Monday 3/25:
Even though Monday was only 2 days ago (it's now Wed. night) I can't even remember what I did that morning. We're pretty lame in the mornings because everyone else is teaching and its not a big enough time gap to go anywhere very far so it's usually pretty chill. Probably did my usual sleep in until 8, shower, read scriptures, eat breakfast, plan lessons..
We have in-service training M/W after lunch but elementary was excluded from this one and we were told to meet the next morning at 9:30 down at the school instead. I spent the time they were in the meeting laying on the floor next to the windows in the hallways in the sun with Sam and Melanie as we appreciated being in warm sunlight. It's been pretty cold here so we keep going outside to a minimum which is really unfortunate because we're starting to get tired of being in such close quarters all the time and I really really miss being outside. Once it warms up though I plan to make beach visits a very regular activity. Or Spider mountain. Or even the common room (which is almost as cold as outside some days, minus the wind).
For my 4th grade class we started reading The Three Little Pigs and the teacher stayed in the classroom so it actually went pretty well. Up until this week I've always loved my 5th graders more than my 4th graders because they were better behaved but that has switched this week or maybe my patience level has just worn out in different areas. My 5th graders were, as they like to call it, "very very crazy" so I started a system of strikes. If they are talking or speaking in Chinese I write their name on their board and give them a strike. 3 strikes and you're out. One of the girls copies down the names in Chinese and gives them to her teacher. It makes things a little big better but of course does not even come close to completely solving the problem. I had a gap between classes so I sat in on Melanie's class to help her keep her kids quiet but they were a little bit better than usual and there was a Chinese teacher in there so they weren't too bad.
After dinner I spent about an hour putting together a slideshow on holidays for one of the classes I planned for Tuesday. I never got to use it because they were incapable of being quiet long enough to get through the first lesson, let alone two.
For FHE Mikelle planned singing with headphones on for the group like we did on the bus which was fun to do again and I got some cute videos but when I checked my camera this morning all my pictures and videos were gone (I have NO idea what happened) but I've been pretty good about uploading regularly to my laptop so I think I have most of them saved other than what I have from that night. Sam sang a song by The Darkness called I Believe in a Thing Called Love and even with headphones in he did really really well. But ya, somehow deleted. At least it was only a few.
Tuesday 3/26:
Yesterday (Tuesday) I did my normal routine (with TOAST and hot chocolate for breakfast!!! Only because Melanie bought me bread) before I had to go to my Elementary training at the school at 9:30. We walked ALL the way down to the school and then ALL the way up the stairs to the supply room and then waited for an ENTIRE 15 minutes (am I being dramatic enough? Lol) before we found out that apparently the meeting had been cancelled. Alisha: "It was on the board." Me: "I checked the board before I came. There was nothing on there." Alisha: "I took the Post-It for the meeting off like 2 days ago." Me: "You told us last night that we needed to be here." Alisha: "........." Melanie: "The Post-It could have just fallen off (it's right next to a window that gets very windy when it is open) or someone could have taken it off just because. You taking it off the board doesn't tell us that the meeting is cancelled." *Amanda simply walks down stairs because she's far too immature to think rationally* Blah. So I was a little bit ticked off. Both because I'm tired of showing up to meetings multiple times a week that get cancelled without anyone telling me or missing things because no one tells me and because I knew it really shouldn't have been a big deal and I should get over it but I didn't want to.
Lunch was disgusting. They fed us shrimp again with their black eyes looking at us so I didn't even bother making an attempt to eat them this time. Since I've decided against learning Chinese I took a nap in the sun in the hallway while everyone else went to class. It was wonderful.
