Zhuo Feng Graduation

Well, this week has been nice and slow so far, just plugging away at camp stuff. Yesterday we mass-produced emotion cards to use in our classes. Most of them we just used previously drawn cards, since we have taught this topic in the semester. But we added two new emotions that presented quite a challenge to us, especially since neither of us is that talented when it comes to art... anyways, take out a pen and some paper, and draw a cartoon face to depict "grumpy" and "nervous" or "embarrassed" for that matter! Anyways, they're done now, save for the laminating.
Yesterday afternoon we got to go see my 6th grade students graduate from Zhuo Feng. It was pretty fun, and the speeches weren't too long or unbearable. When we first got there, we got to look at some picture books that the students made of their time at Zhuo Feng, and one of the books had their grade 1 class picture. It was SO adorable! I enjoyed trying to figure out who was who. Some of the students look exactly the same, but taller, while others have changed a lot. All of the students at Zhuo Feng are from the Bunun tribe, and so as they graduated, they got to wear special clothes that they wear for dancing and other ceremonies. Some of the highlights were:

• getting called up (out of the blue) to present a gift to one of the students
• these hilarious skits that the students did (though we didn't understand what was going on at all, each one ended up with one or more of the students falling down)
• a dance performed by some of the 4th grade girls (the cutest thing EVER)
• the students saying "Thank you Hope and Charlotte for teaching us English" (in English) in the middle of their speech to thank all their teachers
• their classroom teacher giving a really emotional speech that got half the students from the other grades crying

It was a really interesting ceremony, and since it is such a small school, there were only 6 graudating students. Afterward we stayed for their graduation dinner which included such interesting things as sashimi, a whole chicken, sweet and sour fish, pineapple shrimp and egg roll type things. It may have been the most "western" Chinese meal I've had! What I mean is the food was more similar to the Chinese food you get in North America than most of the food you get here.

Gong Xi, Gong Xi which means congratulations!