Students and Parents

I'm ashamed that I haven't posted much about the reason we came here for...TEACHING!! 

Teaching...teaching...teaching! It's a full time job, we are constantly busy with meetings, lesson plans, preparing for lessons, making crafts for our classes, etc. We both teach kids ages 5-7 and they are adorable!

We teach at a boarding school so half of the kids stay here and we get to tuck them in sometimes! The first time we decided to tuck the kids in Jordan and I showed up at 7:30 (the time our leader told us). We decided to do the boys that night since girls and boys sleep separate. To our surprise we arrived right before shower time and were welcomed by a bunch of little undressed boys running around. They were so innocent and happy to see us, it was really funny! And the hugs were ....special haha 

Teaching is kind of difficult, somehow trying to get a bunch of kids to listen and obey your rules is hard when they don't understand you. Who knew?! The kids love the ILP teachers though! I've honestly never prayed for so much patience. At the beginning a lot of us were very discouraged and wondered how we would be able to do this for 4 months but it's getting easier. The kids are learning to love us, and learn our personalities. We are learning to love them and not stress so much about having a perfect lesson, as much as just an easy going lesson where they can learn English and have  fun! 

They say some of the funniest things sometimes and my favorite thing is when they try and make sentences out of words they know. Like sometimes they call me "pizza" just to be silly and other times we play charades while they try and describe toilet paper to me haha! 

Along with the students are the parents! All of our kids go home on weekends and since the parents know that they have American teachers, they like to invite us over for dinner. Home visits are SO fun. The first time we attended my student's house, it was Jordan, Kelly (our native), Andrew (another teacher who lives here but is from America), and I. They taught us how to make dumplings, and made us feel right at home! 

Since we don't really have our own home here it was so nice to feel that "home" feeling somewhere. They welcomed us with a lot of fruit, and even put up balloons! They offered us EVERYTHING they had and when it was time to cook they let us help and work with them. It reminded me of when I go home to Mexico and visit my aunts, except we didn't understand much but Jordan was a natural at rolling the dough for dumplings (: 

Our second home visit was to another one of my students homes. Thomas is one of the CUTEST students we have, he knows a lot of English and has been to America many times. I met his mom one time when she came to make pizza with my class and she spoke a lot of English to me so we were excited. This time the girls I co-teach with and I were invited, but we managed to smuggle Jordan in too! Which was a blessing because Thomas LOVED Jordan, he wanted to play with him the whole time, I think he got a taste of what having an older brother would be like. 

Thomas' mom is a fluent English speaker and we had a blast with them. They also made dumplings for us with a lot of delicious side dishes. There were a lot of mom's there with some of our other students too and we were blown away by Katie, my piano prodigy student. She was AMAZING at playing the piano. We had a lot of fun and it sounds like we will be invited many times more before we leave, which we are not complaining about! 

One of the times doing home visits I was asked about my religion. Due to the laws of China I wasn't able to say anything and it broke my heart. I was only allowed to say that I was a Christian, which the parent understood as I believe in Jesus. He then asked me in his broken English if I believed in Jesus, I didn't want to get in trouble so all I was allowed to say was "yes! Jesus is awesome!" (Awesome, was the only word he knew haha). However, we are building bonds with these families and my hope is one day they can come visit in America and we can share what I'm dying to tell them. 

We are getting very attached to some of the kids and families. It's hard to think we will leave them soon. I think at first we struggled with the initial culture shock but as the days go by, I love China more and more. It is so beautiful and tomorrow we leave on our 10 day vacation through China! Can't wait!!