Teaching, and Learning the Basics

Hello lovely readers,

I do not even know if anyone is left out there reading this, because I have been so terrible and being frequent with it. The last couple of week have been busy, busy, busy! As you know, I have begun to work with Golden Kids International School. The last two weeks have been filled with acclimating myself with being an International teacher and all that entails in China.

To begin, We have one student right now and his name is Xiaobao. He is our one faithful student everyday and he learns a half hour of English with me a day. I do a structured lesson based on one letter with him that is formed of six 5 minute activities. That lesson is the same for one week. We do songs to warm up, we have a special song specific to the lesson each week, we explore items from our magic box, we act out verbs related to those items, we read a book based on the letter of the week, and we learn a finger-play. It really is a great plan and it creates structure in an otherwise unstructured day. The first lessons were a little tough, because Xiaoboa has not really met a foreigner. Now I think he is warming up to me. We have done the letters lowercase a, b, and this week c.

Flying like Airplanes

Reading Chicka, Chicka, Boom, Boom

Singing "Row, Row, Row Your Boat"

Pretending to drive a bus

Reading Bugs! Bugs! Bugs!

Talking about a bus from our Magic Box

I know it might seem silly that I have pictures of each lesson like this, but I am actually required to. Each week, I write a newsletter, due by Wednesday, that has very specific guidelines. I must have three pictures at the bottom in which the students are interacting with the lesson and they must be clean and nice looking. I submit it for review, receive corrections, and then give it to my Mandarin co-teacher for translation. After that, the principal reviews it before it is given to the parents. So much work!

Nonetheless, because there is only one student, I spend an additional half hour in the classroom or outside playing with Xiaobao. My co-teacher, Sherry and I, have all sorts of fun with him and have even found a secret spot where Xiaobao can be as loud as he wants. At the top of our building there is a rotunda and we can get into it through a window. Once you are inside, there is a floor and a very high hexagon ceiling that causes a crazy echo. He loves it! We will have to work on his sharing though, because at some point, there will be more students.

Xiaoboa peeking through our window to the Secret Room

Block tower, Peace!

In all of the spare time I have had, I have been assigned a project to complete. I was given 2 giant boxes of books. I then had to check them off a list, number them, and sort them into themes. After that I had to shelf them, record all the numbers on each shelf, and post them on a that shelf. After that was said and done, I had to label all of the shelves and then match the first list to a master list for all of the schools. SO MUCH WORK! I am proud of the result though (I made labels that turned out so cute!)

With the labels

Up close

Some other shelves

The library

That is all I have to say for now, even though there is so much more to share. To finish up, I will leave you with this week's letter, lowercase c.

 Goodbye for now!
Lots of love,
Blythe

A Step in a New Direction

As you may or may not have noticed, I mentioned in a previous blog post that I had a job interview. After three interviews and a demo class for invisible students with two people observing, I got the job! I am going to be working with Golden Kids International Kindergarten. Here in China, Kindergarten means Preschool, basically.

The school I am working with has a "Bilingual" program and an "International" program. I am the first teacher for the "International" program in this new school that has been built in the last 4 months. The "Bilingual" program is taught all in Mandarin except for a half hour of English each day (which I teach) and the "International" program is all in English with a half hour of Mandarin each day (taught by my co-teacher, while I teach English for the other program). The level of education that these students get in preschool is intense and I have lesson plans for the full week. It will be a lot of work, but a rewarding experience.

This past week, I was in training for my position. For training, I had to go to the headquarters of the school. This required about an hour of travel in the morning and evening on public transportation. Up until this week, I have used public transportation while traveling with others, but never on my own. I had to take a bus for about ten stops, get off and walk to the metro, which I took for two stops, and get off and walk to a shuttle, which took me to the office. It is ABSOLUTELY exhausting day in and day out, and I have a greater respect for the Chinese people because of this.

This travel experience was definitely a picture of the Chinese culture. The first day, I walked in the rain to the bus stop with my umbrella, and then got on the bus which was packed and got soaked by my umbrella. I got dropped off at the terminal stop and realized it was not where I thought it was and had to find my way to the metro. Needless to say, I missed the shuttle and then had to walk to the office in the rain. Whew! Other days were accompanied by getting on the same bus and going to completely different stops (the are two different Buses numbered 74, and I cannot read Chinese to know the difference!), missing the 6:30 pm bus and seeing a line of 100 people waiting for the next one (I opted for a taxi!). Just a VERY crazy week.

Walking to work one of the couple of days that I missed the shuttle

While in the office this past week, I learned a lot about Business in China. People interact very differently with their superiors and it is rare to ask for help with a difficult task. This caused a lot of confusion for me, but thankfully, the curriculum supervisor is from Canada, and was helpful in explaining how everything works here. I was trained about the curriculum, how to talk and interact with parents, how to write newsletters, and how to do a Demo class to attract new students.

I also worked on a Library project in which I organized the office library into sections to match with the curriculum. I am very proud of the result!

 

On Friday, the first day of school, I got to meet the one student in the school so far. He is in the "Bilingual" program so I work with him one half hour a day. Right now, because I have no students, I spend half of the day in the bilingual classroom, and the rest of the day setting up and preparing the school for more students. It is literally in boxes, so I have my work cut out for me :) It is really exciting though, because only one other person in the school speaks English, so I think I am on the road to learn Chinese!

