home visits and changes

last night we had another home visit to go on and chantelle and me volunteered to go. We went to paul and bree's house.
Okay Paul's house wins. No, he didnt live in a gigantic apartment, they actually had a house, and it was GORGEOUS! and humongous and just shouted we have money. Paul is one of my favorite kids and one of the cutest. He always seems to be off in his own mind in class but really he is one of our smartest kids. He speaks some of the best english in the class and he's just a really really smart kid. but he's also a little wierd he'll just get up and start doing karate chopping and what not but with his smile and laugh you just cant not love the kid. His parents seemed young and very put together, but also very very nice. Pretty much all of the rich kids their dads are in what else but the lighting business. (In case you didnt know thats all our town is, is chandelier shop after chandelier shop after light shop after light shop, its actually pretty ridiculous). And Paul was so cute. His parents said whenever teachers come to visit he gets really excited. It was so true he couldnt stop jumping up and down and going all over the place for like half an hour. Okay so if we didnt think he was super smart already, this house visit shocked us. So what we do at school is we have 6 subjects we teach, kitchen, shop, arts and crafts, drama, games and gym and we just interact with them. We have certain parts of speech they say and if they say the one we're focusing on for the day they get a token (for example one is concept of wants "i want ____"). So they get tokens and then at the end we count them and they get to shop at "store" which is just our boxes full of little toys as their reward. Well turns out Paul plays ILP school with his mom. And it was absolutely amazing. It cracked us up because he would be the teacher and he mimicked us SO well! it was hillarious. we have a list of rules and number one is "No Chinese" and if they do they have to go sit in the chinese chair, and his mom says he'll send her to a chinese chair. Its hillarious. so we played it with him for a little and he was giving us tokens and we were just busting up laughing. And then we had store and he had his own little box of toys and he was just so smart and just super impressed us. And it was funny because he had a little matchbox like car and he said it was 100 tokens and this is my proud little moment, but i busted out 1 of like 5 chinese phrases i know and used it on him. He told me it was 100 tokens and i said "oh, tai gui la (tie gway la)" which means too much! (we use it in bargaining) and his mom heard me and just started laughing and then paul looks and me and looks shocked said "UH! No chinese!" then he said "you have two more chances and then you get a strike, which is totally what we do with the kids because we have strike cards where they get three strikes then they have to go talk to teacher tina (our Foreign Affairs Officer) or Callie (our head teacher). It was just super impressive. He is so smart and he speaks english SO good. It was amazing. The only thing that was lame was that his parents were going to take us out to a dinner, but we had another appointment so we had to tell them we couldnt. but we were way bummed because i really really wanted to go.. laaame
Then we went to bree's. We love bree, she is pretty much our smartest student. She's one of the smallest cutest little girls and she can be a little pill sometimes but thats only because she's so smart. She forms sentences on her own and everything. its ridiculous. But we go to this shady kind of neighborhood and she takes us upstairs to this kind of run down office place and we go into her mom's big office and thats where we had the home visit because her mom had to work? i dont know it was wierd. And it was kind of sad because her parents didnt really seemed that interested in her progress or in her education, compared to the super involved and super inquisitive other parents we've met. and it was kind of annoying because bree's two year old brother just kept spilling a bunch of stuff and throwing things and it was just awkward because the mom wasnt really talking. I dont know it was just kind of lame. but bree was the high light definately. She is one of the cutest kids. And it was funny on the way home we were talking to her and saying some chinese, like asking her chinese name and then she said Zhongshan Park in chinese and chantelle tried to say it back and bree just pointed to her and let out a big fat "HA". and i just start laughing and chantelle's just like "ugh. i just got laughed at by a 7 year old." It was funny. And minus the setting we loved seeing bree. and these house visits help SOO much. I think the kids are more comfortable with us and we have fun a lot more now. It just seems like we're better friends with the kids.

okay now for changes. So its kind of upset our little world of guzhen but other school have WAY more kids that we do so they've actually needed some teachers to move to other schools. So the first week Megan moved to Xiaolan, the school in the next town over. And then Lucy moved back to live with her family and study for a test in April for a new job. So now we Tina, who is the smallest cutest lady ever. She's the same age as lucy about early mid twenties. And we just love her death. She speaks suuuch good english. Well then a couple days ago we heard they needed even more teachers in Kaiyin (two towns over, we're still all part of Zhongshan) so now Lorenda and Jaimee moved today to go there for the rest of the time. Its just been very frustrating trying to work this out and they give us seriously no notice at all. So now we went from 7 teachers down to just Chantelle, Jae, and me and Callie. Which we're a good little group and its going to be a lot more peaceful in the living conditions because sometimes i felt i was going to snap. But i'm sad that the girls had to leave because we had some good times and enjoyed each other. The other thing that is way way stressful is now our teachings all messed up. We went from team teaching, switching off in 6 half hour rotations, so really i only taught for an hour and a half. To then we were going for four 35 minute lessons in a row with no break, but one day a week we werent going to have to teach. To now where we will teach two subjects a week and have 6 rotations at about 25 minutes a piece with no breaks. It kind of stresses me out, and i think i'll just be really tired by the end of the day, but this is what i signed up for so i'm okay with it.

so thats whats new, and it was sunny for a while but now its gotten a touch colder.. sad face.. but other than that, s'all good.