bieber fans

hello loyal followers, i am sorry to say that there will be a short hiatus in posts as i will be going to vietnam tomorrow. from there, i will also visit cambodia and thailand.

i will close the first semester with my favorite video that i took of my super crazy/super fun class. It's only 13 seconds but it's just such a ridiculous 13 seconds. This is my 4th grade class singing (aka screaming) "Baby" by Justin Bieber. I had played it for them the week before, and they requested to hear it again. Afterwards, I turned the music off and took out my camera and said "okay, sing the song!" This video is what happened. The passion with which they sing this song puts Justin to shame. The boy in the yellow kills me- he gets so into it that his peer feels the need to restrain him. Also, notice at the end, two boys are so happy that they just jump up and down hugging each other. It was a magical moment.

After I left class, the boy in the yellow caught me on the stairwell to ask me about the song. I wrote down the name and the artist. I saw the boy again after school and he ran over to me to confirm that he had the right name. I think I have won his favor forever after introducing that song to him- I played soccer with his class today and the entire time he was running around screaming, "GEI LAO SHI" which basically means give the ball to teacher. LOL

class monitors

one of my wonderful class monitors. this boy, like most of the class monitors, takes his job pretty seriously. in the beginning of every class, he would stand up at the podium to get everyone quiet before i started. The kids have numbers, so he would say, "43 is good. (pause). 28 is good. (pause). 5 is good (pause)." The kids would sit up really straight with their hands behind their backs so he would call their number. Sometimes he would admonish a student by name for his posture or something, but he would always do it in a funny way so the other kids would giggle.

he also was given the responsibility of deciding which team did the best that day (a lot of the classes are divided into 4 teams) and which team did the worst. that's a lot of trust in an 8 year old boy!

i have a few second graders who have ridiculously good english and he is one of them! his english is better than the majority of my 4th graders' english. that's why i pretty much did the same activities for 2nd, 3rd, and 4th grade- their english levels are all over the place.

new name

today some of my students asked me what my English name was (I took this to mean what was my first name...they call me Miss Church) so I told them it was Victoria. Then they said 'OH, Bigtoria!' and ran away. pretty good new name. another girl kept calling me Church today which sounded really strange but I didn't feel like correcting her.

chinese primary school book answers life's hardest questions

have you ever wondered why dogs hate cats? the 3rd grade English book explains it all:


It might be a little hard to read, so here's the basic synopsis- An old man (he appears to actually be a wizard) lives in a beautiful house with his cat and dog. He also has a magic wand. One night a thief comes to the house and steals the magic wand, and the old man tells the cat and dog to go get it back. The cat and dog search far and wide and finally find the thief and have a scuffle with him. While the dog is busy assaulting the thief, the cat grabs the wand and runs off, leaving the dog behind.

The cat returns home with out the dog and the wizard says "Thank you. You are good. The dog is bad." When the dog finally gets back, the wizard says, "Go away, dog! You didn't help me." Then the dog is made to sleep outside in the snow while the cat purrs by the fireside.

Pretty messed up, huh?! The old man is such a simplistic thinker...

the next MJ

this is by far the best vid i got during thriller. this boy is incredible, i don't know what else to say.


this is one of my worst classes, but man they can be fun....especially this boy.

mimicking

i think it's really interesting how little kids like to imitate dance moves...and they're really good at it!

LSD?

i think this boy came to class this day on some serious drugs




all the kids are running because for some reason all the kids wanted to see him dancing from the POV of my camera...guess they couldn't handle the real thing

hold up all the abductions, this girl's the only one i need.



one time we were playing a game that involved running to the board, and she still has a little bit of her baby fat, so her tummy rammed into the ledge of the blackboard. oh man she was crying so hard, i felt terrible!

thug life

listening to MJ apparently provokes violence in some chinese children




ill put up the rest tomorrow...the best one is yet to come

silent MJ

this boy insisted on showing me his dance moves with out the music. pretty good! he's a really good student :)

spinning MJ

another one of my second graders. this boy rules! i am loving the spin move he threw in there, and the imaginary hat action.

Moonwalking

Hoorah for blogger, the videos are working again!!!!

