School is finally finished!  These past two weeks have been a lot of hard work but it was a lot of fun.   It was great to collaborate with other teachers and get ideas- sometimes in my normal job it can be hard to even talk to another adult at school.  The children were so cute and most were very eager to learn and practice their English. Even though there were a lot of cultural differences, kids are kids everywhere.   One of my favorite kids, Richard, was so curious about everything that I taught.  He always prefaced every question with my name:

“Stacie, what kind of eggs do they use to dye for Easter?”

“Stacie, why do Americans eat cheese on everything?” (This was after I presented a lesson on Western food- I didn’t realize there was cheese on just about every picture- macaroni and cheese, cheeseburger, grilled cheese, salad, pizza, loaded baked potato, ….  Maybe its just all the food I like has lots of cheese on it!  There is really very little cheese in this country and most of the kids said they didn’t like it)

“Stacie, what are all the NBA and NFL teams in Texas?”- He knew about some teams because of Yao Ming. 

He would ask me spell everything out and he took notes over everything I taught.  By the end of the two weeks, I looked at his notebook and it was full of about 50 new words that I had taught him.  He told me his dream was to come to the U.S. because it looks so nice.  I just love kids like him!

The closing ceremony was pretty amazing.  A lot of the kids performed- each grade level did an English song and then they showed off what they had learned in their other camp classes like magic tricks, traditional Chinese dances, tap and salsa dancing, kung fu and roller blading.  On the last day, most of the students presented me with little gifts and said 1 sentence about how they enjoyed my teaching.  It was very sweet!

The teachers had also had the farewell dinner with the school officials the night before.  It was another great time.  Overall, the experience was a lot of fun.  It was harder work than I thought it might be but I’ve enjoyed all the people I’ve worked with, the students and China in general.  As much as I don’t really like traveling with big groups, I don’t know how well I would have maneuvered around China without some help.  Not speaking the language does make it a bit of pain but I’m hoping in Beijing with the Olympics just right around the corner, there will be more English spoken there.  

Kristen, Erin, Christina and me at the Farewell Dinner

Kristen and I with Sally