a Spanish-speaking parent had come to the school to consider enrolling his kids, but he didn't know very much English, and no Chinese. I (Bruce) splashed water on my face, threw on some clothes, and ran to the front of campus to meet them. The guy was from Colombia, and it was so much fun talking with him in Spanish. The school tour lasted about an hour. It was funny, because everything got double-translated. First, the tour guide would say something. Kelly would translate it to English for me, and then I would translate it into Spanish for the guy. I had been worrying that perhaps my Spanish had deteriorated too much, but I could understand everything the Colombian said, and spoke with him at a pretty fast pace. He was raised in Colombia, then went to college in Russia, then got a job in China (here), and visits his wife and kids in Spain one week every month. His family is moving here to see him more often. I can't wait to go to Houston TX and use my Spanish much more often.

Then at 11:30am we all went to the international beach here in Weihai. Today is our last Monday off ever. Katie made a sandcastle, and a little Chinese toddler with the crotch-hole pants came and played with her and helped her build it. It was so cute. He stayed for like ten minutes with his dad. There were a handful of other European and American people out there, but mostly Chinese. The girls tanned on towels while Bruce and Sam waded out into the ocean water. We swam around, and then threw the frisbee back and forth. I think maybe the Chinese had never seen a frisbee before, because they seemed entranced in watching us. Maybe it's just that we're American. I skipped a few rocks on the beach, and they liked that, too. A Chinese guy next to me decided to try it. He picked up a rock about the size and shape of a softball (big and round) and tried to skip it. It just sank; no skip. He was pretty frustrated and yelled at the rock.

After we had all sunburned ourselves, we went back to do our weekly grocery shopping (we teach all day for the rest of the week). Katie and I bought Chinese burritos for lunch/dinner. After a few bites, a black ant runs out of her burrito and to the tip where she would have taken another bite. One of the other ILP girls noticed it and screamed. Katie flicked the ant off, and I traded burritos with her. I would finish the bad ant one, and she could eat my good one. But when she was first inspecting my burrito after I handed it to her... there was a hair in the lettuce. Welcome to China.

Children's Day at the CCTV Playland

June 1st was Children's Day in China. The school celebrated by taking the kids to a Funworks-ish play land. It actually doubles as a TV set for CCTV. They film TV shows at this place, kinda cool. Can you imagine if they charged admission to let you play in the REAL Sesame Street in the US?


First we went to the "playground." Chinese people have a new tradition of taking exercise equipment, disguising it in bright paint, and calling it a children's playground. There was a climbing pyramid, a maze, a pirate ship, lots of ladders, and balancing courses.


Bruce and a few of the kids made it to the top of the pyramid. It was about 20 feet high, and so dangerously steep that it would never have passed US safety regulations.


As soon as I spotted the merry-go-round I told a few kids to hop on, and I began to spin them. A few minutes later we had about 10 kids trying to ride the merry-go-round so I enlisted a few other teachers to help spin them.


Bruce's student Jenny is walking across one of the 4 different types of balancing courses.


There was a science center in the park too. Little did Chase know that they were training him to be a public bus driver . . .


Further into the science house were some physics experiments.


Chase, Andy, and Jenny were testing their shooting skills. Notice how none of them know how to hold the gun. It is illegal to have a gun in China. Most policemen aren't even allowed guns (or if they are, they don't know how to properly use them). The kid in the white shirt holding the gun properly happens to be a South Korean.


Come to find out there was a hidden arcade! Kim is focused on a pinball machine.


This was a really funny game where you sit on a bull, and push the button on its horn to rope in other bulls on the video screen. These are Katie's girls playing.


There was a funny white metal box with two black pads on it. You punch or kick either of the pads as hard as you can, and it gives you a number. Bruce's student Sam is in the picture. The kids usually got between 8 and 12. Chinese teachers got in the 40s and 50s. Bruce got 82. Our head teacher's husband, Sam, got 112. The machine almost fell over, and his wrist hurt the next day.


This is Bruce's student Emma. We couldn't figure out what this was for. First we used it to measure our height. Then we tried to see how high a button we could push.


The Chinese teachers yelled for all of the students to line up, and they have to hold their arms out to ensure proper spacing. Bruce ran into the line-up of kids and played along, at the mercy of the Chinese teacher.


From left: Jenny, Kate, Jesse, and Ringo. This beach is actually part of the CCTV fun land.


Jesse found some live sea creatures! That's Katie's turquoise fingernail polish.


From left: Amy, Maia, and Kitty; all Katie's students. This photo catches how Chinese people squat. In the US we kneel down, or sit on our heels. In China they squat to relax and eat their lunch... and also to poop in the famous "squatter" toilets.


Ringo eating a cold hot dog for lunch. I threw mine away...


Jenny, Kaysee, and Zooey eating bread for lunch at the beach.

Airplanes only have 3 wheels... so I can do it, too

Ok, so this blog will be dedicated to nearly a dozen really funny stories that have happened in the past few days. In no particular order,

1 - Today a group of parents came to our school who are thinking about enrolling their kids. As part of their tour of the school, they swing by our ILP building and could poke their heads in our classrooms. Halfway through my last rotation, Drew (a kid in my class) pulled Amy off of the Chinese-Chair (used to punish them when they speak Chinese), and she fell on her stomach. Amy then ran to the open center of my classroom, curled up into a ball, and started crying. I ran over to console her and help her up, but she refused to move. The three kids at the table opened up a Chinese story book and began reading it out loud to each other. Just then, our English supervisor teacher poked her head in and said that the parents were coming. My classroom was a girl crying in the middle, with other kids yelling in Chinese. The parents ended up not coming to my room, luckily.