Now for a series of posts showing my kids dancing to Michael Jackson's "Thriller". This girl is in 2nd grade and look at her trying to moonwalk! How awesome! She must have been exposed to another MJ video because he does not moonwalk in Thriller.

She was one of my only girls who came up to dance, and was the only girl who went up to dance by herself in all my classes! So she rocks.

granola

i've given up on keeping any sort of order to this blog. i'm just going to write about my experiences as i feel like it lol.



here is a picture of a special food they sell in Anshan (a very small, depressing city an hour south of Shenyang). i didn't see it anywhere else in the city besides the train station.



it was surprisingly delicious. i accidentally bought wayyyy to much lol but it turned out being worth it. it had like a granola base with dried fruit and some sort of honey/molasses mixture to hold it all together. granola doesn't really seem to exist in china as far as i can tell, so this was a refreshing taste!


it looks like the guys selling it are of some sort of central asian descent. well, whoever they are, this must be their specialty.

the nicest one

this is the absolute sweetest boy on the planet. i think out all of my students, he has got to be the nicest one. i don't really have that many examples, it's just his general demeanor and what he says in class.

he is very smart (not only is he one of my best English speakers, his family is Korean so he is trilingual) and I get the feeling that his family is very rich (you don't get good English here for nothing...and he has traveled to Europe and will go to Canada and America this summer with his family) but he is completely unaffected by it. he is a very mature little boy. i have some other good students who know their good at english and want me to know it too...ie...they tell me, "TEACHER, I'M GOOD AT ENGLISH!" hahah.

This picture is taken after the previous sequence of pictures. He came up afterwards and asked if I could take a picture of just him lol. From another student, it would have seemed really vain, but from him it was just cute.

He always tries to come up and talk to me before class. It's so refreshing to be able to actually talk with one of my students! Some of the other students gather around to listen a little even though I doubt they can really understand. Most of my students will try to run up and talk to me really quickly and then run away because they have either run out of things to say or couldn't understand my last question hahah.

anyways, i wish i could see how this kid turns out!

chinese pyramid

my favorite sequence of pictures...look how they came together at the end! it was perfect!



the success of this picture is definitely due to the fact that half the class was gone this day. if the whole class had been there, this would have turned into this:

abduction #3

this little girl only pays attention half the time, but i'll take her anyhow.

abduction #2

since my plans have already been foiled i might as well show all the kids that i will abduct. this is #2. i think i already put a picture up of him, but i really don't think anyone will complain :) i don't know his name, but in my head i call him chucky lol.

i still have yet to hear him speak english. i always try to get him to talk and he ducks under his desk...

i checked out the help forum and it looks like a lot of people are having the same problem as me with the videos. stupid blogger....

soo cute!

ugh...I have all these great videos and blogger is not letting me load them. until i get this figured out...i don't think it will be possible for me to leave china with out stealing this little boy. i have a video of him trying his absolute hardest to sing along to ALL the words of Baby by Justin Beiber...most kids didn't even bother trying past the chorus. Awesome for him!

Thriller

hehe, look how cute all these little boys are, I've been showing the music video for Thriller all week and they got a little scared during the zombie part! I guess they are giving each other moral support. Videos to come of the kids dancing to Thriller...oh my god... hilarious. Blogger is not letting me load vids right now though for some reason...

If the world was full of rich Chinese kids...

I always try to start class by asking them a question before starting a game. It’s good to get them talking and it makes them work a little for the game. Today I asked them what they would do if they were rich. Most of my kids said they would buy large houses, expensive sports cars (multiple), PSPs, video games, KFC (lol!), airplanes...things of that nature.

However, some of my sweet students said the nicest things! I always knew which ones would do good things with it and which ones would just acquire riches though lol. One of my sweetest boys, after I asked the question, shot his hand up with out hesitation to say that he would use the money to help poor people. I didn’t expect anything less from him! There he is below.



There was sometimes a ripple effect to this though- one time after a boy said something really sweet I told him that he was the nicest boy in the class. Then another boy, who previously said something very selfish, raised his hand again and said that he would also help the poor people. So then I had to also call him one of the nicest boys in the class, lol. Then one of my feisty girls raised her hand and also said something of that nature, so I was like okay then you’re the nicest girl in the class! Haha. This continued for 2 other students.

