The art gallery we went to was called 798

Just for you mom :)

The last few weeks school have been so busy! Lots of planning, grading, and hanging out with students. It has been great, but we got Monday off for Tomb Sweeping day and it was so nice to relax and enjoy a weekday off. It has been in the 70's here and sunny. So yesterday I played soccer for a few hours and I could barely move when I got out of bed this morning. The highlight of the weekend was going to an art area called 798. It is this huge area where they have turned old warehouses into art galleries, and it is free to go in and walk around. I went with some friends and some university students. We had so much fun walking around and taking pictures and enjoying the amazing day.

More exciting news, I just ordered tickets to go to Guilin and Xiamen, these cities are both in southern China. Guilin has lots of mountains and lakes, so we will go down and rent bikes and bike around to see all the sights. Then we are going to Xiamen to go to the beach. We get two weeks off of school for our kids mid terms and May Holiday. I am excited for my upcoming adventures.

My best class yet?

I have been working really hard this semester trying to get through to my lower level juniors. I have major discipline problems with them, they talk all class, they don't bring their books, they never do their homework, and they fail most of the exams. So I have been trying to change things up and figure out what works and what does not. Some of my lessons have failed completely and have been very frustrating, but this week was amazing. All I did was institute trash can basketball, but it was amazing. We were learning about music and that by itself is a much better topic than most of the topics in our book. So they really enjoyed listening to music and learning music terms. We do listening activities with them and this week we let them fill in the blank to High School Musical songs, this was such a hit! They love singing these songs while doing the activity. Although, I had to hear the song 12 times, so I have been singing the same song alllll week, I even wake up singing it!

Along with a good lesson, I let them shoot a piece of paper into my trash can if they answered one of my questions. Then for review if they answered a series of three questions they could crumple up their listening activity and shoot that, I think they almost fell out of their chairs when I let them crush their work. They all loved it and all the boys in my class answered at least two questions, and usually it is only girls who speak in my lower level classes! It is interesting because in my upper level classes basketball did not interest them as much and it is usually the boys who answer questions anyways. However, I did not have to tell my bad class to be quiet one time, it was amazing :)

It is really fun to have a really good lesson it gives you motivation to work hard on the next lesson. It is also fun when you see your students enjoying what they are doing and actually understanding the material. What a rewarding week it has been. All thanks to trash can basketball!

The Lama Temple, they had about 10 different buildings with Buddhas in them.

I also went to the Lama Temple, which was very interesting. People would come and burn incense and pay homage to the Buddhas there. They even had a Buddha that was 85 feet tall.

Last week I went to the watercube.

NEW PICS

I posted new pictures check them out. http://picasaweb.google.com/oadolph

I had a bad day (really it was quite funny after it was over)

That was our theme last semester the song Bad Day by Daniel Powter. If someone would have a bad day we would sing it for them. Well on Monday I knew my classes started at 8:50 and I had five in a row, so I always get up early to make sure I am ready and to read through my stuff one more time. At 8:30 I was just sitting in my room piddling around waiting until I had to leave. I always leave for class 10 minutes early, and for some reason by this point I was thinking I needed to leave at 8:50 and teach at 9:00 so that is what I did. My classroom for 1st period is in the building I live in, so I only had to go down a few floors, but when I got in the hallway I thought it was weird that the kids were all in class. Then I realized what I did and I freaked out and ran to class. When I got there my kids were sitting quietly, but when I made them get into their assigned seats they refused and would not move, I spent 10 minutes arguing with kids to sit in their seating charts. This is one of my upper level classes so I was shocked at the dicipline issue, I did not know what to do. Once I made it through that class I ran to my next class across campus, and I was really excited about my lesson and started out really loud and excited saying "Let's talk about JAZZ" but I meant to say music and my kids were so lost and do not even know what Jazz is. Also, I guess as i was walking through the aisles and asking kids questions I was dropping note cards out of my book and did not know it. Near the end of class a kid told me I dropped something, I look down and I had dropped over 100 notecards in every aisle. It was soo funny I could not believe I did not notice. I run back to my third class and I had been wearing a sweater all morning and at the end of my third class my student told me I had buttoned my sweater crooked. WHAT A DAY, it was stressful at the time but looking back it was hilarious! Hopefully next Monday I will be a little more on top of things.

Random moments in China

1. Bo Luo is an important word right now. It means pineapple and it is so fresh right now, you can buy it on the street, the market, or the best is in our cafeteria you can get it on a stick. Every day at lunch I see kids walking around eating it as juice runs down their chins and then it always makes me want to get some.

2. Women's day was on Sunday and I got some awesome gifts from my students. I got a snowman on a stick, a broken hedgehog, and a lot of candy.

3. There have been a lot of birthdays and for one girls birthday (Michelle) Laura and I attempted to make fried chicken. We were terrified of a grease fire, but we made it and it was AWESOME and we did not have any fires :)

4. Saturday we got to help out a school for migrant worker children. We went and painted a couple rooms. However the fumes from the paint were so strong that evening a lot of us were dizzy and sick.

Let's go fly a kite

Last weekend some students invited us to go kite flying. We have been having really nice weather so Joel and I decided to go. We rode our bikes to a park to meet our students and started to notice that it was not a very windy day. Although, we were still hopeful that we would be able to fly kites because we saw some other kites in the air.

