Saying goodbye

Oh, the heart wrenching sadness of leaving these kiddos. The poor babies only sort of understand we'll be leaving, but I think they understand it enough to get that we will probably never see each other again... Hopefully that is not the case, I want to go back!!! It was a sad evening in general, following a very tiring day. We played in the snow with our last class (awesome) and then I spent the day packing up my horrific mess of a room. I had a lot of school supplies.... every. where. On the way to tuck in the kids, I totally slipped in the ice and landed on my bum. That really hurt. Once I got to the dorms, I was able to keep it together pretty well. I made sure to visit my favorite kids (not that I have favorites or anything... heh. heh.) last, and visited lots of others first.

Me right before crying my eyes out. 

 Annnnnnnnnnnnd it's over. I started to cry, which means Daniel started to cry. Sorry baby! I felt SOOOO guilty for making him cry!

 Phil, me, and Daniel. So Phil was actually like the worst kid ever. He tried to be good, but he ruined many a beautiful craft by taking a glue stick, scissors, tape, or craft glue to them. I learned a lot about unconditional love and patience from him. While saying goodbye, he was crying so hard! Like, wailing in grief! And not because I was crying, he was just that devastated. So, I decided to be the adult and cheer those kids up.

 Yay! I cheered Daniel up! I was really worried about him. At the very end, he just kept holding and rubbing my hand and saying "Teacha ok, teacha ok" over and over again. Then, he taught me his Chinese name, Wefan. Seriously, it was like an emotional scene from a movie. I'll paint you s scene;

Me: "I love you Daniel! Wo-ei-nee"

Daniel: (grabs my hand and points to himself) "Teacha, no Daniel. Wefan."

Me: (points to him) "Daniel Wefan?"

Daneil: "No teacha Larkin, (points at me) Teacha Larkin, (point at himself) Wefan, no Daniel." 

When I figured out that Wefan is his real name, he got so excited and gave me a huge loving hug. I love this boy!

 Unfortunately, Phil was not cheered up. I hid a bunch of candy under his pillow so hopefully that's a happy little surprise for him.

I'll miss you, sweet kiddos!

Happy Birthday to Me!

It's my 19th birthday..... Super weird!  I was one of two teachers who had a birthday during the semester so we made it extra fun!

An adorable banner Abbey made for me- she is just the sweetest head teacher ever! With the addition of some fun artwork made by Emily, the little girl that visits us sometimes.... haha she's so funny!

 Two of my favorite dishes were served for lunch today- hash brown type potatoes mixed with peppers and carrots, and friend rice with carrots and peas. Heck yeah!

 Maria straightened my hair and did my makeup, it turned out really cute! Also, PIZZA!!! It was my first time having pizza since coming to China, that's a little too long for me! My group was super nice and paid for my meal... Yummers! (And thanks, guys:)

 Pizzzzzzzzzza. Stuffed. Crust. Pizza. complete with garlic dipping sauce. Can you say heaven?

Haunted House

This week was pretty busy- we put on a haunted house for the kids and it was really fun. We dressed up kinda scary (black clothes and dark makeup) and transformed Caiti's classroom into a dark pathway around the room using huge poster boards. The kids are short enough that they couldn't see over it so popped up when they walked by and that would startle them. The guy teachers hid in the curtains and jumped out at them when the kids would walk by and that scared them a lot too. I hid around a corner of the walk way and stared at them while making a creepy face and then grabbed them as they finally got the courage to walk by which freaked some kids out so badly they hit me. :P  Jake stood on a chair covered in a sheet with a mask and freaked them out and we had balloons and shredded trash bags hanging from the ceiling and a strobe light and all sorts of stuff. It made a lot of kids cry cause they were scared, including my favorite little girl named Milly. We used to call Milly "Spacecadet" because she would just stare off into space during class until we knelt down next to her and she would grin this adorable little grin and finally say a few English words once we helped her. Now she's much better about paying attention. Luckily most kids had a lot of fun and we had a ton of fun putting it on. My throat hurt so badly by the end of the night from screeching and making creepy sounds.

Flooded Classroom

Today my classroom flooded and that was crazy! The heaters here are run by hot water pumping through them and today they were draining the old water out in preparation of turning the heaters on in a few weeks. Problem was, something went wrong so all the yucky old water drained into my classroom instead of where ever else it was supposed to go. Before the water started gushing out of the small pipe air was whistling and spurting out and it was so loud  my kids were terrified and started running out of the classroom. The the brown nasty water started gushing. Ewwww. It was too bad it flooded but then we got to have class outside and the kids just ran around and had fun. It was fun to watch them be kids and be goofy because the school is very strict so they don't have a lot of running around play time outside. I got super wet with some pretty nasty water while I was trying to direct it into  trashcan rather than the floor and my shoes got soaked but thankfully the Chinese teachers mopped the classrooms while we were outside.