Some of my students (boys, of course) said that they would buy AK47s. I was like are you for real. One time a boy raised his hand and said he was rich he would buy an AK47, and then soon thereafter raised his hand again and said that if he was rich he would go to Libya. I do not know what is going on in that boys mind but I was like wow. Of course, I had that one student who said they would use the money to do terrible things to Japan.

Some of the kids were bursting to explain what they would do. My favorite ones were when they would tell me that they wanted to buy the world or earth or all of space. They always had this hungry look in their eye. What an abstract concept for a little kid though..thinking about owning the whole world…lol. I love it.

I had one class that decided that they were all going to suck up to me- each kid was trying to outdo the one before with the amount of gifts they would give me. Sometimes, they were just trying to outdo their own previous gift amount. If their wishes came true, I would probably have about 1 million PSPs right now lol. I’m not sure where they got the idea that I like PSPs so much, but I thanked them for their generosity.

more team names...

i think this is pretty classic, lol. Next semester, I am going to start the games by awarding the team with the best name a point. Team American Chicken takes the point for this match-up- it was a good play off of Team China Dragon!

my kids going mad :)

Me pulling out my camera to record something, and my students going nuts when they see it hahah. This is one of my really fun, but absolutely out of control classes. I've realized that the degree to which a Chinese primary school class is out of control is directly related to how many boys like the ones in this video there are in the class, and that is really the only factor involved. In a few of my classes, including this one, there is not really even one boy with slightly mild manners. This makes for conducting a class extremely difficult. I don't even bother trying to keep order anymore, I just try to enjoy the chaos...lol. It's actually surprisingly easy.

Ice Cream

In case you don't know, Chinese people live ice cream, no matter how cold it is. I have not noticed a different in ice cream consumption from when I arrived in the winter until now. Here is a little boy munching on his ice cream cone when there was still snow outside!

This is in a McDonalds. They actually have some small McDonalds stands here that ONLY sell ice cream. Awesome!

Facial Exercises

It's really sad, my students are better behaved for the music over the loudspeaker than me. They'll be absolutely out of control, and then this stupid song comes on and all of a sudden they all become silent and do their eye and ear exercises. The boy in the very front in the red has some major behavior issues and look at him there! He's in perfect form!

I asked one of the Chinese English teachers why they do this and she told me that it was because their eyes and their ears get tired during class. I guess the exercises will help rejuvenate their senses!

The power of conditioning is amazing. I just need to figure out how I can get it to work in my favor...

Bargaining...VC style

Today I stopped by a mall to buy some new shoes. I really hate clothes shopping in China for the following reasons:
1. The stores are TOO SMALL
2. every way you turn there is something in front of your face (whether human being or object)
3. The shop owner is usually riding you the whole time (either just standing there awkwardly or chattering away and trying to direct your attention to heinous clothing)
4. There are no dressing rooms, so the shop owner either pulls a curtain across the door or holds a sheet up for you
5. Once you have on a particular piece of clothing, no matter how bad it looks on you, the shop owner tells you how beautiful it looks and helps you examine it.
6. If you like it , you then must ask the price and they will tell you something ridiculous. If you tell them it's too expensive, they start telling you about how the material is really good and how it was really expensive for them to buy. If you start walking away, then the calculator comes out. And that's when I don't care anymore and just want to get out of the store!

So now we come to: Lesson #1 - How to Bargain like a White Girl (I highly doubt there will be #2)

The trick - don't bargain at all.

So today when I was looking for shoes, I walked by a row of shoe stores and 2 woman said hello to me in English. I stopped and said hello, and then they started speaking to me in a little Chinese. There was a man selling shoes next to them, and he tried to talk to me but I really could not understand his speaking style at all. So then another shoe vendor who happened to know some English came over to help out a little. We tried to chat for a while, but I felt a little nervous and it was pretty difficult.

They really didn't seem to care whether I went in their store or not, but I figured I was there and they were nice so I might as well have a look. I found a pair that was decent- I didn't really love them but if they were cheap enough I'd buy them.

