home visits

so we thought we were going to do home visits the week when we got back from vacation but we didnt... well turns out we had them this week.

way neat experience.

so these kids are pretty much well off, like really well off. which is ironic because i guess all of the teachers here thought we were going to be teaching the kids from the ghettos. i just thought it'd be middle class regular kids. ooooooh no. these kids are loooooaded.

okay side note two of our teachers, lorenda and jaimee actually got pretty violently ill. we're pretty sure it was food poisoning because the rest of us didnt get sick.. but we cant figure out what did it. lorenda's vegan so we're thinking it might've been some wierd thing she picked up at the store.. but we're not sure. but it was pretty bad like from 7pm to 2 in the morning throwing up every 20 minutes. its the exact thing i've been dreading. hopefully i can avoid for my time here.

so since they were out of commission chantelle, jay and me went the first night. we went to three kids' houses. lucy and their teacher cindy went with us, lucy was the translator. we thought that the home visits were going to be the parents take us out to dinner, but this wasnt the case (its different for each home visit). we werent sure what it was going to turn into but the first day we just kind of sat there while lucy talked to the parents. it was kind of frustrating because she wasnt translating at all so we're just confused. lucy said our job was to interact with the kid and talk english with them.

first visit: LEO, the new kid

Leo had been in our class a day. so we're like um.. how are we supposed to report on his progress and what not. we go in and its this really nice apartment (nobody has houses hear, just really big apartments). and i am very happy we got to go on these home visits because we got to see where these kids are coming from and we totally gained some insight into what makes them the crazy little kids they are. so leo to sum it up is a spoiled only child. there were toys everywhere and the tv was on the whole time and he just was absorbed in playing with toys and eating his little raisin candy. it was so hard to hold his attention for more than 10 seconds. oh and this kid, automatically the coolest kid. he has about a 12 inch long braided rat tail. ha. its hillarious. and the first day at school he just kind of seemed zoned out and kept doing these like karate stances and i couldnt get his attention. well turns out he's infatuated with Ultraman. which is has many many action figures of, and well it just made his personality make more sense. the one thing that made me laugh the hardest was that these parents have these really nice photo albums made of their kids. they're a bit ridiculous. but one was leo just dressed up in different costumes, one being superman and he was in action hero stance.... which a bigger version was sitting, framed, on the mantel. it cracked me up.

second visit: Blake, cute shy kid

Blake is one of mine that i'm over. (we each have about 3 kids that we are over). He has the saddest little cute face. his eyes have this cute watery look to them all the time. he's way way cute. his house was like the first. huge flat screen tv, nice furnishings, and whatnot. and something the parents do is just shove a bunch of food in front of us. most of the places we just got fruit and hot water (to replace the tea we would've had). but blakes house we banked on. he had like this tub of candy that they offered to us and most of it western candy! (china doesnt really have chocolate or anything, they think its chocolate but believe me when i say its far from). but okay so we dont drink tea and lucy tries to stop them before they serve it to us. but blakes mom started making these individual cups of something that looked like coffee, so we're like lucy is she making us coffee? and lucy's like no its milk tea. and we're like um.... well.... we dont drink tea. and lucy tells us its not tea. so we're like okay, we dont want to insult these people because they seriously monitor whether you're eating what they've presented for you. and jay, a very very smart girl says yea its just like a milk drink. so we're like okay we're safe. well number one turns out milk tea is black tea with sweetened evaporated milk (didnt find that out until we looked it up at home later that night) and i saw chantelle's had a chocolate looking thing so i assumed mine was chocolate. i take a drink and i'm like "hey guys..mine tastes like coffee..." and jay's like "well i think mine's strawberry" and chantelle said her's tasted like chocolate so i'm okay well mines probably just chocolate. nope turns out its coffee milk tea. so we're like great. i just broke like half of the word of wisdom in one sip. and thats not all they offered us some gourmet chocolate covered crackers, we look at the label and it says Bourbon. hahaa. we were like crap.. we're going to have to talk to the branch president about this one. lol. we had a good laugh. and the visit really went well, we got blake to talk to us a lot more than leo. it was fun.

visit three: Jodie, super outgoing girl

So we're all excited for jodie's house because she gets so excited whenever we show up at school. so we're thinking she's going to have a heart attack when she sees us at her house. yea. not the case. we go in and we think her mom didnt tell her because she walks out and sees us and just has this look of shock and horror on her face. it was wierd. i thought she just woke up or something but we freaked her out. she didnt talk the entire time she went and hid in another room. like didnt even smile the whole time. it was weird. we seriously freaked her out. but her mom was way way cool and actually just had another baby girl 3 months ago. so that was exciting. but pretty much lucy and her just chatted for an hour while we just sat their and had our own conversation, we talked about what we were going to name our future kids. and jodie's mom had these really really good fruit platters. it was fun.

