About Me

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Boot Scootin' Boogie

I know, I know I am a couple of days behind, but I don’t really have a reason- it wasn’t like anything that exciting was happening. Oh well! I wrote on Monday but I didn’t even get to my day, so I guess that, that is where I will be beginning.

In my first class Monday morning we were playing a game called “Musical Lines,” basically you are supposed to tape lines down on the floor and then the kids have to walk around on the lines as the music plays and then freeze like statues. I couldn’t find any tape that would be safe to put on the ground and so I decided that I would just improvise—it was a good thing too, I learned that when it is raining hard the kids stay put and the teachers rotate instead (it was considered raining hard on Monday- yippee!...NOT). So my improvising- I just had the kids walk and dance around the room while the music was playing and then of course freeze when the music stopped, it was probably a good thing that they didn’t have to stay on a little piece of tape, I have some kids that like to go really fast and push and shove while others like to go slowly and so it probably would not have turned out very well.

When I was done with my class I rushed upstairs to call in on the family phone call, sadly no one was there. I wasn’t sure if I had just called in too late or if it hadn’t happened at all, so I called mom to check- it was nice we got to talk for like 20 minutes when it had nearly been a week since we had last talked (yeah I know, SAD).

For my middle class we were talking about being in airports and airplanes, yeah I realized afterwards that it came to being really close to when we had talked about transportation and I had talked about airplanes, oh well the kids seemed ok with it. I started by reading a book about going on an airplane, and then for the 4 and 5 year old classes I drew a picture of a airport and showed how there can be a lot of people, we went back to our stranger lesson and talked about how we should stay with our mommies and daddies while we are there (sorry mommy and daddy, when I flew to Taiwan I didn’t stay with you!) and then we got to play a game where we were airplanes..yahoo!!! In the 3 and 4 year old classes we just practiced flying from orange cone to orange cone but in the 5 year olds class we set up the cones so they made this little area to the side, all the kids started there and one at a time I would say “Tower One to Airplane______(put in child’s name here), it is safe to take off” and then they would “take off,” once in awhile I would also have someone land and then take off again, they loved it.

Of course after lunch I took a nap (what kind of day would it be without a nap?).

This week in our afternoon class our theme is Under the Sea (sounds mystical doesn’t it?), and Monday I was talking about waves and currents (ok not really currents that much), to begin with I started by showing a 10 minute clip of Finding Nemo (because what kind of teacher would I be if we talked about the sea and didn’t get to see Finding Nemo?) and then we looked a bunch of different pictures of waves of different sizes and also watched another little clip of different waves, as it is cooler to see the waves moving then just pictures of them. It was kind of interesting to be talking about waves right after we had a typhoon, all the kids were like ahhh, we know what that is. Once we had finished looking at the pictures and movie clips we got to play a game, I had brought a whole bunch of plastic balls (the kind that are in the McDonalds play structure) and a blanket from my room, then the kids got to take turns making waves with the balls on the blanket. I would always start the kids with doing small waves and then they could do big waves, the balls would go flying up into the air, in among the other kids and basically everywhere in the classroom, of course the kids loved it- every single time they screamed, laughed, and then went scrambling after the balls to put them quickly back on the blanket so the next group could go (because if they went faster there would be a chance of them getting to go again).

I don’t have any tutoring on Monday’s but I went downstairs and hung out with the kids again for awhile, at one point somehow I became the kid’s jungle gym again and got my hair messed up. I told them that their payment was that they had to do my hair, generally I love having my hair done/played with, this time was not the case- Allie was doing my hair and she would pull really hard, she also enjoyed (for some reason) pulling my hair straight out and then hitting it really hard with her hand (ouch!). Natalie came by and invited me to come with her to the Chu’s house for a single adult FHE (I guess Bro. Chu just got a new calling of the single adult leader or something like that), I hadn’t been feeling very good all Monday so I declined in hopes that I would go and get my journal done and then get to bed early. Well neither of my hopes got done, I went upstairs and started working on my journal- but of course I was in the kitchen and had the TV on and was getting very distracted (which would explain why I only got a little bit done on Monday night—though Natalie did walk in when I was almost done and was like wow you have a lot, I was like not really- I generally have this much for one day). I was just about to leave and go to bed when this show started, Amazing Race. I had never seen the show before but had been seeing commercials for the past couple of weeks, it looked interesting- Natalie and I both got hooked and couldn’t leave until the show was over. I have been a little sad as some of my favorite shows are starting in the next couple of weeks and I have discovered that the websites will not allow me to watch them from over here, but I think that Natalie and I are both interested in this so it might be our Monday night show (I know, I know kind of pathetic). I don’t know if anyone has ever watched Amazing Race but it looks interesting, especially since this time they are in Asia! When the show was over I headed to bed, again later than I had wanted to.