Jello!

Today in class we made jello. It was awesome because I would mix water with red crystal light, then put it in a cardboard box “fridge” then take out an identical container of real jello. Then I’d carefully hold it and walk up to one of the kids then suddenly “splash” it on their faces, but of course it was jello so it didn’t go anywhere! They would just look at me in shock then slowly lift up their hands to feel their face and then be even more in shock when nothing was there. That sounds horribly mean but it was seriously the funniest thing ever and they were so enthralled. Before I had the idea of "splashing" them I would just tip it upside down suddenly and watch their jaws drop when nothing spilled. Jello is not a common thing here in China!

You know you're late to class when...

Well today’s lesson went way better than yesterdays, and no one ate moldy bread so that was a plus. Romeo looks fine so I guess he didn’t get sick. He still had an appetite as made apparent by the crackers he stole from me when I wasn’t looking. That kid drives me crazy!!!

So today I left for class way later than I should have. We’re supposed to be at class 10 minutes early, so at 7:20. I left the dorm at 7:26 and that was a really bad idea. I dashed out and pretty much ran down the stairs and I could hear someone else behind me so I though “ok, I just gotta beat the person behind me!!!!” So I dashed down the stairs and out the door and as I was speed walking I looked next to me and a Chinese teacher was there and she started to run because she was late, too, so I started to run and I turned around and Caiti was there and we both started cracking up. So we both sped walked so fast that we passed the 3^rd most late person and we totally beat her to class but we were still both late. If the Chinese teacher next to you is running to class to be on time, you know you're really late! I got to class at 7:31 and of course Kelly the local coordinator was standing right there so she saw that I was late. But I dashed in and the kids were already lined up so it was ok since they had just got there but if I had been any later that would have been really bad. The kids are usually good for about 30 second after their Chinese teachers leave them so I had made it just in time before they started creating chaos in the classroom.

Halloween Horror

It’s almost Halloween so here’s a horror story. 

Today my lesson was making sandwiches out of moldy bread, but they obviously didn’t eat them. I would make a sandwich and put leaves and clean tissues and toothpicks onto the bread to make a yucky sandwich. It was a lot of fun to see the kids reactions and about half the lesson was on not eating yucky food, especially not moldy bread. It was a good lesson and in my last class they pretended to eat the bread, then reenacted puking and dying and stuff like that so I thought the message was pretty clear “you don’t eat moldy bread". (It was literally covered in green mold because I forgot about it for three weeks.) At the end of my last class they weren’t listening so I had them help clean the classroom and they threw away all the fake food and the sealed bag of moldy bread and tissues. I thought the lesson had gone well and I only had a few minutes left in class when I heard kids yelling “TEACHA!! TEACHA!!” and I turned around and Romeo the king of pills was standing over the trashcan with the bread bag ripped open and a huge mouthful of bread. EWWWW!! Why WHY would you do that??? I freaked out and had him spit it in the trash can and tried to get him to spit it all out and I think he got most of it out but another little girl named Chris also ate a little of it and I don’t know if she swallowed but I told her to spit it out, too. I was terrified thta the kids would get sick and I would get in trouble and the Romeo kept saying “Teacha, me no bleh (pretending to throw up) me no yucky” but I wanted him to know it was not ok that he did that so I pointed at him and motioned that he was going to throw up. In the end, both kids came to class the next day perfectly fine so I guess they're ok! That was definitely a scary teaching moment, though!

Giant Picture Frame

So when you google Weihai and look at the images, one of the main ones that show up is of this giant picture frame with stone hands holding it up. It's super cool! So we decided that we were going in search of the giant picture frame, despite having no idea where it was and not exactly knowing how to ask anyone. Jake, Abbey, Ben, Caiti, and I took off down town. Once we found the "beach" we followed it for a while until low and behold, an enormous picture frame! It was even better in person, and the details on the hands were amazing. It made me sad that there was graffiti on the hands, but at least you couldn't see it from the front too badly.

Mug cooking and microwaves

The first time we opened the microwave here in our "kitchen" at the dorms there were four cockroaches hanging out in side.  My roommate went ahead and cooked them along with her hot jello water and they were never seen again. Yummmmmmy. 

On that note, here in china, we've invented something called "mug cooking". It's where you have a big mug, and you cook anything and everything possible in it. So far we've made chocolate chip cookies, peanut butter chocolate chip cookies, noodles, jello, and what ever else can be made from "just add water"

mixes. We've even made things, like the cookies, that needed milk eggs and oil, with just water.  I brought lots of mixes so figuring out how to cook them in just a mug and a microwave has been an interesting experiment. So far I've successfully made yummy American noodles that only tasted a little weird. I'm excited to master some more of these microwave recipes to eat when all that's at the cafeteria is tofu. Why eat hairy meat when you can eat cockroach cookies?