As we were getting the kites out there was an old man who had a lot of kites so we assumed he knew what he was doing. We watched how he got a kite in the air and tried to do the same thing. We layed the kite down and let out a lot of string and pulled it so it would go up, however it did not work like the old man. So we decided one person would throw the kite while the other one would run. Basically we spent the whole day running around dragging kites on the ground. Joel got one kite to stay in the air for about 10 minutes, but most of mine ended up in a tree and lots of Chinese would gather around trying to help me or just watch me. It was pretty amusing. Even though we could not get our kites up we had a fun day with our students and the view was great. There were 50 or so people there trying to fly kites, it was neat to see so many kites in the air.

Why did I have to open my mouth?

This week I had a new student in my class and when they introduced themselves they had hair around their face and to their chin, a high voice, and their English name was joyment. So I thought they were a girl. I handed them my attendance sheet and asked them to write their name in pinyin, their english name and their gender. That was plenty of information for them to fill out the form, but I had to keep talking and when I said write your gender I said and obviously female. There was no point for that comment, and when I got the paper back I was in shock b/c it said male. I thought since this is a lower class that they were just confused and did not understand the word gender. As the class went on I realized that he really was a male, and I felt terrible b/c he is so nice and answers questions in class and was very friendly and I called him a girl. Why was it necessary for me to say obviously female!

Oh how I love my job

This semester I was given all new classes and all new students. I am teaching all juniors which I was really nervous about at first because I have had some discipline issues with the juniors I already teach. However, I now teach the upper level juniors and it is a completely different world. They are excited about learning, are into the activities in class, and they actually take notes.

But besides them paying attention, I have had a lot of fun getting to know them the last few weeks. I have been able to help them with English work outside of class and many students stay after class to talk and practice their English. My students really bring joy to my day and really remind me why I am here teaching. Even my more difficult classes have really started to talk to me more. I also, have almost memorized 14 classes English names. That is a lot of names that I have floating around in my head, I can recognize and call them by name in class but I have to work on recognizing them outside of class.

We also got to bath with baby elephants.

In Malaysia we were able to ride elephants and then we could get on an elephant and he would take us in the water and fall over with us on it. It was quite scary, I felt like I was going to be under the elephant in the water but it was a lot of fun.

Back in Beijing

I am back in Beijing, and I started teaching this week. I had an amazing break, I was able to do a lot of traveling and I had an amazing time at home in America. However, I am so glad to be back and teaching again, six weeks off is a bit too much. It really kills your motivation to do anything. I enjoyed coming back to my apartment and seeing all my friends and students again.

This semester will be a lot different because they gave me all new classes. Our school changed how many class periods we have so I no longer teach seniors, I only teach juniors. I was not sure how this semester would go at first b/c the juniors I taught last semester were a real challenge. But after having my classes this week, I am so excited about the semester, my kids are a blast and I am having fun with them already. The only thing that stinks is I only see them once a week, so I have to work extra hard on memorizing their names.

My story of the week is about my first class on Monday. I let the kids ask me questions on the first day, and they all want to know how old I am and if I have a boyfriend. But in my first class instead of asking if I had a boyfriend they asked if I have a lover. This question came from a seventh grader who looks like he is about 10 and it was just hilarious.

COMING HOME!!

I am officially on break for 6 weeks!! I am leaving tonight on a sleeper train for Xian (pronounced She-on) to see the terracotta warriors and the city wall. When I get back from Xian I going to Malaysia to see the rain forest and go to the beach!

Then I fly back to the states at the end of January. If you are around Cedarville please send me an email, I would love to get together with you!

I hope you are all having a HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

HAPPY NEW YEAR

I cannot believe it is already 2009, time has flown by. I had quite the new years celebration. We were told that our students have parties from 8am to 10:30am and that we should go b/c they are a blast. They warned us that we would be asked to perform, so prepare something for the class, the Chinese are all about performances, if we ever show up at an event they always ask us to sing. Greg and I decided to do a song together b/c we teach the same classes (there are 50 kids in a class and he teaches 25 and I teach 25). Caleb also came with us and we went to some of his classes.

We decided to teach our kids the I would walk 500 miles song b/c it is very interactive. We ended up doing that song EIGHT times in EIGHT different classes. I was exhausted afterwards b/c we were shouting and jumping around. The kids loved it.

If I would ever need an ego boost I just have to walk into the classroom of my kids b/c they go crazy shouting Miss Dolph Miss Dolph, Mr. Briggs and they start clapping.

The new years parties in their classrooms are a big deal they decorate, have games planned, prizes and food. It is very atypical of everything I know about the Chinese school system. But the parties were soo much fun. Every room we went into we either had to play the game they were playing or watched their karaoke or helped lead the game. In my favorite class we performed our song and then played a game with them and I led a game for them. But before I could leave they were begging me to sing a song to them. And I hate to sing in front of people bymyself, (although I always end up singing to my classes some how) and they will not let me leave until I sing. So Greg and I did a duet to You are My SunShine, and it was really funny.

The morning was really fun spending time having fun with our students instead of teaching them.

Then in the afternoon we had to perform a skit at New years party that was put on by the school, and all the deptarments of the school are suppose to perform something. The show lastest from 1:30 until 5:30 and it was all in Chinese. So we had no idea what was going on, but I have some great videos of hilarious acts performed by the teachers.

In the evening we all played games and celebrated by spending time together and singing songs to father. It was a great start to the new year!!