So as I was trying them on the woman wrote 38 on the calculator and I thought that was price (it would be about $5.75). I was surprised they were that cheap but I thought okay why not. Well after I got my wallet out to start paying the woman realized that I thought the 38 was the price while in reality it was just the shoe size. They got out the calculator and wrote 300 on it ($46). Of course I thought oh hellz no. I said said it was too expensive. They dropped the price down to 250 ($38). At that point, I am just thinking about the fact that I really didn't like the shoes very much in the first place, I didn't want to bargain with them, and I am not able to express to them that I really only wanted to buy the shoes if they were dirt cheap. So I just started telling them that was sorry and that I didn't want the shoes. The woman shoves the calculator in my face and asks me to write what price I feel is appropriate. Well, I really just wanted to write 38 like I originally thought the price was, but I knew that that was way too low for these shoes. So, not wanting to deal with the stress of the situation anymore, I refused to write a number on the calculator, and told them that I was too embarrassed, and that in America we didn't do this, so I didn't really know how and I was so embarrassed. haha, it's kind of ridiculous in hindsight. I tried to escape, but then the shoe-vendor-neighbor that spoke some English stepped in again and kept saying "it's okay, here, write." I refused and told them again that didn't like to do it and didn't want to and that I would return to their store later. I either used really bad Chinese or they couldn't understand why I was telling them that because they just stood there sort of dumbfounded. Finally, the woman just grabs the calculator and writes 80 ($12) on it and asks if that's okay. So now, I still don't really want to pay 80 for them, but I also was thinking about how kind it was of her to drop the price by 170 with out me doing anything at all, how nice they were being to me earlier, and how in the scheme of things, the price she was asking me for was the equivalent of $12. So I said okay. Then they kept telling me really seriously, "it's okay don't be embarrassed about bargaining, don't be embarrassed", haha. Well, I think my unintentional reverse bargaining worked pretty well, although I bet an experienced bargainer could have knocked another 20 off. Well whatever, the extra 20 that I have to pay is what you would call the 'foreigner discount' here.

So that concludes lesson #1! Hope you have learned something :P

This is my super awesome private student, Tommy! He is in the 3rd grade. We see each other for 1 1/2 hours every week.

He is definitely a little crazy, but he is a really sweet kid. Almost every class he brings me what he calls "Christmas presents." He always tells me that I have to wait until Christmas to unwrap them, but half way through the class I tell him that I can't wait anymore! Then he'll hide under the table, and I unwrap my gift lol.

My favorite gift that he gave me was these Plants and Zombies trading cards. Plants and Zombies is a super popular video game here with the kids. I love the scuba-driver zombie with the big fish- it's so random lol. They also have a Michael Jackson zombie card that I saw one time...I gotta get my hands on that.... I think the plants are a little lame though.

I made the mistake of telling some of my students that I had these cards and they convinced me to trade some pogs for the cards. Worst trade ever!!! The pogs are terrible.





















Tommy also gave me this really cool fruit one time, I have never seen it in the states but it is delicious! At first I tried to bite into it and it was hard and disgusting...I couldn't figure out why anyone would like it. Then I started dissecting it and found that the meat is actually on the inside- it's the white part in the picture. It's really sweet and juicy!

I tried to give Tommy a little reward like 3 times and he will never accept it. I asked him why, and he said because you are the teacher! Sheesh, it was just a piece of chocolate!


I think that Tommy is super creative and it makes giving him lessons much easier. I'll just ask him to tell me a story about something and he always comes up with one really quickly, although I started to realize that he just Simpsons episodes that he's seen and molds them into my prompt. His parents allow him to watch the Simpsons for 30 minutes a day, and that's all the TV he's allowed to watch. I think he has learned a lot of English from the Simpsons though- he can understand almost everything I say!

We have an ongoing joke together about the ill-fate of all his grandmothers animals. It all started early on in our sessions when I asked him what he had done the previous weekend, and he told me that he went to his grandmother's house. I asked him what he did there. He told me that he helped his grandmother feed her pig. I asked him what they fed her pig. He told me that they fed the pig dumplings! I was like really?? He said yes, except a bad thing happened because his grandmother called him on the cell phone the next day and told him that the pig died. It was so unexpected that I burst out laughing and couldn't stop for like 2 minutes. Then he told me her other pig died too because it was old.

