random notes

Happy Labor Day to you all back home. I hope you guys used my blood drive ticket to the state fair well.

The crocodile hunter died! crazy!

As per my mom's request, lunch today at the school canteen was my favorite tomato/egg dish, some mabo tofu stuff, some chinese greens, some chinese style celery, some duck, and the everyday rice and soup. not bad at all.

At my school, the bell to start and end class periods and stuff is a short musical kiddie rendition of what in America would be "In a cavern, in a canyon, excavating for a mine, dwelt a miner, forty-niner, and his daughter Clementine. oh my darlin, oh my darlin, oh my darlin clementine, you were lost and gone forever, dreadful sorry, Clementine". It's pretty funny.
Yesterday after school ended, they played some Kenny G over the loudspeaker too. that was weird. we'll see what happens today.

Classes are going well enough. This being the first week, however, I am only doing my introduction and rules lessons. So it's been fun and easy. Yesterday though, I had a class of 5th graders who didn't really understand me after I repeated 5 times for them to get out a piece of paper. I stood up there and pulled out my own paper and waved it around for them, and they still didn't get it until their english teacher (my contact teacher anne) told them what to do in chinese. How am I ever going to teach them science in english if they don't understand what "please take out a piece of paper" means? Today is going better. 4th grade, class #3 did well, and grade 5, class 4 did very well. this afternoon I have class 4(4) and 6(4). Sixth graders should be fine and we'll see about the other 4th graders. I really would like to learn all of these kids' names by the end of the semester. But there are about 360 of them! My 17 kids in Beijing, with all the close interaction we had, took me a week to learn their names well.