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.