I don't know if this first story was true or not, but now all her other animals are dropping like flies. For example, she bought some new fish for the fish tank- her cats ate the fish- but the fish had a disease- so the cats died too. The way he tells the stories are so funny....

He also makes some pretty crazy comics which he translates for me. It's a little hard to see, but this one is about Automan and Plungerman...I think one of them gets thrown in the toilet or something and it explodes and all the "doodoo" as my kids would like to say flies out of the toilet. Lovely.


Well that's Tommy, one of many really awesome kids here :)

COMPETITIVE

I finally got a picture of these two little girls...if you'll remember an earlier post, the girl on the left (Angel) is the one who said she wanted to be a headmaster when she grew up so that she could hit the girl on the right (Tracy) for getting Student of the Day. (BTW, I don't do student of the day anymore, i just give out stickers to anyone who did well in class that day. I always get robbed of stickers...the students always convince me to give out a lot, lol).

In almost all my classes last week I reminded them that I was choosing the three best students from each class, but I didn't feel the need to do any reminders in this class because everyone knew who it was going to be. However, they both remembered that I had mentioned it the previous class, and came up to me during class to ask if I was collecting the names that day like I had said. I couldn't believe that they had remembered...well I guess knowing them...I actually can :) Of my 1300 students, they are definitely with in the top 5 best English speakers.

I think in the US we definitely need to watch out for Angel- one time I asked the class what they were going to do this summer and Angel told me that she going going to go to Boston so that she could visit Harvard....!! I said "Oh really, wow, do you want to go there? That is a really good school." She told me, "Yes, I want to go there, and I think it's not just a really good school, I think it's the best school in the world." Damn! She told me.

Tracy is also really smart, but she's much more at ease than the girl on the left and doesn't sweat things. The funny thing though is that she knows exactly how to deal with Angel...for example, if I haven't called on Angel in a while, she'll go "teachhheerrrr, next time, it's her turn." I definitely heed her advice, I don't think she's telling me that for nothing :) I think they are perfect for each other!

Sometimes Angel's competitiveness can be a little much though. For some reason, with the way the room is set up, all of the really good English speakers are one side of the room except for one teeny tiny little girl (Lucy) who has to carry her entire team. Well, one day we were playing a game that required throwing a ball at the board and Lucy was pretty much the only student participating from her team, however, almost every time she threw the ball it fell short of the board. The score was like 1 to 25. Finally, I told Lucy that she could stand closer to the board than the other students. Angel immediately protested this- she said, "no, teacher, she is small but she is powerful!" I was like are you serious, your team is dominating them! How can this be fun? I overrode her and let Lucy advance a few steps. Lucy was able to hit the target and Angel was like, "See teacher!!" Of course, Angel's team still won by like 50 points, but I guess it wasn't enough for her...lol. Lucy is the little girl in the very front in the middle. She's a sweetheart!
Angel will also cry if she does not personally dominate her other classmates. If we are playing a game where I put two students head to head, and she does not win, even if she has won 99 out of the other 100 times, she will get very huffy. However, if she just happens to lose that second time, then that's it, the water works come out. Man, if I were one of the other students, I would be pretty insulted that she thought it was ridiculous that I could possibly win over her hahah.

Although Angel is a little ridiculous, she is my most tenacious girl and I love her for that. She will be very successful because of it. Other girls here should take a FEW pointers from her, lol.

seaside deer habitat

there was a deer in a cage at the beach...nice. of all things to put there, i really want to know how they decided on the caged deer??

Harbin contd.

So not too much to say about Harbin, but I will give a little background!

Harbin is the northernmost major city in China and the capital of the Hei long Jiang Province. It is known for its beer, sausage, Snow and Ice Festival, and Russian tourists! That's about all that needs to be said I think :) Although most people go in the winter for the Snow and Ice Festival, I just don't know if I can handle sub zero temperatures, so I thought it would be nicer to go now. In fact, Harbin is way hotter than Dalian is right now because it is farther inland...the sea winds make Dalian very cold sometimes!

Although Harbin as a whole was definitely a lot dirtier than Dalian, the downtown area is really clean and they have some nice parks along the river. They even have a pedestrian only street (bu xing jie!) which is amazzzzzing! It was so nice to be able to walk and not have to worry about cars for once. I think there are probably few places in China where you can find these kinds of streets. There were many shops on this street selling 'authentic' Russian merchandise.







