Botanical Gardens & Sports Day!!

Well, the last couple weeks have been crazy busy, but some of my favorite so far in terms of teaching! With the upcoming May holiday, (this past week) schools in China handle breaks a bit differently. Instead of actually getting an entire week off, you make up for half of it ahead of time by having an 8 day week before the break! Classes went from Monday the 23rd to Monday the 30th without a weekend! Our team exclusively, thanks to our contract, was fortunate to get Sunday off. But, I must say, it sounded entirely wrong to hear my kids on their morning warmup recite, "Yesterday was Friday, April 27th, 2007. Today is Saturday, April 28th, 2007!" I don't exactly think that would ever happen in the states! Haha. But, the redeeming factor of the week was that I got to go on a field trip for all of 3rd grade to the botanical gardens and the Monday before break was a half day sports meet/field day! I have lots of pictures to capture the days.

First, I also wanted to share a few pics of a couple other things that have been going on. We had two birthdays to celebrate this past month of April...

The girls celebrated Claudia's birthday by taking her into Beijing for a massage and shopping at Ya Show market (2 of her favorite things!). The guys met up with us at a spicy fish restaurant later that night for dinner. One of our entrees included rabbit! hmm...

We all enjoyed delicious peanut butter bars for dessert- one of our team favorites!

For Megan's birthday, we surprised her a couple days early and took her out for Indian food. On her actual birthday, we put together an ice cream sundae bar, complete with frozen chocolate chip cookie dough balls! As you can see... she was very excited- as were the rest of us- good desserts are hard to come by in China because Chinese people don't like really sweet foods.

Early on in the 8 day school week, one of my classes earned their 20 good behavior points, so they got a class party. Since the weather outside was so beautiful, I took them out to play duck duck goose and a few other little kid games.

This picture makes me smile... By now, I and everyone else on the team are chopstick pros! We use chopsticks to eat little pieces of corn, green beans, peanuts- you name it! Here I am eating dinner with Amy in the school canteen...

Botanical Gardens- April 24!!

It was a cultural experience in itself to go on a Chinese field trip! The day started off by leaving around 8:00 in the morning. All the kids were super excited and had their bags stuffed full for the day... full of what you'll see later on...

The first shock was the bus ride to the gardens-- from the moment these 8-year-olds got on the bus until they stepped out 1 1/2 hours later, they hardly spoke a word! They were almost completely silent!! Granted, the 2 classes I rode with are the 2 best behaved in 3rd grade, and one of the teachers is quite strict, I still couldn't believe my ears at the lack of sound coming from these 60 little kids! Believe me, this cannot even compare to the noise that is usual and expected to come from my BGC kids on a summer field trip!

Immediately after we arrived and got through the entrance gate, my kids whipped out their very own thin, small digital cameras and proceeded to snap pictures of friends and scenic shots for the next 5 hours! Now that's my kind of field trip!!

Pink cherry blossom trees were blooming everywhere. We probably spent 15 minutes just taking pictures of all the kids by this one tree!

It wasn't exactly the kind of botanical garden you'd see in the states. It had sections with lots of flowers in it, but there were also parts that were just scenic with lots of trees and a pathway and a pond with mountains in the background. The sunny weather and blue skies made for a perfect outdoor field trip day.

And then, lunchtime brought the biggest surprise! The homeroom teacher began spreading out trash bags for the kids to sit down on. And then, rather than each kid taking out their lunch bags of sandwiches with some fruit and chips and maybe a dessert, instead my kids started unloading their bags with piles upon piles of large portioned Chinese junk food snacks! Their little backpacks were crammed full of the stuff! After unloading, they all began yelling out, "Shui yao?! Shui yao?!" which means, "Who wants?!" The kids would excitedly reply, "Wo yao!" meaning "I want!" Everything from dried seaweed or beef to chem chi flavored (fermented cabbage) pringles chips and chocolate sticks got passed out and shared with the entire class, including, unfortunately, ME! All my kids wanted to share their snacks! I was lovingly handed all I wanted and more, much more! "Miss Allison, give you!!" How could you say no to those excited little faces?! My saving grace was the yogurt cups and rolls that were provided by the school. I also quickly discovered the ease with which I could simply pass along these treasured gifts to another eager hand!

Here are some of the remains of the snack frenzy that occured over lunch... the trash bags they ate on made for a quick and easy clean up. And the kids cleaned up the entire mess themselves.

It was great to be up by the mountains and enjoy the hike along the paths by the pond. This is a picture of me with 1 of my 5 classes. I spent the whole day with this class. The 4 other teachers that came with us don't speak any English, so my only source of English for the day was the simple conversations I had with my kids! I was also able to talk a bit in Chinese with the teachers. It's amazing though, how little needs to be said when you're all experiencing something together.

Miss Chen and I pose by a small waterfall. A lot of my pictures were actually taken by the kids!

After walking around for several hours, we decided to take a little tram car to the flower exhibit part of the gardens. The entire place is huge! Wendy enjoyed breezing along the pathway in the car!

