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Well, what an entertaining evening! I apologise in advance; today's writing isn't the best but its 2am and I'm tired!!!
I, TamPan, Joshua and Sweety had a lovely relaxed day today- like a real holiday! Had an accidental 30minutes lie-in (what pleasure!!), then an hour of Chinese (I still can't understand why Z makes a J sound), then an hour of Teacher Training along with an hour of event planning. A delicious lunch (once again made by our old kitchen angel) started a great afternoon off, filled with sleeping, music and reading. And I was woken in time for dinner. Bliss…
Unfortunately dinner was cut short (not too much of a disappointment as I wasn't enjoying the strange cartilaginous substance that may have been some kind of deep sea animal anyway) as we finally had proper work to do. Once again down to the city square for 'advertising', this basically consists of me playing with gorgeous children for 3 hours, but this time with a real game plan. I had given Joshua a real job to do today, so arming him with 2 giant skipping ropes, I told him to go find some children. I was armed with 20 sticks of multi-coloured chalk, so got to work drawing an incredible up-to-50 Hopscotch outline in the middle of the square. Even before I had got to 10 I had a massive crowd just watching me and touching my hair. Entertaining for all concerned! I must admit I was sweating like a pig by the time I had finished the outline, but it curled around and I was proud. It certainly had a lot of interest! I managed to gather around 20 children and set too sending them along counting as they went. I was very surprise they could all (all being under 10) count to 30. Very impressive as a third language! Also a little bad as my lesson plans are definitely going to be too simple. Poo. But the whole thing was good fun, and I got a laugh out of watching everyone try to pronounce thirty-three.
You may be wondering why I said 3rd language not second, but you see even though China had Mandarin and Cantonese, it also has Provence languages (as in every Provence has its own completely unique language). So all the children I have met so far can speak and write (in both Chinese characters and words) Pingjiang-ese, Mandarin and a smatter of English. Very, very impressive for an average age of about 9!
The children here are so lovely. Genuinely nice, happy, smiling, generous children, so I'm so looking forward to starting teaching now! Joshua commented to me after the evening 'When you enter the square you immediately seem to grow huge tumours, as the children just attach to you. They give you hugs and won't let go, but I get none! That's not fair.' This is true, but then again I would be quite obliged if he took some of the sweatier ones away- Every time they hug me I get sweat marks all down my top. It looks like I've dribbled every 5 minutes. I will attach a picture on the picture part of the blog for proof.
I have also noticed the frogs here sound like chainsaws. Quite incredible. I thought it was a tractor at first, but i've been corrected since. The little blighters keep me up at night.
Finally, I leave a little comment for those of you who have ever watch Napoleon Dynamite and are in dire need of a laugh (mum);
I really recommend watching the video of Joshua's giant skipping rope in the square (located on the video section of my blog, if it I can upload it). It starts with a small girl wearing a blue hair band almost falling flat on her face. I relate it to Napoleon Dynamite due to Joshua's (white top + blue jeans) entrance and exit from the rope. Very entertaining and well worth a watch.
- comments
Mum x You are veritably the Miss Honey of Pingyang! See my suggestion re: Vaseline on messages Xxxxx