Swimming Through Beijing

I feel like a fish. Every time I pass a good water supply, or the see the New Day store, I get another drink. All day, I feel I just drink and drink. And I would believe it all sweats out of me, except for the fact that I also run to the bathroom whenever I can. Oh well, que sera sera. I am thankful to have an abundance of cheap water. it only costs 1 quay to buy a water bottle at the store, 2.5 for Jasmine Iced Tea. I also enjoy their fruit leather! My roommates always buy lemon flavored RITZ, and they also have Oreo s . . .ice cream bars . . . its a great little convenience store located next to the dining hall. It's on the New Day Campus so its just for workers and students, it also sells some products from the New Day factory. Their factory is amazing because they only allow their workers to work 40 hours a week (unheard of here) and pay fair wages. And despite that, they are very successful. This really says something to the villagers who for years believed that this land the compound sits on was cursed.

Anyways, I just finished writing my first lesson plan for next Monday – my first day to teach by myself (yikes!) It is going to be about American money and grocery shopping. There is sooo much that goes into making a lesson plan, especially because we have no text. We have to make a page of sentences for them to practice that would be used in conversations, as well as a worksheet. Then I have to decide how to present a ton of new vocabulary in a way they can pick up in one day. Since we only have four weeks to prepare them for a possible trip to America, we have a lot of info to present – especially in the lower level classes like mine. The hardest part is thinking of fun games and ways to make the info more memorable and real. But, I'm taking on this challenge.

This morning to start out classes we performed . . . . Head and Shoulders, Knees and Toes. This was just a fun way to start them thinking English. At first I think they just kinda thought we were being crazy Americans, but after we began to speed up and make it challenging they were all laughing and enjoying themselves. Our next challenge is think of a fun action/song for every other day. Hmmm – Any ideas?

Off to the village with a native to try some real food - last time i went with my roommate and the only way we survived was cause some of our students happened to walk by. Lol. We also had a family of chickens visit us, they will probably be dinner tonite . . .

Love, Kelli