My favorite part of the gardens was the tulip

section. There were at least 10 different colors and varieties of tulips all growing in different winding formations and patterns. Pictures could not take in and capture the full view!

One of my students snapped a great shot of me with Grace, another 3rd grade English teacher who filled in for Winnie while she was in Australia. Grace is also the one whose little baby I met several weeks ago. I love the beautiful flowers and trees in the background!

Here I am by some of the tulips with 3 of my kids, Joney, Sandra, and Tiger. A lot of them bought these strange slimy green popsicles that turn rubbery and floppy after you've sucked on them for awhile!

We spent a good couple hours toward the end of the afternoon just playing in the big water fountain at the gardens. It was the kind that plays to music, so all the kids would stand above the spouts waiting for the music to start, then scream and scatter as soon as the water sprang up! We definitely had some WET kids on our hands at the end of the day!

They also entertained themselves with a bunch of toys and trinkets they bought as souvenirs. A lot of the kids had fun blowing bubbles.

Not surprisingly, the ride back was also silent, but for different reasons...

After a long day of picture taking, playing outside, and enjoying the scenery, we arrived back to school a little after 5pm- a 9 hour field trip!

Sports Day- April 30!

Sports Meets are a very important and widespread event on primary and college campuses alike. Many different schools throughout the area all had a sports meet at some point right before May Holiday began. It's always great to have a work day that involves hanging out with the kids and cheering them on in events- especially when it's only a half day of work! It was a great grand finale to the 8-day week!

All of the top people at HuiJia were there to witness the event- a combined performance of both the primary school and the middle school. They were seated on a raised platform above the rest of the audience- right along side all of us foreign English teachers at the primary school! Since Bob was home in the states, we were all there to represent the office.

Each class marched across the track with their own chant and some sort of prop. My favorite of grade 3 was class 3.2 with their giant fans.

The middle school "theachers" were well represented!! (Better luck on your spelling test next time, guys!)

We were also entertained/amused by a short dance performance by all the female teachers- desribed by a fellow foreign teacher as a "former cheerleaders' pajama party reunion." Hmmm... I'd say it was a pretty accurate description...

After the chants and dances were finished, the real meet began. Here some of my girls get ready to run the 50 yard dash. Well, at least as best they could considering they're 8 years old and some were not wearing very athletic clothes! Ha!

Here Hope is ready to dash off for her part in the 4 x 100 meter relay. That was a pretty fun one to watch- good memories of high school track!

They ran well and Hope's team actually medaled in the event!

The Chinese English teachers were given the task of timing and scorekeeping for all the events. I stopped by to see Grace and Amy and keep them company for awhile. Don't you just love the awesome red hats and vests all the record keepers had to wear?!

After awhile, I spent the vast majority of my morning entertaining myself by just walking around to play with and visit all my kids while they sat and watched the races. Here are some of my favorite pictures with my kids:

Catherine is adorable! She's actually from America but her and her sister go to HuiJia to learn Chinese and have a chance to learn more about their family's culture. She's a native English speaker and extremely sweet and always very helpful in class.

Here I am with Tesseray. She is probably my smallest girl- soo tiny!! She's a little bit shy, but always tells me hi and is well behaved in class. Her English is kind of low, but I am still able to talk with her.

And, of course, here is my millionth picture with Wendy!!! I think she loves pictures about as much as I do! Half the time she's the one taking the pictures on my camera! I had a lot of fun playing with her and joking around that day! For an 8-year-old, she comes up with some of the most artistic pictures and poses- this one below is one of my favorites!

This is Tyson. I got to name him myself because he came in new this semester without an English name. I wanted him to have a name that was unique from all the Davids, Daves, Marks, and Kevins in my classes, so I gave him the choice between 3 different names and he chose Tyson, after my second cousin. His English is extremely low, but he has an incredible attitude toward

learning and he tries so hard. I really admire his perseverance. He's such a happy kid, always smiling and loves to run up to me and tell me hi whenever he sees me.

One fun event that they had at the very end of the meet was the 3-legged race!! All of the students whose parents lived close enough to come for the day partcipated in the race with their child! It was definitely amusing and entertaining to watch the kids get dragged along and awkwardly lunged forward by their parents!

This is what happens when other kids get ahold of the camera-- everyone wants in! My reaction?... "Uh, ok guys, give me a little space here...."

Which quickly turns into... "Ok, ok. You are all too cute! I could never get mad at you!"...

Kids definitely bring an endless source of fun and entertainment- especially when you're not in class and don't have to worry about being the disciplinarian!

The field day ended with an awards ceremony and the kids got to come up and receive their certificates on the platform in front of everyone.

Upon the end of the sports day, it was officially May Holiday!!! Time for a well deserved break from school!

I just recently returned early this morning from our May Holiday trip to Dalian, and will hopefully update everyone on that soon. I hope you enjoyed all the pictures (that is, if you actually got through them all!)