I also finally told Natalie about why I don’t generally accept her offers to go to the Chu’s house with her, about how I feel like a 3rd wheel. I know that she doesn’t do it on purpose but it doesn’t make it fun for me and so I feel more comfortable staying at home doing my own thing.

Tuesday morning. So I was really excited about all of my classes yesterday, especially my two morning classes! In my morning class I was teaching some simple sign language (I have always been interested in it, but last year and this year I have had many, many friends take sign language at BYU and they have absolutely loved it- I am thinking that it will be something that I look even more into when I go back), not very hard stuff like- apple, dog, cat, candy, thank you, house, school, hamburger, day, night, cold, happy, please, hello, good-bye, and strawberry (the kids love strawberries so I had to do it). The kids picked up on it pretty well, but I hadn’t realized how much until later during lunch when I was getting ready to serve the kids some of them called teacher, I looked over and they started doing several of the signs. It just makes me all tingly and happy inside when they remember things like that, that I taught them- it helps me to know that I am not just standing at the front talking for hours at a time, that I am making a difference.

Tuesday’s middle class is supposed to be something about music or literature, generally I have been using some kind of book or teaching about a instrument, which are very good topics but I have felt like I was getting stuck in a hole and wanted to add a little bit of something different, anyway last week I was using a random CD while we were playing a game and I started line dancing to the music (it was country of course :D) and I realized that it would be really fun to teach the kids line dancing. So that is just what I did yesterday, I made up a simple dance like 10 minutes before class started (because even the dances online that I could find that said simple were definitely not simple- 4 sets, 22 steps is not simple in my mind) and then I taught it to the kids, they seemed to really like it. In the 4 year old class I even gave the kids chances to lead the others in the dance, the first one that I had do it was Leslee- I figured that they wouldn’t really remember it that well, boy was I wrong, Leslee stepped up and was a pro, she was so cute and funny; I wish that I had taken my camera. I did find out though that dancing for an hour and a half is a good work out (:D) I was sweating like something nasty by the end of the class. All in all I think that it was one of my best classes yet, I have decided that every couple of weeks I am going to teach the kids some other kind of dance, which would mean that I would have to learn it myself, but I think that it will be fun for both of us. It made me really excited also to hear later from Natalie that the kids had come into her class all excited about it and showed her the dance, she said it made her wish that she was in my class. (oh yeah and the title of the post is totally the song that we danced to)

Lunch was Ali’s delicious curry! I think that I commented about it when we went to “The Curry House” but I thought that theirs was good but Ali’s is definitely better, I am kind of sad that she doesn’t make it a lot L.

For my afternoon class we talked about fishing (because of course you use the ocean and sea to go fishing). We looked at some pictures of different kinds of fisherman (not at all that interesting) and then I taught them a song, which for the life of me I am not sure why as the song had nothing to do with the topic of the day (that is how my scatterbrain works).

The Song:

A sailor went to sea, sea, sea. To see what he could see, see, see. But all that he could see, see, see. Was the bottom of the deep blue sea, sea, sea.

When we had finished that the kids got to color their own fisherman and then we put magnets on them and went fishing. Coloring took a little longer than planned again and so the 1st class got a little bit of fishing but the 2nd class didn’t really get to go at all.

When school was over I had half an hour until I had tutoring, I decided that I had probably throw in a load of laundry while I had the time as I was wearing my last pair of clean pants (yes I know, again). I was going downstairs when one of my tutoring students was coming up the stairs (I was a little panicky when I saw him but realized that he was 15 minutes early), I came upstairs and realized that our kitchen was infested with ants and started stomping like crazy, I guess the outside must have been too as Brian started stomping everywhere too- at least he was helpful for being there early. My tutoring went pretty good, while I was tutoring Yuling’s dad came by and fixed the light in my bathroom… so now I have a light again!!!

