Thanksgiving

(I don't actually have pictures of any of this. Hopefully I can get them from people who brought cameras)

Thanksgiving at our school was not nearly as big as Halloween was. We've been doing Thanksgiving themed activities for a few weeks, and we put up a few decorations right at the entrance of our school, but that was it (no intense haunted house or big performance, thank goodness). One of the days this week, my kids went on a field trip to the post office so I spent the morning putting up a paper thankfulness tree. We had paper leaves that people could write things they were thankful for on and put up on the tree.

Thanksgiving day itself (I suppose that is today) was Parents' day, so the parents of all the kids came and watched class. It wasn't as bad as I had feared. Some of the kids actually behaved better with their parents there, and while my lesson wasn't amazing, it wasn't a disaster either. I had met some of the parents before, but it was fun to meet a few more of them.

We (the 15 girls in my ILP group) had planned on having a potluck Thanksgiving dinner on Sunday evening. This happened to coincide with the birthday of one of our Chinese friends (There is a tea and smoothie shop down the street from us that we like to go hang out at, and we've made friends with all the owners and workers), so we ended up having our thanksgiving potluck at the tea shop. It was really fun. We all brought the stuff we had made to the little round tables that the tea shop has set out on the sidewalk and sat on stools and had Thanksgiving together with everyone. I was surprised at all the things we managed to make. We didn't have any turkey, but we did have mashed potatoes (the powdered kind) and gravy, stuffing, pumpking pudding, and green jello, along with other things. It actually felt sort of like Thanksgiving, albeit outside and in China and with fish balls on the side. Then, of course, we had birthday cake afterwards. I was sufficiently full by the end.

Bragging Rights

Today I ran 17.5 miles. I figure that gives me bragging rights.
For those of you who aren't aware, this is 2 miles farther than I had ever run before, so it made me feel awesome. It also made my legs hurt a lot. :)

My Kids!

If you couldn't tell, I've kind of given up on blogging about my Beijing trip. Blogging doesn't take me that long, but I was kind of avoiding it, so I never got to it. Maybe I will post some pictures on facebook sometime.

I finally managed to get pictures of all of my kids! Since kids are hard to take pictures of, some of the pictures are better than others, sorry. Here are pictures of all the kids in my homeroom.

First of all, we have Valerie. She's pretty quiet and very sweet. She's the one that can't dress herself so that I have to do it every day. It is less that she can't do it and more that she just stares off into space and doesn't do anything. She always wears t-shirts and pink stretchy pants (okay, not in this picture--those are her uniform pants).

Next is Alyson. She has this gorgeous long hair, and this sassy personality. She's also one of my best English speakers ("I is a mermaid princess! Terrence is Prince Charming!") and knows all of the Disney princesses by name. I feel a tiny bit bad for any boys who know her when she gets to high school. They don't stand a chance.

I don't have a particularly good picture of Phoebe (this is her with Alyson). She's the oldest of my students by a few months and is definitely the tallest. She seems to like me a lot, and is always grabbing my hand/shirt/whatever she can get a hold of and pulling me over to stand by her.

Jophy is super, super quiet. I often can't tell if she is saying her English right, because she speaks too quietly for me to hear. She is very good friends with Phoebe, so I can't ever have them sit together. She likes me fine, but she sort of does her own thing. She also poses well for pictures.

Cary is sort of my star student. He is really good at following rules, and says what I want him to say about twice as much as everyone else (he's not quite as good at having a conversation as, say, Alyson, but he speaks much more in class).

Tony is a sweetheart, but he's also definitely a handful. If he grew up in America, he would probably be a football player in high school--he sort of has that cool-guy personality. He speaks English quite well ("Teacher Diane! I'm a tiger! I will eat you!), but also very loudly and not always at the right time.

Peter took a little longer to like me than my other students. He's pretty shy, and he has a hard time with English. I think I'm winning him over, though. I make sure to wave to him specifically when I come into class in the mornings, and he is to the point where he smiles and waves back.

Terrence is super tiny, and Lindsay likes to say he looks like a little teddy bear. He's behaves pretty well in class, but every so often he gives me this little mischievous smile and refuses to do what I say. It is pretty darn cute.