Mom wrote and wanted to know if I had any updates on Yuling, this morning when I asked the teachers if they had heard anything nobody had yet heard from her, but this afternoon while I was in the middle of my afternoon class Teacher Stephanie came in and said that Yuling had stopped by but that she still was not feeling well, she was gone by the time I got out of class. I asked Teacher Stephanie if they had found out what was wrong, she said that she had talked to 3 different doctors and they had all told her something different, well that didn’t really answer my question- but I guess that she is supposed to be seeing someone else tomorrow and hopefully they will soon get this all figured out. I hope that she does not have to endure pain for much longer.
Today was a very, very long day. For once I am kind of glad to see the day ending. Natalie and I were talking about it tonight also, it seems that today and this week have all kind of been very stressful, what with all the new kids coming to school (or old kids coming back to school after being gone for more than a month), new tutoring jobs, and adjusting all of our schedules it just has seemed on the overload.
My day started out pretty fine this morning, my alarm did go off and I just laid there for a little bit and then was like Beth get moving you have to start the day. So I forced myself to get out of bed and go take a shower, it has actually been getting cooler lately, right now I have my fan on and it is the first time that I have had it on in like 3 days!! and so when I got into the shower the water felt freezing! It took me like 4 tries to be willing to get under the water, but if finally did it though I wasn’t the happiest about it :D. For my breakfast I made a piece of toast with melted cheese on top of it and then my last cooked egg- because of tutoring and then rain I have not been able to get to the grocery store all week, until tonight, and so this morning I was kind of scraping together a meal.
In my morning class we were playing memory, I thought that I had seen an actual memory game downstairs and that is why I had decided to do it as a lesson, but sadly when I went downstairs to look for it I could not find one. So I hurryingly went through the classrooms to try and find something that I could use for a memory game, much to my luck there was this big pile of boxes in the yellow classroom (covered with dust I might add) that were puzzles, two pieces that go to each other, one with a big picture of an animal and then the one that connected to it had like 5 ducks with the number 5. Ahh, I am so glad that I am a genius (:D), I took the puzzle pieces apart and then had to try and find the puzzle piece matches. The 4 year olds were my first class and they thought that we should do the whole package of matches (big mistake), we did not even come close to finding any matches, so for the 5 year old class I was a little smarter and only put out maybe half, we got most of the matches done but time goes very quickly when the class is only 20 minutes long and they normally come in 10 minutes late from Teacher Natalie’s class. I knew that with the 3 year old class there was not even a chance of playing memory so I just had them help me find all of the matches and put them back together, it actually worked pretty well, they were all excited to try and help me and then get them put away in the box (I am learning that for some strange reason they like to clean-up, so maybe I will figure out a way to include that with my activities for them).
For my middle class I was talking about baby animals and big animals. I had several different books about baby animals and big animals, we read a couple of them and talked about what some of our favorite animals are and what their babies are called. This was the class that I was ready to pull my hair out, amazingly the 3 year olds did awesome but both the 4 and 5 year olds had some major trouble. In both the 4 and 5 year olds class I was having to remind them every page that they should be quiet and listening to me when I talk/read. It was rather frustrating. I think that at times I forget that they are only 3,4, and 5 and I expect too much of them, but also they should know better, it is not like it is their first year here for most of them, I am hoping that tonight with a good night of rest I will not be as short tempered with them tomorrow and will be able to better deal with their not wanting to sit still and listen—also maybe that just tells me that I should try and do more lessons that are more interactive and do not include as much reading.
Lunch again today was pretty hectic. Teacher Stephanie has had to come in earlier the past couple of days because of all the new 3 year olds and so lately she has been more tired, so I have been trying to help her even more. Today I still helped with most of lunch and then towards the end I let her sit down and eat her lunch while a couple of the kids and I set out the beds for nap so that she would not have to do it. I think that she greatly appreciated it. I again didn’t get upstairs until 1 again, but that was ok I am getting used to that, that will probably be how it will be every day. It was raining really hard when I got upstairs and really loud thunder and lightning, I quickly walked around the apartment and closed the windows when I noticed that the TV was soaked, I didn’t want anything to get ruined. When I came back into my room I didn’t think that I would be able to get any sleep because of the thunder but I was soon fast asleep, when my alarm went off I did not want to wake up yet and so went back to sleep for 20 more minutes. A couple of minutes before my 2nd alarm went off I sat straight up and freaked out that I had missed my alarm, but when I looked at my clock I realized that I had not missed it I had just gotten up a few minutes before it, I think though that it was better that I woke up that way rather than the alarm, I don’t think that I would have woken up as quickly with the alarm.
For my afternoon class today we were talking about Egypt, I would have to say that the most exciting part of my lesson was that I made a couple of the kids into mummies. In my first class nearly everyone wanted to be turned into a mummy, but unfortunately we only had time to make one mummy, all of the kids were disappointed and so I promised to try and talk about mummies in some other class and we could make others into mummies. It was really strange, because of how enthusiastic the first class had been about being made into a mummy I expected the 2nd class to also but when it came time to turn someone into a mummy and I asked for volunteers hardly anyone volunteered, I was surprised that Meggy volunteered to do it, but I think that she made a very cute mummy (see picture post), I think that I will probably make a copy of the picture for her mom.