Monday night Natalie and I had talked about going out to dinner but because Natalie had tutoring until 9 she thought we had decided to do it another night, I thought we had decided to still do it and so was waiting until she was done to eat dinner. She realized that and so we still went, of course we went to the night market. We had been talking about trying the Indian BBQ and decided that, that was what we would try. I got some kind of Chicken Roll, it was pretty good, a little on the spicy side and a lot on the messy side. I was still hungry when I finished it and so got a crepe thingy too. I had my camera this time and took a little movie, but it was not the best so I will take it again with me next time and try to get a better one. Oh funny story though, Natalie and I have been staring to notice more and more places at the night market (like we both swear that the Indian BBQ had not been there a few weeks ago) and last night we noticed this shaved ice place, we both got really excited and wanted to get some. We saw what we thought was mango and so we decided that we would get one to share (as we remembered how big the last ones we got were), the lady didn’t speak English and so we just kept on holding up one finger and then pointing at it, finally this guy was walking by that did speak English and the lady called him over. He asked us what we wanted and we pointed at we thought was mango and said that we wanted one (if you haven’t figured out yet, it wasn’t mango), he told the lady and then she was like it’s not mango, it’s sweet potato, ewwwww. I am glad that someone that spoke English walked by because I would have been a little bit disappointed if we had gotten it and it had not turned out to be mango.

I thought that I was going to go to bed early but then I came home and again got distracted by something and then started talking to Sallee and looking at her pictures and others.

I woke up this morning feeling a little sluggish and very much wishing that I could go back to bed. But I am in the semi-real world and can’t go back to sleep because I am tired. So I got up and took a cold shower (I have been taking semi-warm showers lately) in hopes of waking me up, it didn’t help.

Luckily my first class was pretty simple, we were just singing the song “3 Speckled Frogs,” that went pretty well, the kids enjoyed when I got one of the cots down and used it as the log and I would shake it at the bumpy log part. By the end of my class I was having trouble keeping my eyes open and they were a little blurry so I decided to go up and take a nap during our break, that was the 1st time that I have ever done that and I am not sure how much it actually helped me as I kept startling awake afraid that I had missed my alarm and was late to class. But thank goodness I was not late and made it to class on time. I had chosen to do another song for my 2nd class, I don’t think that it was the best choice- it was kind of hard to keep the kids attention for the whole class.

When class and lunch were over I went straight to my bed and took a very refreshing nap, but once again I kept startling awake afraid that I was going to miss it. I got up and was preparing my lesson, it started raining but I wasn’t really paying attention to it, finally though when it had been raining for a little while I looked down and saw that most of my floor was covered in water, I got up completely freaked out and then ran into my other room and found half of that floor soaked too. I grabbed my towel and started mopping up the water.

In my afternoon class I was talking about octopuses, I first started with two movies (refer to previous post) about octopuses, the kids asked me to show the movies over and over, I limited it to twice of each movie. We then looked at some pictures of different kinds of octopuses (did you know that there is one kind of octopus that can get up to 40 feet across!!!!???). Then we got to make our own octopuses, we used half a paper plate- colored it and then stapled streamers to the edge for legs. The kids loved it, I guess they were really excited and went to Natalie’s class and were showing them to her. I realized that this kind of craft project is a little too much to do for that big of a group, the kids are not allowed to use the stapler and so I had to staple every kids, luckily the teachers helped me a little.

Tonight my last tutor student didn’t come and so I was done an hour earlier!! Yeah! Which meant that I got started on my journal earlier, which also means that it is not even 11:30 and I am already done with my journal! Hopefully that also means that I will be going to bed earlier tonight!

Monday Yuling told me some new tutoring that I will be picking up next week, so my schedule is going to be even more hectic. Hopefully I will quickly get into a system and get everything done and still get to bed early every night.

I am all caught up now, YEAH!!! So I guess that this is all for tonight. Love you all tons! And hope that you are having an awesome Wednesday morning, this is ~Betherd~ signing off.

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