The river running through the city was definitely refreshing, but I was a little surprised to see how many people were fishing in it considering how dirty it probably is. I guess the Harbinese really are a "hard people".... I also saw someone swimming in it with what looked like no end in mind. I guess he was getting some exercise?



The city originally started as a railway outpost for Russian engineers who were surveying the construction of the Trans-Siberian railroad. The Russian influence can still be felt today- the downtown area has many Russian-style buildings. The most famous example of Russian architecture in the city is the Church of St. Sophia. The church was almost destroyed during the Cultural Revolution, but luckily it mainly stood in disuse before being restored in the 90s. It was pretty cool to see this in China, but it was definitely a lot smaller than I thought it would be.

While I was walking around the church, a ton of Chinese people trying to sell little things were trying to speak to me in Russian. At any time, I would be walking down the street and all of a sudden I would hear a bunch of Chinese people shouting "Elousiren, Elousiren!" which means Russian in Chinese. Come on now...really?! First, I think it's a little annoying that they shout that, but it's also a little annoying that they assume that I'm Russian. The Russian population in Harbin is much smaller than it used to be, but I guess the tourist sector there still mainly consists of them. The picture is a famous little Russian cafe in the downtown area. It's pretty cute on the inside, but the coffee there was exceptionally terrible. For a little while though, I felt like I was not in China anymore. Even the waitresses were dressed in little Russian dresses. They definitely thought I was Russian in here...oh well, I guess I made the cafe seem more authentic for a while :)

















According to my travel book, in the early 1900s Harbin also used to be home to over 25,000 Jews who had fled from Russia. Most of them left after World War II ended, but there are still a few remnants of the Jewish influence in the city, including a synagogue that has been converted into a hostel. If you look closely, you can see the star of David at the top.
Last story from Harbin, when I was walking along the river I needed to use the bathroom so I found a small public toilet. I walked in, and it was one of those ones with just holes in the ground and really small division walls. There was only one hole open, and it was next to this woman who was just chilling there while she defecated. When she saw me, she immediately started trying to talk to me. It was really simple Chinese, so I could understand her...but after a while I started getting a little uncomfortable because it was unclear how much time was left before she was done. So...I finally just told her that I didn't understand her and ran to my hole. Then she started trying to peep around the corner to continue the conversation, but I just couldn't have that lol. Chinese people can be friendly in very unusual ways :)

A suck-up!

The boy on the right is so super cute (the boy on the left is too, lol). You can't really tell in this picture but he is soo tiny. And I love his little yellow glasses! They have a big nose piece in the front and another piece of plastic that goes around the back of his ears to keep the glasses securely fastened to his head :)

The best part about him is that every time I ask his team what name they want, he ALWAYS says "Team Miss Church! Team Miss Church!" Usually, I appease his request, hahah. What a little suck-up ;)

He cried one time, and it literally broke my heart. He had to take off his glasses to rub his eyes, ah! Whenever a student is crying, all of the other students demand that I take note of it. They all say "teacher, teacher, he/she is crying!!" and make me approach the student. They always say it like it's a crime. I'm not exactly sure what they want me to do about it, besides just taking note. I always ask the student if they need to go to the nurse, and none of them ever do, so I have no choice but to just move on and continue with class.

Anyhow, another one of my faves!

I'll never go hungry...

because of this little girl! She brings me something to eat almost every single class, and it's always something different. Sometimes it's bread, sometimes it's fruit, sometimes it's candy...one time she brought me a peeled hard-boiled egg though, and I accepted it graciously but had to throw it away later. Fortunately, she did not get on my case about eating that day. Usually when she gives me food and I don't eat all of it right away, she'll start to unwrap it for me or hand it to me again and won't leave until I eat it, lol.

Here mom is the 4th grade Chinese English teacher but for some reason the daughter speaks very little English. I think part of it may be that she is not very serious about school.

She's very funny...today in class I played part of the music video for "Thriller" where the zombies come out and she looked absolutely horrified throughout the entire 3 minutes lol. She's such a little girly girl. Another time during a group game she raised her hand so I worked my way through about 20 kids to get to her- I thought she had a question about the game, which I was surprised about because she usually does not participate. Instead, when I got there, she made me lean down so she could whisper in my ear "teacher, you are beautiful today" lol.