DAY TWO

so lorenda and jaimee were still ill so we took the next night too. i call this series the factory kids.

So guzhen (where we live) is just full of lighting shops, mostly chandelier. buts it seriously lives up to its name as the lighting town. so the other three kids just lived in gated really nice apartment section of town. these kids live about 20 minutes way in factories. they live in the factories that their dad's run. and let me tell you, it made the previous night kid's look poor. it was ridiculous.

first visit: Andrew, mischevious cute kid

so we get picked up in this nice SUV (barely anybody drives more than a car, if that) and they take us to the factory. we walk a couple of flights of stairs and get to the apartment part of the factory and oh my gosh. it was SUCH a nice place. huge screen tv awesome huge leather couches. his mom comes down in this silk house robe. lol. it was amusing. andrew is kind of a mischief maker but this house visit went SO well. he was playing and talking to us so much. and we had so much fun. then they showed us some of his drawings and we saw his room and then proceded on a tour of the home, including the pool! and their little white fluffy dog that andrew so lovingly gave it the english name of jessica. lol. it was cute. but we had a really good time there. it was fun. (ps. andrews the kid that drew the inappropriate puppet. lol)

second visit: Ya-Ya

Ya-Ya is a girl that i dont really know that well and she's not particularly one of my favorites. She had dance class that would pull her away from ilp class alot so she was gone alot. but her house was really really nice. and everything seemed golden. we got to see her room and whatnot. it was a good visit.

third visit: Mike, the chubby kid

so it was kind of late by now and we go to mikes house and i think he was already in bed but she woke him up to say hello to us. but he didnt stay in the same room with us. i loved his mom. she was way cute and i also respected her the most. because she seemed to want to fix some problems and seemed the most concerned with her child's progress instead of the others who just wanted to hear that they were doing well and what not. it was sad because she was telling us that his chinese teachers dont like it and he thinks its because he's fat. but he's really not, like his body's not, his face is just rounder. he's so cute! and he's SOOO smart. he's one of our smarter kids. but he's kind of above than just coloring something and so he just kind of sits there and mumbles to himself sometimes or just seems disconnected. its like he's not being stimulated enough. so we talked about what we could do. but i really liked his mom. oh and funniest thing ever. like this just made our night. so mike is kind of quieter but he gets into these goofy moods and just mumbles and mutters to himself, and we've gotten not mad at him, but have told him off for it. well comes to find out his mom says he's like in love with Mr. Bean. he watches the show non-stop. and we're all just like, oh my gosh. that makes SOO much sense! he does the Mr. Bean face all of the time now thinking about it! and he just mumbles like him. it cracked us up.

so we're just really really happy we went on these. it was such a neat experience for us. and i loved just being at their homes and just observing and learning more about their lives and how they really live.

oh yea ps. lorenda and jaimee went on one last night with karen's family. turns out they're the flipping loaded ones. they took them out to a dinner that cost 800 yuan and gave them both red envelopes with 200 yuan in them. red envelopes are gifts you give to people and they just have money in them. so we put that in a community jar. but flip. we totally got cheaped. but whatever.

oh and update. lucy's gone. we're way bummed out and sad about it. but she's actually been so thinking about quitting for a long time. she doesnt really like her job which we cant take personally...but we are kind of her job. but she also doesnt like "the bond lady" jane bond, who is her boss at Bond Language Institute (which is the people that are kind of over us too). she wants to work more as a diplomat kind of. she took a test when she got out of college and was off by like 5 points to get into the career she wanted. so she's going back and living with her parents and studying to retake the test in april. she said we can come visit! so we're way excited for when we can do that. but we're still way bummed because she was so much fun...

now we have tina. the cutest funnest little chinese lady, she about the same as lucy i think around early mid twenties. but she doesnt live with us like lucy did, so thats a tad inconvenient. but we're excited. we'll miss lucy but we're excited to have tina. and we'll still get manderin lessons, and she said if we stay dedicated we can go to two a week lessons. yay!

so thats life. schools still good. the kids are still a bunch of brats that are too cute to get mad at. :) all well in china