In other news, I was able to do a little project to make our room feel a little more like home. However, we are having a leaking problem in our room around our window. The whole wall is wet and the paint is peeling. I have been trying to dry it, but with no success. We are waiting for the compound to come take a look. We just want the moisture to go away. Please pray that we soon have a solution for this.

Our picture wall :)

The walls after the mildew was cleaned. It has now reappeared.

Thank you for reading! Until next time, keep us in your prayers and especially pray for the funds for us to go to Hong Kong in April at the 90 day mark to "reset" or visas.

With Love,
Blythe

Fireworks are the name of the game, 新年快乐, Happy New Year! Part 2

Hello again,

It is time for the second half of my Chinese New Year story, and it will end with a bang! On New Year's Eve, we had the privilege of being invited to the house of a family at our church. They have a beautiful home and served some wonderful food for us. They even gave us a gift for the new year, which was candy in an envelope, that is a traditional gift.

 After dinner, we went back to our apartment and just waited for the chaos to ensue. Starting at dark, fireworks were going off here and there, but midnight was a whole other story.

We decided to walk out to the road behind our complex to get the best view. I took some shots of the fireworks, but all of the smoke from them, made them rather unclear. I also took some video to attempt to capture the incredible noise made by the fireworks, but it does not do it justice.

To try to explain the scene, beginning at about 11:45pm, you start seeing fireworks here and there in all directions. As time continues, the fireworks increase in frequency. They also, increase in loudness. Fireworks here are not only about how pretty they are but how loudly they explode. They also REALLY enjoy firecrackers, but ones louder than I have EVER heard.

By the time midnight rolls around, the sound from the fireworks is absolutely deafening, and in all directions you see nothing but the sky lighting up. This happens non-stop for nearly a half hour. Then it begins to slow down. Nevertheless, the whole night fireworks are going off into the wee hours of the morning.

Needless to say, fireworks here are like nothing I have ever experienced. Disney World has nothing on the common people of China when it comes to fireworks!

The following morning, we had church service and got to hear great sermon about "Going Home" in relationship to the Chinese New Year. The main focus of Chinese New Year is to celebrate the coming of Spring and spend time with family. Therefore, everyone packs up and heads to their hometown. Our current home nearly became a ghost town, besides those that call Minhang, Shanghai home. People will do anything to get home and wait in never-ending lines for the chance to be at home.

Following the service we had some time to relax and then had dinner with another family from our church. This family is from Singapore originally and the allow us to hold youth gatherings at their home. They hosted a delicious dinner including lots of seafood, which we found out was typical Southeast Asian food. The father of the family had spent hours preparing it for us and it was definitely a gourmet meal.

After dinner, we were treated to yet another fireworks show of our own. Justin had a great time helping pick them out and light them.

 The rest of the Chinese New Year, we really got to enjoy just hanging out. Megan and I did a bit of "Spring Cleaning" to get rid of the extra dust and grime in our apartment. Then, Justin and I caught up on all of "Downton Abbey." We even got to help out a family in our church by house-sitting for them. They have a beautiful home, two cute dogs, and left us some delicious food. It was wonderful :)

Downton Abbey and slippers!

Our beautiful, clean floors

A "Beautiful Girls" poster in the home we stayed at

Chicken Parmesan... mmmm!

And what you have been waiting for....

Enjoy!!

Xin Nian Kuai Le, 新年快乐, Happy New Year! Part 1

Hello Friends and Family,

I promised I would write again and it has proven to be more difficult than I thought. I have found that my life and my schedule are not my own. When I plan to do something at a particular time, I will almost always fail. So here goes nothing....

Chinese New Year is unlike anything I have ever experienced. So much so, that it WILL take two blog posts to really give you the full experience. In the Chinese schools in our area, they get about 3 weeks off for Chinese New Year. Most international schools get off one week. With this being said, it was very hard to pinpoint when exactly everyone was celebrating. As soon as the children get off from school, the mass purchase of fireworks and gifts commences. The stores are incredibly packed, like "Black Friday" but everyday!
 

People purchasing pounds of candy

Waiting in line to get down the aisle of the store

Along with the purchase of fireworks comes another of my "I never expected..." I never expected  that I would wake up having dreams that I was under attack. The first time I woke up at 5:30 a.m. to the sound of fireworks, I really thought the world was ending. Then, I realized someone was just outside our front window shooting off fireworks.

The last day of work before everyone took off for the New Year. I had an interview for a preschool teacher position. That morning, when I woke up, I was greeted by the start of a snow storm. I was so excited to be enjoying snow in the place that I live for the first time. After the interview, I had a tutoring session and got to enjoy seeing the snow start to cover the ground.

As part of the New Year's celebration, we got to visit with our friends here and have many delicious dinners. The night before "New Year's Eve" we went over to Rob and Joy's house for a little celebration. Got to spend some time with these cool people. 

Kenneth being cute!

Rob wrestling with Jonathan

Beili and I

Jonathan being a rock star!

Beili doing her own rock star pose!

And, yes, Justin, John, Megan, and Joy were there too. Some people just really like to pose for pictures ;) Stay tuned for part two of our New Year adventure...