My Crazy Week

This week was a strange one. First, the week started with a working Sunday which is never fun. Then, Monday was International Children's Day, although I don't know any other countries that celebrate it so I'm not real sure what makes it international and finally, we had no power for the entire day on Wednesday.

I'll start from the beginning. We worked on Sunday because we had Thursday, Friday and Saturday off for Dragon Boat Festival so the public schools make up one of those missed days on Sunday, yay.

Children's Day on Monday was really fun and a new experience for me. Last year on Children's Day, I only taught adults so we didn't celebrate it. This year, I was told there'd be a show by our class students and their parents and I was also to create a 3-10 minute skit that should make everyone laugh. Right before the holidays I was also informed I'd be co-hosting the day's activities with one of the moms and I'd only be speaking in Chinese the entire time. Well, they wrote out a script and I put all of the Chinese in pinying (Chinese with Roman alphabet) on notecards so I could actually read it. I haven't learned to read actual Chinese characters yet, but I have begun the process.

Monday morning came and I dressed nicer than my normal t-shirt and shorts to go to school. When I arrived, Meier's Mom (the other co-host) was waiting for me with a purple wig for me to wear. The skits were performed mainly by one student and either their mom or dad or both. A couple skits had numerous kids and parents involved. The skits ranged from famous stories being acted out, singing, Beijing opera, magic, story-telling to cooking demonstrations. My skit was called short because the other foreign teachers were involved but some of their Chinese teachers didn't let them leave their classrooms to help (I forgot to add, my class was the only one in the kindergarten that had parents in the classroom or that did a show).

After all of the shows were over, all of the parents, students and teachers from our class went to a 5-star hotel's buffet. The parents paid for the teachers, excellent. It was a great lunch and one I really needed. I haven't been eating Western food very much because it's so much more expensive than eating Chinese or cooking at home and I've been craving it pretty badly so that took care of that need.

I've posted pictures on picasa from Children's Day, they're not the greatest but they're ok. One of the parents will be making me a copy of the video from the day so I'll post that video online, too. It's obviously longer and I'm not sure where I'll be able to do it since I can't access youtube but I'll figure something out. This way you can all hear my Chinese.

On Wednesday, the school and the entire area was without power. The government shuts off the power in certain areas during the summer for a day in order to save money and electricity. Luckily, I live in the city center so they'll never do it to my apartment area. The parents and Chinese teachers, not the foreign teachers, were told the day before so I only had 4 students show up to school. Needless to say, I didn't have to teach that day which was quite nice. Before 9am my shirt was completely wet from the sweat because it was in the low 90s that day and the humidity here is extremely high, and that's coming from someone who lives in humid Atlanta.

It was a pretty crazy week but luckily it's over and I'm able to sit back and relax finally. It's a beautiful Saturday and when Vi comes back from work after lunch, we'll head to the beach for the afternoon and evening. If it's a nice day tomorrow, too, we'll probably head back to the beach for the whole day. It's just so hard to stay in the city when the beach is so close and it's so beautiful outside.

Until next time...