Thursday/Friday

Thursday 3/21:

On Thursday waking up was so difficult but I was super hungry so I dragged myself out of bed for breakfast at 6:45am. Melanie didn't want to get up for breakfast so she asked me to bring her a roll. I got down to breakfast and it was a boiled egg and roll again (surprise! Oh wait.. I've never had anything else here for breakfast). The principal sat down at the table to eat with Cindy and I but she doesn't speak English so it was awkward and I ate my egg super fast. The rolls had these jello-y noodles in them that Melanie hates so I brought her two for breakfast :) I later found out that she threw them out. Melanie had Chinese observations for a class they had her teach at 8 which I was a couple minutes late for and sat next to Sam in the back who was practically asleep. Hardly anyone even came to observe her so it was pretty pointless to be there. After it was over we went back to our room and the 3 of us (Talon never showed up for anyone else's lessons) just hung out and talked until I had to teach at 10. My lesson was especially horrible and afterwards we went back to the room again and played Monopoly Deal. At lunch we had DUMPLINGS and it was a fantastic treat. It's amazing how desperate we are for mediocre food here. After lunch we played Monopoly Deal again. I kept losing which wounded my game ego a little bit.

At 12:30 we went to our first Chinese lessons and I decided that I was going to keep sticking to my decision that I didn't want to learn Chinese. I tried to fill out the job application to work for ILP this summer in Utah when I get back but China's internet only works about 20% of the time so I kept getting blocked.

Thursday is Talon's day to teach 4^th grade so I was pretty much done teaching for the day since I'd already taught 5^th grade in the morning (I only have 1 5^th grade class on Thursdays). I sat in on the 4^th grade classes and Talon taught math for the first one. The objective of teaching math is not to teach the actual math but to teach them the terms in English. Those kids are ridiculously advanced in math. I had an hour gap between 4^th grade classes so I was just going to hang out down at the school but I had to pee and since there is no TP or soap in the bathrooms at the school (plus they're squatters that reek of pee/poo) I made the trek back up almost 200 stairs to my own wonderful Western toilet. While I was up there I ate a kiwi and enjoyed some quiet time and then headed back down to the school. When the second class got out I picked up a new water bottle to put on our water dispenser and carried that beast up to my room except for the last 2 flights of stairs because Luke ran into me and stole it to take the rest of the way. Luke, Melanie, and I went and bought noodles at another Muslim place down the street and they were wonderful as always. We're supposed to sign out on a sheet when we leave but since we were only going to be gone for an hour and classes were still going on we failed to do so. We stopped at the JiaJiaYue for some groceries on the way back and when we got back to school Alicia (one of the head teachers) yelled at me a little because (OVER) a week later someone had finally come to replace our bathroom light and they couldn't find us. He did leave the bulb though which was nice.

We had our in-service training meeting at 6pm that night to make up for the one that was cancelled the day before because Casey came. It was as worthless as usual and after 45 minutes of sitting on the arm of the couch my butt was pretty impatient to stay put. And that's all I wrote down in bullet points for Thursday so I have no idea what I did for the rest of the night. Probably just hung out with people in my room and talked. Like usual.

Friday 3/22:

Friday I woke up sick. Sick meaning I simply felt horrible without any side-effects for proof. Here you teach unless you're on your death bed (because let's be honest.. most of us are sick most of the time) so I managed to make it through both of my classes of kids who were not any less crazy even though I looked pitiful and told them I was sick. The elementary teachers had a meeting at 9:40 in Ella's office (what?! ANOTHER Chinese meeting?!!!) but it was actually really really nice. They complimented on us on what good teachers we were and talked about how they want to help us as much as they can because they have been trained as actual teachers and Ella gave us all lasers that also stretch out as pointers. It was very nice after an exhausting week of being observed and having to watch observations every day.

After the meeting I went back to my room and slept through lunch. I got out of bed in time to make it to a calligraphy class at 2 that a couple of the Chinese teachers taught. I don't think I have a single ounce of art in me because I simply could not understand why I had to paint the characters a certain way and why I couldn't just draw straight lines. So I worked on it for a little while and then just sat there watching other people appreciating it and shared their joy over it. After calligraphy a bunch of us went downtown on the bus at 4:15 (it comes every hour) to get noodles at our favorite place and then a bunch of people went to KTV afterwards which is a karaoke place but Melanie and I were both sick so we went to the street they always have a night market on and got a few more DVDs and picked up some stuff at the bakery to eat for breakfast the next morning. I bought This Means War, Breaking Dawn 2 (just because I have never seen it and want to) and the first 5 seasons of Big Bang Theory ($3 for all 5 baby!) Then we went home and laid in bed until everyone else got back and told us about their epic adventures and we kicked them out so we could sleep.