Always an Adventure...

Yesterday when I was riding my bike somewhere, the people in this little store were waving at me and saying hello. I smiled and waved and kept going, one of a hundred hellos I get in a day, shouted out car windows, by people walking by, from stores along the road.... Today the man from the store stopped me and turns out they actually had wanted to talk to me! Boy did I feel bad.... Anyways, they were curious about our English classes and want to send their teen and a couple of friends to our Saturday class, how exciting! That's all.

My good friends Amy and Annie ready to party!  

Easter morning started for me like it started for many others around the world and throughout history... getting up while it was still dark and making my way out of town before the sun rose. Hope and I rode out to a hill and read the account of Christ's resurrection, and then sang a number of songs. It was different to watch the sun rise over the mountains, since for the past four years I've been watching it across the expanse of Saskatchewan hay fields. It had its own beauty though, forever mirroring in a small way the wonder of new life and the constancy of God. Also different was that I was in a light cotton shirt, not bundled under layers of clothing, and when I returned it didn't take me an hour to stop shivering... I went to breakfast and then got ready for church. It was a nice service, but I do miss Caronport Easters... it's really a blessing to be among so many amazing teachers there. At church, Coco gave me two letters they'd received, Easter cards

It was fun to celebrate Easter in Yuli Church. They are generally quite energetic. We discovered there is a Taiwanese version of "Christ the Lord is Risen Today" 

Hope and I after church... please ignore the wierd expression on my face... another squinting into the sun picture, reminiscent of half of our family photos (which of course were widely distributed) 

All dressed up for Easter.  

Our living room before 8 children descended upon it!  

Annie and April. April was the youngest girl that attended, but has amazing English (on account of her dad being the owner of the cram school). She was asking us questions like "what are you afraid of?" and "what do you like to do?" amazing.  

Gigi is from church and also in my class at Yuli Elementary 

Look at all these artistic little friends (xiao peng you) 

Samuel, Mary, Hope, Joey 

Yen Ting and Echo 

May and Amy were busy covering balloons with something like paper mache. 

The kids got to color two kinds of eggs.  

The kids with their eggs.  

A final picture of us with our proteges... L-R Gigi, me, Hope, Mary, Dr. Su, April, Yen Ting, Echo, Joey, Samuel, Annie 

Easter Art. 

I have two Kobes in my class and two Michaels. My boys really like basketball! 

Some of my adorable elementary school students! This is Amy from Zhuo Feng. 

Some my students really don't like getting their pictures taken! 

Look at that attitude! Actually, Steve is one of the best and most helpful students in my San Min 7/8 class.  

Lily from San Min, her name was Jessie last semester.... I guess they don't get too attached! 

Jacod, from San Min 

I must say that the rest of this week has been pretty eventful so far. When I think of my life here, I am overflowing with thankfulness. We know so many wonderful people who take care of us really well. Almost every time we go out, we get to see people we know. I only had two Jr. High classes on Thursday, which were ok. My one class has some discipline issues, but when I asked the teacher how she normally disciplines the class, she said "well it's my first year of teaching them and i am trying to be their friend, so I don't really discipline them... many of them have bad pronunciation or can't understand, so they don't want to learn.." Well that was NOT really what I wanted to hear, but anyways, I'll deal with it. I wish I could communicate that their pronunciation is not going to get any better if they won't practice... Oh well, I really do like the class, they are my most energetic class (which accounts for some of the problems too haha). Ther

Yesterday was our first day of class at Yuli Elementary. We have class there from 12:50 -1:50 and then have to boot it over to Yuli Jr. High for 2:10. Fortuately, Yuli Jr. High has midterms at the moment, so we didn't have to worry about that. My class is 1st-3rd grade, and they are really cute!! I think they all know the ABC's though many of them can't write them yet. It spent quite a long time just to get them all wearing name tags and giving some of them English names. I'm anticipating this will be the case at my first class tomorrow at Yon Feng elementary, though hopefully not since there I am teaching 3-4th grade and 5-6th grade. The kids here are always really excited to see pictures of my family and Canada that I bring in. They are excited about snow, and shocked at Zeke's height. They are always quick to point out which one is me, I think that is their favorite. I brought in some pictures to illustrate the four seasons. In the evening, I was supposed

... whether you're having fun or not! Not to worry, i'm having fun for the most part! What have I been up to? What else? planning lessons, teaching lessons, talking about lessons i just taught.... it's a vicious cycle really.. lol I must say, I have even more respect for my past teachers now that I've joined their ranks. Especially elementary teachers who are with the same students all day, every day. I'm really enjoying the change to teach more children this semester, though I'm getting a little sick of teaching ABC's. Two more classes to start with this week! Saturday was a really busy day, since we were teaching 3 classes morning, afternoon, and evening. Saturday night we were able to share with the Young Holistic group about "Getting a Global Vision" It was a lot of fun, we sang the chorus of "I could sing of your love forever" In Chinese, English, and Portuguese. We each shared about our experiences and how we felt God leading u