Since it was Tuesday it was Talon's day to teach!! I still helped but it was nice to not be in charge. The first hour we finished reading the book and then the 2nd hour we showed them a video of the story on youku.com (their youtube) that we had found earlier in the day. Youku.com is now one of my favorite websites because they videos are a whole new level of awkward wonderful. Here's the link for the 3 Little Pigs story we showed them:
http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMjY1NTQ4NTYw.html
After we showed this to them we had them act out the story while I read it. It was actually really really really fun. I tried to do the same lesson with my 5th graders for their second hour and they just couldn't handle it. SIGH They did decide it was time to start using the F-word though (luckily, in Chinese so I couldn't understand it) and since my kids are such huge tattle-tells one of the girls informed me that, "Teacher! Amanda!!! Kevin say very bad word in Chinese. In English it is... F Q." Me: "(correcting her): F you. Kevin-- stop it." I was secretly laughing really hard though. F Q (because they can't tell the difference in sounds very well). That's fabulous Chinglish.
Dinner was nasty too. We had fish sticks again that actually have fake fish in them but its super salty and ocean fishy unlike the shark they feed us in the USA and call fish sticks. I saved some to feed to my stray kitties but they weren't outside our building when I walked back so I just threw it on the ground for them. My favorite cat is a little white one (or it would be if someone washed it) that's super friendly and cute without being overwhelming. It was in the cafeteria a couple Sundays ago and I hand fed it another kind of fish stuff they gave us. She (or he) was down by the main building when we were coming back the other night and I said, "hey nasty! Come back home!!" and she followed us back to the dorms. So her name is now Nastie. Because "ie" is a cuter ending than "y."
After dinner we hung out in my room with one of the topics being top things we want in someone we marry and I am happy to say I'm with a group of people that all agree that them needing to have read and like Harry Potter is at the top of the list. Things after that got boring. Sam, Kristen, and Sarah were doing an ab workout in the common room and everyone else was already heading to bed so things wound down a little bit earlier than usual and poor Melanie had to listen to me talk for at least half an hour before I let her go to sleep. We did agree though that we need to start exercising by running in the morning after breakfast (which means we have to get up early.... :(....) because we feel gross and want to be healthy but also want a hot shower (which turns off from 8:30-11:30). We also decided that we would not start doing this until tomorrow :)
A final note for the day-- I took my ground pad off my bed to sleep on in the hallway and I was too lazy to remake my bed and put it back on so I decided upon a night sleeping on my board *cough* I mean, bed. And surprisingly, it was one of the best nights of sleep I got here. I think I just needed a break from the ground pad. Hopefully Sam slept nicely too because I let him borrow it.
Wednesday 3/27:
Wednesday was the usual routine again-- waking up to the mop lady, getting up 15 minutes later for an almost hot shower, reading, breakfast, and planning. This morning was a little bit better because I started reading Jesus the Christ. I volunteered to teach the Sunday School lesson this week so I'm hoping to have some things to talk about for the Easter holiday from the book. We also watched the first episode of Big Bang Theory while I drank a guava "milkshake" one of my students gave me and even though I'm quite sure it cut off the beginning (of the episode) I still thoroughly enjoyed watching it and not only seeing my friends again but seeing them when they met and were even more adorably awkward. Melanie and I were the only ones who watched it because Sam and Talon were going to go running (even though Talon claimed he was super sick and had strep throat) but then decided against it because it was so windy so they went to the JiaJiaYue to get noodles instead. Sam did come and spend a little bit of time with us before though when he came and cuddled up on the end of Melanie's comfy bed and chatted with us for a few minutes. This sort of behavior is very common for a few different people in our group. Let's just say that Melanie's (what feels like) memory foam mattresses and my ground pad are very popular.
Melanie had to leave early to go print stuff off for her class so I had extra time to put a little effort into my appearance today. I wore my retarded navy blue plaid shirt that I love so much that buttons up the front and back and french braided my hair and put on makeup. Luke informed me that I was not, "hard on the eyes" so apparently I did okay :)
For lunch there was fried-ish rice!! It had some veggies in it and I think even a little bit of salt although I don't know if it was actually fried. But still.. it tasted amazing and I ate more than a normal portion. We had in-service training outisde on the steps because it was actually warm today. We've had a couple decent warm windows for a few hours at a time where I only had to have hoodie on but today I didn't wear a jacket at all. It was fantastically wonderfully marvelous.
