Si Hai Holiday Hotel Anshan

Today was our final day at the school; we drive to Shenyang tomorrow. In the morning, we visited he Haicheng Primary School. The children's orchestra sounded top notch! Students entertained us with dancing; a troupe of boys demonstrated acrobatic breakdancing and girls performed a traditional costumed Mongolian dance. We saw a class of students learning English using a fast-paced response method and an entertaining computer game projected on the screen. More classroom visits were ...

... and I played table tennis with our hosts. Later, I taught an English class on common pronunciation mistakes. At the end of the day, we had a cultural exchange. We had been warned ahead of time to prepare a performance, so we sang Frere Jacques in four languages including Chinese. Aaron and Katie both sang solos. We sang the school song and taught the Colonial shuffle ...

... comes from mining building stone and from pears. The mayor is a parent of a student in HSHS, and also is the host father for Chloe. The mayor requested that I assist in making contacts with our Indiana industries to establish economic relations. I don't think he understood that I'm not really that influential. The mayor gave all of us jade bracelets. We took many group pictures of various configurations. The computer I am using is not able upload pictures, so those will ...

... group, so I must be brief. We are convening for a sightseeing trip. When we arrived at the school, it was full of students, on a Sunday. Our students were open-mouthed. The Chinese students were studying for upcoming exams. Music sounded (The Pachelbel Canon) to change classes. Katie asked me if I would change the bells to music. I responded, "If students come to school on Sunday I will."

... she has school in the morning and Sundays are her extra classes, reporting and then singing class with her mother, the police officer/ music teacher. Throughout the weekend she is often doing homework, I think the only time she really stops is when someone comes to visit, that someone usually being me. The poor girl, if I was her, I'd go crazy, I have a lot of respect for her. Anyway, back on track, on Fridays I head over to the family's ...

... her in Chinese. After our lesson I was taken to uncle Li's family's home for dinner. I met the whole family, aunts uncles cousins, grandma and great grandma, it was very interesting and fun, but slightly awkward as my Chinese is not quite up to a family discussion. its very lovely to have an adopted family here, being so far from home and with so few people who speak english around, its nice to ...

... really a futon, and thank god that I'm so short, as I'm exactly the same length as the bed. I am lucky however, that my bed has a fair amount of padding in addition to the feather bed I insisted upon bringing with me, as beds in China are typically hard (I'm talking like a slab of wood here) and there are no springs in the mattresses. As I stumble out of bed and into the day, I head towards my teeny bathroom to take a shower. This means I better have ...

So I started teaching this week. I am absolutely in love with every single one of my kindergartners, they are so sweet and so excited and just want to play and show you everything they can say. We played a game called Switch! It is sort of like musical chairs, except there is only ever one less chair than students and instead of running around the chairs until the music stops, they wait until i say switch, and then rush to switch seats as quickly ...

... stared at it every 10 seconds, terrified that someone was going to make off with my laptop. Eventually I got my luggage settled and went to go find my gate. In order to pass through security they had to send my bag through three times! First it was my ipod, then my perfume and deodorant, then finally i was cleared! After that i found an Olympics store, bought myself a Beijing tshirt and plopped down to wait for my plane, the flight itself was uneventful. By the time ...

... may not have understood the scratchy tape. Perhaps they will make up what they didn't do later in a tutoring session. At the end of the lesson, the American principals took the front of the room to answer questions. Most questions were about American education. The class ended with students giving each of us gifts. I received a beautiful scroll from a girl named Cherry. Her note said she and her grandfather had painted it. At our next school, Anshan Oriental School, we ...