I have a ton of stuff to update, but for now, I'll just share a really funny story with you! In our adult class on Saturday afternoon I was teaching the advanced students, and we were playing a board game. The topic was family, and so the students were having to share many things about their family. I had one student who was really capitalizing on the opportunity though! When answering one question, he mentioned how he wanted to get married soon and have a really happy family... One of the aspects of the game was that if you landed on a space with a ? you had to ask someone else a a question about their family. In any case, I was a little shocked when this student asked one of the female students "Do you like me?" She was suprised too, and didn't want to answer! He told her "You have to answer, those are the rules of the game!" When she tried to protest that it wasn't about her family he smoothly replied "Well you may be part of my family in the fut

...things are going pretty well. I just returned from teaching my teachers' class.... it was a lot of fun, I think it will be one of the most enjoyable classes in the week. As always, it is a little odd to be teaching people who are older than yourself and in this case, who have been teaching longer than you, but anyways, their teaching methodologies are generally not very task-based, so I think they are learning something new. Also I'm focusing on pronunciation which means I have to brush up! At least we haven't gotten into grammar yet, though I do get some grammar questions from my teachers. Our Yuli Jr. High classes were cancelled this week since they have midterms coming up... wow we just started teaching there it seems and they're having midterms already! The rest of this week is going to be a bit of a whirlwind, so I probably won't update again until Sunday... sorry! I have to prepare what I want to say on Saturday Night about being a missionary/getting a g

Our sick little puppy died today. She's been sick for a couple of weeks, probably longer actually. Good-bye, Frosty. :( My sick teammate got better, and we were able to team teach our classes on Thursday night and today. They went pretty well. Our adult classes are really fun! It’s quite a change from the Jr. High students. Our Saturday afternoon class was really small, which is ok, though I wish some of our Thursday night students could come on Saturday! It’s a little disproportionate. Anyways, there was some kind of big dance exhibition/ competition going on at the school across from the library today, which everyone and their cockroach wanted to take us to. Anyways, we went for maybe 10 minutes after English club this morning, yet somehow managed to get on TV! Peggy told me later that she’d seen us on TV. Poor dancers performing while we showed up… they’ll have to wait another day for their 15 seconds of fame. Meanwhile we’re going on 5 months of fame… sigh… lol. I’v

ok, I shall once more attempt this blog entry... i'll start with the most recent news before I return to previous events: I hurt myself!! I was riding my bike, and going a little too fast, and was riding on a curve when suddenly I somehow wiped out.... it was really scary.... I wasn't totally sure what was happening, but I think I kind of went over my bike and then it went over me... I've got some painful road rash on my left elbow and what will be a monster bruise on my leg, but that's all, but if you saw my bike you'd be amazed that I didn't incur further damages: the basket was almost totally imploded in a misshapen heap of wire and when the handlebars of the bike face the right direction, the front wheel is perfectly perpendicular to the rest of the bike... I have no idea how I managed that. Anyways, I called Hope and she came to my rescue along with Mr. Yang who (once again) loaded my bike into the van and then took me to Dr. Su's so I could be bandag

i just spent about 30 minutes writing an entry which got erased when i went to save it... i will try to repost it when I am in a less agitated state.

Friday I had class at Yu Dong, and since Hope is sick, I went by myself. I really like my students there, and it's so great to have a smaller number of students for a longer period of time. I've also set up a system now that will benefit those students who want a little extra practice. They all have class notebooks, and I told them that if they write questions to me in English, I'll write them back. Only a few students have the confidence and skill to write me, and it's usually only a couple of sentences. Windy, who is the class leader, and has the best English of those students has written me both times. The first time she wrote "when you first see me, do you feel...." I wrote her back saying that I thought she was really kind and cute. This time she wrote "Are you feel bored in class break? Beacuse no body talk with you, and our English is not good. So, I think you're bored." This class, though, had an incident that really disturbed me. The st

So there was this really scary situation... a lady came up to us and asked us if we could come teach at her school from 1-2:30 on Thursdays. Well we alrady teach 3 classes on Thursdays, and one of them starts at 3:00, so there's not really any way we could teach that class, since it takes about 20-30 minutes to get to San Min. Hope tried to very tactfully tell the lady that we already had a very full schedule, and that that time would not work for us. Well she wouldn't take no for an answer and kept insisting that her school needed us. Finally she informed us that she was a very important person in the community, and that if we didn't come to teach at her school, she would make sure our friend (one of our main coordinators here in Yuli) Coco got fired! At this point we had NO idea what to say or do, but fortunately Liz and Phil arrived and as we were beginning to explain the situation to them, I woke up..... whew I think I was a little stressed out to dream about such

i'm not sure i have any really good excuse for my lack of updating last week.... i have been quite busy, but i suppose mostly i just haven't known where to start telling of everything that's happened. I guess if I'd been updating daily, you'd all be party to the whole drama of things rather than hearing my brief (or not so brief) summary of events. It all started a week ago today.... (play chime and cut to out of focus screen with clouds around the border) I'd found out the night before that my reading centre class started at 7:30pm. Prior to that, I had to have a lesson/ministry meeting from 8-10 with Dr. Su, then teach at an elementary school in the afternoon. So I was a little flabbergasted with it all.... anyways, the day didn't exactly go well.... in my elementary class i played a game where i had ball that i threw to different students when it was their turn to answer a question. But then one of my students threw the ball kinda hard (though it's im