Elementary School Visit

A highlight this past week was when I visited Xingzhi Primary School on Wednesday afternoon which was a lot of fun and I'm going back again this week.  The kids all study English so they wanted to say hello ... some of the boys wanted to "high 5" ... American Basketball is very big here so they all know "high 5".  They were excited to have a visitor and even presented me with flowers.  Classes were all over 50 students so they did a lot of choral reading and reciting but everyone was engaged and wanted to show me their work.  Tomorrow night I am volunteering with another teacher teaching English to 6-8 year olds in another part of town.  Getting out in the community is like being in a "living classroom."  I am learning so much each day it's a little overwhelming but also very energizing.

Xingzhi Primary School has 1400 students

Flowers

Hugs

Carpool Lane has a different look :-)

Last week I also judged a speech contest and at the end they asked me to speak for 5-10 minutes while the scores were added up.  What a cruel trick on Halloween but I did it and it seemed to go well ... even if it didn't, they'd still say it was wonderful.  One of my students won the contest which was exciting.  They had to give a 3 minute speech on "What they cannot afford to lose" and they did a great job talking about family, faith, passion, communication, environment, roots etc.  Then they were given an impromptu topic and had to speak for 2 minutes.  All the prepared speeches were great but the top scores went to those who also did well on the impromptu part. 

Halloween was fun and students loved learning about traditions and how to play American games ... Pictionary, Charades, Boggle, Bingo, cross word puzzles, making words out of Halloween etc.   I also showed them little Halloween scenes from movies like ET, Ghost Busters, Wizard of Oz and they loved it.  A couple of masks had been left in my apartment by previous teachers so I took them to class and they were a big hit.  One restaurant I ate in had up decorations ... for Halloween and Christmas.

 I have now experienced my first "sand storm."  Friday night we had high winds which blew in fine sand from the Gobi desert so everything was covered in a fine dust.  My eyes burned and my throat was scratchy but today we had blue skies and the air seemed to have cleared.  It is now dipping into the 30's at night but we still haven't had a frost so most trees have their leaves and the roses in the park are still blooming.  It's brisk and feels like fall but still very pleasant during the day.  Have a good week.