Christmas Came Early

What a fun surprise I had this week returning to my office on Monday and finding a box filled with fun reminders of home .... snacks, "real" hand lotion, "real" napkins, candles etc. etc.  Thank you so much!  It really was exciting to receive my first package in China and thinking of you made me smile all week. I'm giving a lecture tomorrow on American Education and I'm including pictures from Plymouth Creek so I've been a little nostalgic as well as feeling huge amounts of gratitude for each of you.

Wednesday I visited another elementary school and observed in several classrooms including teacher training in a science class.  The teachers have been very good and they are trying to move away from all rote learning to more student engagement.  It is interesting to observe the differences in teaching strategies.

Saturday I went with a couple of friends to visit a Foster Home with about 20 children under the age of three.  We helped to dress them for Christmas pictures and then played and read stories.  It was a wonderful experience and one I hope to repeat many more times.  It's a bit of a trip ... bus, subway and taxi ... which was a long wait because the facility is on the edge of town and not a lot of taxi traffic.  But it was well worth the effort.  We may try riding our bikes this spring.

My other big surprise this week was a new refrigerator.  That may sound like a silly surprise but I only had a little counter top, hotel style refrigerator.  I've included a before and after picture.  Small pleasures get to be pretty big when you're away from the conveniences of home. :-)

We have a staff meeting on Wednesday and will be talking about final exams, schedules etc.  It's hard to believe we are almost at the end of the first semester.  I've learned a lot but I continue to learn something new every day.  Sometimes it's the same thing I learned the day before.  Chinese is hard to learn.  I can't always hear the sounds and my mouth can't seem to replicate the correct sounds and tones.  The students are very helpful and enjoy laughing at me and it seems to help them relax and not be so self conscious about their English.

Almost every store now has Christmas decorations and Christmas music playing.  That was a big surprise.   Christmas is not a holiday in China so I didn't expect to see all the commercialism but it's here!   Life in China is certainly never "routine" or boring.  I hope you enjoy the photo journal for this first week of December.

Mailing Address
Karla Thompson
School of Foreign Studies
Xi'an Jiaotong University
No 28 Xianning West Road Xi'an
Shaanxi Province
P.R. China 710049

Experiments with water - everyone is wearing a coat because of no heat in the classrooms

Teacher training during class

Outside Metro

Neighborhood dog

Grocery Store

My living room 

My office

Old refrigerator

New Refrigerator - with a freezer :-)

Thermoses for students in dorms without hot water