Well, she is just one of many students that I have to use non-verbal communication to communicate with. Sometimes though, it's really frustrating not being able to have an actual conversation with some of my students because their personalities do not transcend the language barrier :(

Not all my QQ conversations are so interesting!

so it's always fun talking with a few of my students, but some of my conversations can be a little painful..

Cici Jiefang 3.3 4:03:25 PM
Do you sbig chins?
Cici Jiefang 3.3 4:04:05 PM
Do you live chinna?
Miss Church (Victoria) 4:04:35 PM
I speak a little Chinese
Miss Church (Victoria) 4:04:43 PM
of course I live in China!

Cici Jiefang 3.3 4:06:20 PM
Do you like a toy robot
Miss Church (Victoria) 4:06:39 PM
yes, i like toy robots
Miss Church (Victoria) 4:06:40 PM
do you?
Cici Jiefang 3.3 4:07:21 PM
I like
Miss Church (Victoria) 4:07:58 PM
do you have one?
Cici Jiefang 3.3 4:09:02 PM
Do you like?
Miss Church (Victoria) 4:09:15 PM
what is that?
Cici Jiefang 3.3 4:10:11 PM
Is Hello kitty！
Cici Jiefang 3.3 4:10:44 PM
Do you ike
Cici Jiefang 3.3 4:11:06 PM
?
Cici Jiefang 3.3 4:11:08 PM
?
Cici Jiefang 3.3 4:11:10 PM
?
Cici Jiefang 3.3 4:11:12 PM
?
Cici Jiefang 3.3 4:11:15 PM
?
Cici Jiefang 3.3 4:11:18 PM
?
Cici Jiefang 3.3 4:11:21 PM
?
Cici Jiefang 3.3 4:11:23 PM
?
Cici Jiefang 3.3 4:11:26 PM
?
Miss Church (Victoria) 4:11:31 PM
oh yes, i do like hello kitty!
Miss Church (Victoria) 4:11:41 PM
do you?
Cici Jiefang 3.3 4:11:57 PM
I like
Cici Jiefang 3.3 4:12:24 PM
QQ nubber
Cici Jiefang 3.3 4:12:43 PM
is
Cici Jiefang 3.3 4:12:48 PM
1271315512
Miss Church (Victoria) 4:13:38 PM
you're right
Cici Jiefang 3.3 4:13:49 PM
?
Miss Church (Victoria) 4:14:53 PM
that is your QQ number, you are correct
Cici Jiefang 3.3 4:25:15 PM
Ha Ha

Cici Jiefang 3.3 4:26:36 PM
I love Miss Church
Cici Jiefang 3.3 4:26:39 PM
!
Miss Church (Victoria) 4:27:02 PM
thank you, i love you too, Cici!
Cici Jiefang 3.3 4:27:35 PM
Thant you

...

I just had a taxi driver scream at me in Chinese "YOU ARE SO SMART"... I think this might possibly be one of the best moments of my life, LOL...Chinese people's expectations for the foreigner's Chinese is ridiculously low...if you want to come to China, learn about 5 words of Chinese and you're in!

chinese kids singing good day sunshine!

so cute!

notice the boy in green going NUTS half way through!!!! hahah


this week we sang "baby" by justin bieber...it was EXCELLENT! for the most part, the kids loved him. however, one student told me that he didn't like him because he was skinny, and another student told me he didn't like him because he was crazy- he was so young but he was in love! lol.

My roommates in china...

we're becoming more and more acquainted with each other as the days go by...i with them by learning how to best kill them, and them with me by learning how to best hide...

they come in through the cracks in the wall and pipes in the bathroom. they are disgusting, really smart, and extremely fast.

i can't even escape them in class, i was giving a private lesson and my student's book had a story about cockroaches. i was like NOOOOO!!! i told him about my cockroach problem, he and looked very upset and said 'that's terrible!' the book said that they are one of the oldest animals alive, have extremely good eye sight, and can live with out food and water for like 60 days. good lord.

i was truly scared at the hospital when...

i saw this sign....

i really cannot imagine what kind of atrocities are committed in this room...