I went to bed pretty early last night; it wasn’t even midnight- which I was quite proud of myself for doing. That was an extremely good thing especially considering that I don’t normally get to bed until after 1am. I woke up this morning feeling so refreshed, amazing what a little bit more of sleep can do. I didn’t exactly jump out of my bed but I was ready to face the day, with a smile on my face (oh yeah I forgot to add, I had even showered before I went to bed which makes it an even bigger deal).
In my morning class this morning we did something called a car wash. Basically the kids moved their hands in circles in front of their body a lot, pretending to be a car wash. Once they had figured that part out (yeah like that took a long time) we got into two lines, one at a time the kids would walk down between the two lines and be “washed.” Basically during this activity there was a lot of tickling, giggling, and a bunch of everything else that is generally involved with 3, 4, 5 year olds. The 4 and 5 year olds got it pretty well, but when I tried getting the 3 year olds to line up in two lines and it didn’t happen I figured that I was going to have to come up with a different plan really fast. So different plan I did, I showed the kids how to pretend to be a wash and then I would just yell out randomly that someone was a car and everyone would rush over and “wash” the person (meanwhile the person was trying to run away from their washers). All in all I think that the activity went pretty well and that the kids seemed to enjoy it, which in my book makes it a pass.
I think that I mentioned before that they absolutely love Christmas here, when I first got here it seemed like I was always hearing Christmas carols, but lately I haven’t been hearing any, but Natalie and I have been talking about different plans for the rest of the semester and Christmas keeps on coming up. So lately I have been getting excited and wanted to hear Christmas music, but it seemed that the only song that they seemed to know is Jingle Bells (which isn’t a bad song), so I decided that for today’s music class I would teach them a new Christmas carol, we started and it didn’t take me very long to figure out that the 4 and 5 year olds know more than just Jingle Bells. Every time though I would move onto a different song I would hear from several people that they wanted to sing Jingle Bells, so we went back to that song often- Natalie is going to teach them Frosty the Snow Man later this week, we will see how that goes.
Lunch was pretty unproductive, no peeing children (well I am sure that there were many children peeing, but luckily I didn’t see any of it :D) and all the kids that normally are the last ones eating finished first and everyone was done a lot earlier than normal, yippee! As I was going upstairs after lunch though Natalie was coming back down the stairs and stopped to tell me some bad/sad news. I guess because it is the national holiday the tickets for the whole weekend of the 10th have been sold out for a long time, so it looks like we won’t be going to Taipei, but while we were talking I thought that since we couldn’t go to Taipei maybe there would be a weird chance that we could go to Green Island instead. Natalie liked the idea and so I said that I would talk to Yuling about it later (which I did). Again during my break I was just kind of internet cruising, not doing much that was productive, though for once I didn’t feel tired and like I needed a nap. I went down early to talk to Yuling, I told her how Natalie and I were planning on going to Taipei for the long weekend, and she was like “Oh, you had better get your tickets” I told her that we weren’t able to go anymore but were wondering at this late of date would it be possible to get tickets to Green Island. She said that since Green Island is to the south and not to the north it will not be as bad and it is also not the season where everyone wants to go, she also told me that Natalie and I could probably each go for about $1600-$1800NT (so about $48-$54), that would include the ferry to the island, a bike rental, hotel for one night, breakfast in the morning, and a session of snorkeling. I think that, that is a pretty good deal and talked to Natalie about it, she thought so too, so I am pretty sure that now Natalie and I will be headed to Green Island week from Friday (sorry Nate and Sallee).
My afternoon lesson went really well, we were talking about our favorite flowers and shapes (ok more about our favorite shapes). I started with showing them some pictures of different shapes and then we went through and had each person say what their favorite shape was. Once that was all through each person was given a piece of paper to draw their favorite shape all over (see blog post Mommy, Look What I Did!). When they had finished drawing their favorite shape they were supposed to flip the paper over and draw their favorite flower, the shapes went pretty well but a lot of the kids didn’t get the flowers done, it is ok though. When everyone had finished drawing they handed back in their papers (it was kind of funny, when we were done Leslee came up to me and said something along the lines of “is this we take home,” I can’t quite remember the exact sentence but I do know that it was a jumble of words but I knew what she was trying to ask) and I showed a couple of them asking them what they thought was that person’s favorite shape.
*I don’t remember if I have mentioned (and I am too lazy to go back and look :D), but at the beginning of my afternoon class I let the kids pick two songs for us to sing, anyway last week when I asked my first afternoon class what song they wanted to sing they responded that they wanted to sing Teacher Beth’s song, so I made this song up on the spot- now they ask for this at least once a day during the afternoon class. So here is my song, it is sung to the tune of “I am 16 going on 17” from “Sound of Music”:
I am Teacher, Teacher Beth, I teach you every day. I teach you to be silly, and happy in every way.
It’s not very long, but I would also say not too bad considering that I made it up on the spot, words kind of just tumbled out of my mouth and they made sense.
When class was over I played with Wendy for awhile, while I was sitting on the ground she had climbed on my shoulders (she has gotten quite good at it) and wanted me to walk around, so I did the scary thing of standing up with her on my shoulders. We walked around the playground for awhile but then my shoulders/neck were getting tired so I took her off, but before I could walk away she grabbed my hand and just started walking around with me. I did that for awhile but then needed to go plug my laptop back in and so extracted my finger from her hand (yes I said extracted, it was a little difficult to get her to let go—not that I am really complaining :D). I came back upstairs and did a couple of things but then decided to run to the grocery store before it got any later or darker.
When I got home from the grocery store I didn’t have much time before tutoring (this week and last week I had my 5 o’clock tutoring canceled- it has been rather nice not having to rush up to that), so during my short little time I looked up some stuff on Green Island to show Natalie when we had time. Tutoring went really well, I think that this was the most that I have ever heard Mark talk, he really opened up tonight- which makes the tutoring session so much more interesting for me.
As soon as both Natalie and I were done with our tutoring we worked on a letter for Yuling, I am a little disappointed with it, it is not as professional as I think that it should be, but Natalie thinks that it should be more understandable than professional. It is done though and I sent it to Yuling so we will see what she says. Ever since I have been working on this journal and doing some other stuff (I am really good at multi-tasking, ok probably not as generally I don’t get very far on either :D). Now I am done and have some other stuff to work on, so I think that I am going to sign off, I hope that you all have a wonderful Tuesday. Love you all lots! ~Betherd~
P.S. I might be going to Hong Kong in 3 weeks!! Stay tuned as more details are learned! ;D
P.P.S.
Official Countdown
10 Days Until They Leave
12 Days Until They Land in Taiwan
14 Days Until I See Them in Hualien!!!! (Yep that is still the best one :D)
Loves again!
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