When class was over I came upstairs and did a bit of facebook stocking until I heard Teacher Michelle’s voice, she had brought Willy upstairs and was trying to find out who was tutoring him. It was really strange to hear a teacher’s voice upstairs. So I went outside and met Willy and then we went and sat down in the kitchen and got started. We hadn’t been working very long when Teacher Michelle was back, this time with something about my insurance thing, because I am not 20 dad’s name had to be on it or something like that, anyway we got that taken care of and then she left. (Natalie and I talked about it later and we decided that she liked coming up there, since they normally don’t—also we talked about maybe inviting all the teachers to go out to dinner some night with us, do you think that, that would be weird?) Willy that I was tutoring today is the older brother of Sam (3 year old) and Rose (5 year old), Yuling said that they would be working with their school for at least 12 years because there is one more that is younger than Sam, I told her that, that means that they really like your program which is cool. Anyway he was really easy going and a great worker; it is amazing though how much he looks like his younger brother and sister.
When I was done with tutoring I was thinking about going out to do my grocery shopping when Natalie called into my room and asked me if I was interested in going and getting some dinner, I actually hadn’t gotten anything yet but I didn’t want to go to far away in case it started to rain really hard again. We decided to go towards the grocery store and see what we could find over there to eat. We headed out but didn’t really have a particular destination, finally though Natalie thought of a place that she had gone to a couple of times that the son spoke a little bit of English and it was really good. As luck would have it, the time we would choose to go and eat there the son wouldn’t be there. The first thing the dad said as we pulled up was “no speak English,” it always cracks me up though because they have obviously learned somewhere that line to say and it is in English. We thought that we would order just pointing at things, no such luck after he had figured out what kind of stuff we wanted his very first question we couldn’t figure out what he was asking, he picked up his cell phone to make a call (I am guessing to call his son) and then instead yelled into the sitting area, a lady stood up and walked over to us, she spoke a little bit of English. She was able to help us order our food and then we were told to go and sit down. We actually sat at the table next to the lady that had helped us order and so she asked us a couple of questions about where we were from and told us that she would like to go to San Francisco and Los Angeles, it was also kind of funny- the restaurant lady put down a bowl of soy sauce in front of us and then walked away, a lady that was sitting with our lady that ordered the food (I am assuming that she was her mom) got up and walked over to our table and looked at what she had given us, she then said something in Chinese to the other lady and then sat down. The lady got up and then went and got another bowl of soy sauce with some stuff that she put in it and then brought it back to our table for us. They were then done with their dinner and left saying good-bye. Our food was really good, what was even better though, was that they had a machine with cold water, most places have free tea for you but generally not water and especially not cold water (they believe that if you drink cold water it kills your or something like that), Natalie and I enjoyed our cold water very much. I was pretty sure that it was water but was not fully sure but decided that I would go and try it to find out, when I walked over there, there were two guys sitting at the table and they said hello to me, I said hello back and then asked them if it was water, they said the name in Chinese and then said that yes it was. It seems that I have extreme luck, whenever I go to a place and am not able to order with my “sign language” and pointing that there is someone that speaks at least a little bit of English and can help me, I don’t know if those people understand how grateful I am for them and for their small favor they do.
(sorry Kyle I had not meant to make that paragraph so long) When we were done with dinner we paid and then were going to ride to the yellow store, but right before we were at the bakery Natalie asked if it would be ok if we stopped there really fast, which was kind of funny as I was going to ask her the exact same thing but she beat me to it by like 5 seconds. We stopped by and each got a loaf of bread and then some special treat to try, the stuff from there is really yummy but I generally try not to stay too long and look for I know that I will find something that looks yummy (which in this point I found another thing after I had paid and was waiting for Natalie- it looked like a big donut or cinnamon roll dipped in chocolate). After the bakery we headed to the yellow store, Natalie went straight to the stationary isle, which was ok with me as I wanted to find some colored pencils. After I had found what I wanted I wandered around the rest of the store, we were probably there for like 15 minutes and the whole time Natalie was in the exact same spot while I wandered. Natalie left a little bit before me as she had a tutoring job that she had to be back for. I decided what I was going to get and then paid and then headed towards the grocery store. I needed some eggs and wanted to look at the backpacks that they had again. I grabbed some eggs and then looked around the store a little bit slower than I normally do; I found some things that it might be interesting to try sometime. I grabbed my stuff and then headed home again.
Ever since I have come home I have been working on my blog, getting distracted by stuff very easily—case in point, I was talking to Sallee and we were talking about different stuff that she and Nathan could do when they come here and so of course I had to go and search for fun stuff for them to do, I love doing stuff like that and so I don’t feel guilty about it being 12:20 and I am just finishing my blog. But here I am now, done. I am really excited for tomorrow as in my afternoon class we are going to be talking about Antarctica, I have a bunch of ice- don’t know yet what I am going to do with it, but know that I am going to use it somehow, so if anyone has any suggestions I am more than happy to hear them. I guess that, that is all for now, love you all lots and lots! ~Betherd~
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