stand beside her, and guide her

multiple bits of good news to share today.
- kindy #1 was alrightttt. i'm teaching them (and all of my classes) the hand slap game at breaks. it's fun and it's not often that they get to whack me, so they seem to enjoy it. now i continually have tiny people tugging at my shirt and holding out their hands, ready to play.

- kindy #2, the new one, is adorable. names: vivian who wears glasses and has an eye patch, her sister sophia, sandy who seems intelligent, ian who doesn't have a clue, cindy who's missing her 2 front teeth, ... i know there are a couple more girls that i can't remember right now.
i knew that it was do or die with this class, so i did my best to be the silliest version of myself i could be and just have fun with them. i loosely followed my lesson plan, but mostly sang the coolest songs i know (there's one that involves 'rocking the boat' and then you all fall out of your chairs onto the ground) and played all of my most fun games, including of course, duck duck goose.
at break, i held their hands and we danced around and i twirled them and they were coming up to me to try to talk and it was a lot of fun. it's interesting to talk to 7, 8 and 9 year olds who have very limited vocabulary to work with. your conversations are short but to the point. they can only ask me questions they've learned, which limits it to "what's your name, how old are you, where do you go to school, what's your favorite color?"

- i came to terms with bubble drinks!


the fact that you can see/feel that a marble-sized ball of gelatinous goo is coming up your straw always used to freak me out. today though, dena and i went to this place called Coco on our break at Guei Shan school and i pointed to one of two pictures of drinks on the menu. it was mainly passionfruit, but it had passionfruit seeds floating around on the top 3/4, with coconut jelly (read: tiny, clearish rectangles of Jell-O jiggleresque stuff) and black bubbles floating around on the bottom 1/4 of it. it was really odd with the crunchy seeds and the jelly other stuff, but it was sour and refreshing on such a hot, humid day.

i also taught dena 2 helpful phrases.
yi bei zi- one cup
bu yao dai zi- i don't want a bag

- the newest addition to the dorm, dawn from england, is cool. we chatted a bit tonight while i watched CNN's documentary on Obama and she's really an interesting person. she just spent 2 years being a master-diver in south america, teaching people to scuba. she's traveled all around the world and decided to try teaching here for a while because she likes asia. and she was drinking hot, black tea in our hot, hot living room. truly english.

gram & spanky and aunt carol's boxes both got here today! i took out the food products and asked keith to hide the actual presents until my birthday so i wouldn't be tempted.
and that was my day!