Happy Spring! :)

Hi everyone! Here's some pictures from my week of teaching Easter a couple weeks ago. I had so much fun giving my kids an Easter egg hunt, and was also really excited that I was able to share the Easter story with them...

On Easter Sunday, Claudia and I, along with 2 other ELI teachers went out to lunch with some of the university students from our campus.

Here are my kids, ready for the egg hunt and bursting at the seams with energy...

READY... SET...

GO!!!!!

Here I am with one of my girls, Wendy. She's always smiling and so full of energy and expression! She will run up yelling, "Miss Allison, Miss Allison!!" to give me a hug each time I come to class.


And here she is again.... tell me, how can you not love this mischievious face?!

I hid eggs for the homeroom teachers in each of my classes as well. Here I am with Miss Chen, the homeroom teacher for class 3.3. She's trying to learn a bit of English from my classes, but its amazing how much you can communicate without language. We both share a love for pictures and kids! :)

Keep looking!

Hope found her egg! She is a sweet girl who loves to do anything she can to help out in the classroom- pass out papers, help other students. I love her name..

Gathering up the eggs- I couldn't have asked for a more beautiful day!

Go Daniel!! If you haven't noticed already, about half of my posed pictures include Chinese people of all ages in this pose--2 fingers held up are supposed to look like a "V" for victory.

Bobby checks out his egg while David overlooks...

There's something about this picture that I just really like. It somehow brings the day to life.

Although egg dyeing in a class of 3rd graders would've been disastrous, I still found a way to incorporate some egg decorating fun into their new vocab. words: striped, plaid, and polka dot.

Best of all, after teaching my kids about secular Easter traditions, I shared the real Easter story through a kids book and Easter story cartoon. Then they had a chance to recall the story themselves on a worksheet...

I am amazed by the depth of understanding 8 year olds can have of truth that is communicated to them in their second language.

I have also enjoyed doing a drama club for ten 5th graders once a week. I cooperate to teach it with Karen, one of the Chinese English teachers in our office. Here four of our kids are acting out Goldilocks and the 3 Bears. Don't miss Papa bear's huge paws!

The teachers in our office that were gone to Australia for part of the semester are back now!!! It is so great to have Winnie here again! She's the 3rd grade Chinese English teacher and both me and the kids missed her! Here we are at our desks last week...

Also exciting-- I got to see Suzy a couple weeks ago!! She came over all the way from the States to visit China with her dad for a couple weeks and I got to meet up with her for dinner one night! :) It was so great to see her again and to have a friend from home see what life is like here for me!

Well, that's all for now. I'm going on a field trip later this week with my kids to the Botanical Gardens- I can't wait! And the week after we all get our May holiday vacation for a week off school. It's comparable to Spring Break in the states. I had to laugh when I told my sister I just finished mid-terms with my kids and she said she was preparing for finals week! Yes, the kids in China work extremely hard! There's no way around that. I hope you all are doing well! Have a great week!

A bit of what's been going on...

Welcome to my new blog! Since I can't post pictures to xanga anymore from China, I finally broke down and decided to create a new one here to keep you all updated on my life. :) Hope you enjoy it! Here's a taste of what's been going on lately since we started the spring semester...

Also... if you do leave a comment, don't forget to put your name too- otherwise it just comes up as anonymous! :)


Here I am looking over some of the penpal letters my kids were working on- they've really enjoyed writing to the kids at the Boys and Girls Club and Union Valley. It's a great way for them to practice their English!




I am amazed by how perfect their handwriting is at the age of 8!!! But then again, if my first language involved creating intricately detailed pictorial symbols for each word, I suppose my English alphabet would look perfect too!





David beams as he finishes his monster drawing on the back of his penpal letter! I love David! He's bursting with crazy energy and full of mischief...







Our team has way too much fun eating Chinese--Bob enjoys a chance to give Eskimo kisses to a bodyless chicken head! Yummy!














I always love it when my kids stop by my office after school. Jasmine came by one day to practice new vocab.










Claudia and I enjoyed going shopping with Gloria at the Pearl Market one Saturday. Gloria is a university student who interned at our school last semester. It's been fun to hang out with her.

One day after school a group of my students taught me a new game-- everyone puts their leg on the person's leg next to them and hops in a circle on one foot! They then count to see how long they can go until someone loses balance!














We all got to see Ben's family give an olympics promotion concert at a university in Beijing. The amazing part is that his dad wrote an opening and closing song that he's hoping they'll use for the olympics next year!! Best of all, they are free to sing any songs they want at their concerts, so a lot of them are songs about the Father! Amazing to see the way He is moving here!






A couple weeks ago, I got to go to one of the Chinese teachers' houses to meet her husband and little 10 month old baby boy!! SO sweet!

She invited me to go out for hot pot with her husband and mother and father in law that night. The food was delicious and I loved a chance to meet her family! Baby Michael is adorable, too. It cracks me up how they dress their babies for winter weather- piles upon piles of layers until they can hardly bend their little arms and legs! But then again, they're always getting after me for not wearing my jacket!



















Bobby and David had fun playing a board game I made to practice the phrase, "Where are you going?" "I'm going to the (park, restaurant, post office, etc)"

















This past week or so has been beautiful! With all the smog here, I've never had such appreciation for sunshine and blue sky in my life! It is amazing and makes me very happy! All the flowering trees are in bloom and the trees and grass are turning green all around campus! Spring is officially here!










Bob bought a BBQ grill for our team and last Friday, we invited a bunch of the Chinese teachers over for American BBQ- hamburgers and chicken wings! For most of them, it was their first genuine American grilled food outside of McDonalds! They enjoyed trying brownies for the first time too!






Here I am at the BBQ with Traci, another foreign teacher from Chicago and Amy.
















We also recently celebrated Alicia's birthday at an Italian restaurant in Beijing! She is a university teacher with our organization teaching at a school in Beijing. All of us CTFers gathered together to celebrate with her.









Here I am with Alicia :)















Well, I hope you enjoyed my pictures. The nice thing about this blog is that anyone can leave comments, not just people with blogs! I hope to update this regularly. Have a great week everyone!