2 - At the same time as my first story, Katie was in her room teaching her kids to play the game "twister" (Right foot, red... left hand, green... remember?). She was reviewing the vocabulary for body parts, and had put her foot up on the table. All of the kids put their feet up on the table with her. While talking about feet, Katie leaned forward to "smell" her feet. This kept the kids' attention, and would give them something to talk about in English. Right as Katie is nudging her face up against her foot, her classroom door opens. It is the head English supervisor. Taken out of context, it looked really weird for all the kids to be stretching one foot up to the table, and Katie's face in the middle of it. =)

3 - Yesterday I read a book to my kids about swimming underwater. I asked the kids if you could breathe underwater, and they said no. So we had a hold-your-breath contest. Everyone cheated by breathing through their noses, so we laughed and moved on. Today they remembered and wanted to try it again. I consented, so we all plugged our noses and pinched our mouths for about 15 seconds. Then we all laughed, and I went on with my lesson. After a while, I looked over to my left and saw little Zooie still pinching her nose, and her face was bright red. She was still holding her breathe long after the contest was over! I panicked, and got her to start breathing again. Oh, man. Some Chinese kids take school too seriously, even at 6 years old.

4 - Today we were shopping at the local street night market (window-shopping, really), and Katie found a shirt/dress that she really liked, for about $3. So to try it on, the lady at the stand held up a bed sheet to cover Katie while she changed. I felt like it was a little sketchy, but when Katie was done the shirt fit great... and about a dozen old guys from the street had gathered around to see how it fit, too... Pretty awkward... We bought it.

5 - This past Tuesday, I was going over a map with my kids, on the difference between the USA and China. I pointed to the USA and asked, "What is that?" One of my girls answered, "Amer-ica." Good, I said. Then I pointed to China and asked, "What is that?" The same girl answered excitedly, "China-ica."

6 - Our head-teacher's husband, Sam, has been joking for a while about cutting his hair to look like a Chinese man. He said he would buzz his whole head really short, except leave really long bangs in the front. That's actually what a lot of Chinese kids do... Yesterday I got a knock on my apartment door, and it was Sam. He had cut his hair just like we had joked about. It looked ridiculous. He then recruited me to help buzz off the bangs and make his head look normal again. Also, his did all this without consulting his wife. When she got back from teaching, she was pretty blown away...

7 - I want to write this before I forget it. You already know about the squatter toilets they have here. It's like a glorified porcelain hole in the ground. It's traditional. Also traditional is to have NO toilet paper available, ever. Sometimes my kids ask to go to the bathroom, and when they come back, they smell like poop. A week or two ago, I was playing with my kids by picking them upside-down by surprise. After three kids I got a "bad egg." Being upside-down put their bum pretty close to my face, and I could tell this kid had NOT WIPED. Sometimes at the public school when I lean over the kids to get scissors back from them for the lesson, I can smell poop. Just sometimes.

8 - This past Monday Katie and I went out with a couple of the other teachers to look at the famous statues along the ocean coast of Weihai. About four statues along, we found an absolutely ridiculous one. It is a statue of a teddy bear wearing pants, and they are the "traditional hole-in-the crotch" Chinese kids pants. Someone carved a square hole into the back of the pants, exposing two round butt cheeks. When we got around to the front of the teddy bear statue, well, let's just say we were 100% sure it was a BOY teddy bear. Katie took pictures. I want to meet the Chinese man who carved that statue, and take him out to lunch. This is ridiculous.

9 - Today we accompanied Kelly, our Chinese foreign affairs helper, to her drivers ed class. It was so funny. It was held at an abandoned gas station. They had weird cones they had to drive around and practice backing up into spaces. She said that if they messed up, they had to pay the instructor more money. The previous lesson, Kelly said she had lost $400 rmb to the instructor. It was so sketchy.

10 - To get back to our apartments after the driving lesson, we took a bun-bun (a taxi with only 3 wheels, and 2 gears). We asked the driver if his car had ever tipped over, since it only has 3 wheels. He replied, "Airplanes only have three wheels, so I can do it, too."

11 - For dinner today, Katie and I each got our favorite Chinese burritos. For about 35 cents, they roll out a fresh ball of dough and throw it on a skillet with oil. As the bread bubbles up, they pop one of the holes and pour in a scrambled egg and salt, into the middle of the tortilla! That's the coolest part. After flipping it a few times and cooking it, they spread a brown pasty soy sauce over it with a paint brush (NOT like soy sauce in the USA; more like peanut sauce, or sesame sauce...) Then they wrap it around lettuce and crushed pepper, and your choice of either a hot dog (Chinese hot dogs are disgusting), tofu noodles (Bruce likes them), or shredded potato hash browns (also very delicious). The whole thing is so filling, and delicious, and the sauce is soo good. We have to make Chinese burritos when we get home!