I taught 4 classes today. The first one for the 4th graders was on hermit crabs and went really well other than when one of my students asked me what p-e-n-i-s meant. 5th grade was still pretty crazy although I bribed them with letting them watch another youku video (I showed them Dumb Ways to Die yesterday) at the end of class if they got less than 5 strikes total. They only got 4 but half of that wasn't so much their bad behavior but me being nice because I wanted to watch the video and have class end 3 minutes sooner. The second hour of 4th grade was back to complete panic. It started off okay and then all at once there was what I am going to call an explosion of children from the back of the room all yelling about water and running off to grab mops and brooms and dust pans. Apparently the pipe that runs up the back corner of the room has started leaking and flooded the back of the room. That was all sorts of crazy to calm down and then there were about 5 boys that started getting into legit fighting mode back there and they can actually get really mean and violent with each other so its something you really do have to stop. I went back and yelled for everyone to "SIT DOWN NOW!!!!!" and spent the next 10 minutes watching my biggest problem child, Walter, screwing around in the back to the point that Talon took him out of the room but when he went back there Walter had his pen up like he was going to stab Talon so he ended up having to pin the kid's arms to his side and push him out of the room which ended in basically carrying him out of the room. Somehow I managed to get the kids to practice an educational version of the Macarena after that but I have no idea how. The teacher came back in with a few minutes to spare and said they all needed to go practice their jump rope skills for the competition tomorrow so not only did I get 2-3 minutes shorter of a 4th grade class but my next 5th grade class started 10 minutes late :) The teacher didn't actually tell me all of that but after a failed attempt at communicating verbally I figured it out by following the kids out of the room. I understood the "class is over" part and I wasn't going to disagree. In 30 minutes the 5th grade class was so crazy that I gave them 20 strikes which is apparently is equivalent to 200 Chinese points which they total on the board every day and I'm pretty sure 200 points is really really bad, especially for only that much time.
Dinner was meh and some of the people in the group went to get cheap massages afterwards that I didn't get invited to this time because I wasn't at the right place at the right time when it got set up. It happens.. oh well. Melanie and Mikelle left for the store so I enjoyed the quiet time to myself by writing my lesson plans for next week that were due at 8pm, reading my Rocks and Minerals book, and catching up on journaling which I'm very happy to say I have almost now finally completed!!!!! (It's also almost midnight.) The plan was to do all of that and then tuck my kids in at 8:00 so I waited all evening until it was late enough and then Mikelle walked in and said one of my kids was asking for me (because I had promised them I'd go tonight). It was 8:40 and I thought it was only 7:40. I had gotten so wrapped up in writing that I'd gone over an hour without checking the time and the time on my laptop is still AZ time because I want to still have a link to reality at home. So ya.. missed it. Again. But tomorrow night I'll go. Can't even wait to tuck those stinky little buggers in. But seriously. I know I complain about them and talk about how crazy and talkative they are but then Bruce or Bettd (that's not a typo) will come up to me and just love on me and I can't help but fall crazy in love with them too.
Melanie just started snoring so I need to wrap this up pretty soon. She's started snoring because she's a little sick but she'll also randomly say things in her sleep every once in a while. This morning she randomly laughed and a few minutes later said, "cool!" which gave me a big smile. I probably already wrote this forever ago but one night Mark (I was told this by Geoff) said, "Bum in chair!" which is one of their rules and one I'm sure they have to repeat quite a bit. I really wonder if I've ever said anything in my sleep. I have no idea. I did spend about 20 minutes telling Melanie about my awesome camping gear last night when she was going to sleep and then talked about some other stuff too and looking back I really appreciate that I have a nice roommate because I can't imagine how boring my camping gear must be to other people even though I find it to be one of the coolest things in my life. Anyways, good morning USA, goodnight China. I know you've just woken up and for me it's already tomorrow. Such a strange concept that is..
love, Amanda.
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