Dragons, Dinosaurs and Moon Cakes

Well i have been in china for almost seven weeks and there are still new things every single day, some are challenging, some are hilarious and some are just too strange for words! :)

Kindergarden is going surprising well, after the chaotic first two weeks i have established some kind of form of teaching, playing and yes singing....its pains me every single time! My K2 class are a wild bunch, probably thee worst class of kindergarden, probably because i'm their teacher and well i let them make too much noise! The first thing i do every morning is stretching exercises, it warms the kids up and gets them moving whilst also learning the body parts! However the stretching excerises took a turn for the worse this week when i stretched and they all began pointing, laughing and screaming in joy....i was baffled but then realised that they could see my stomach, thus the next thing i knew twelve little hands were up my top and kids were going mental...note to self tuck t-shirt in from now on!

Teaching the letter D was eventful....Dinosaur and Dragon being the favourite words, Duck failed miserably as it cannot roar or breathe fire or is in anyway exciting for a bunch of 4yr olds!!! So next thing i know i have six dinosaurs/dragons in my class, lets just say the noise was not appreciated by the rest of the staff! Next lesson after much demanding of dinosaurs impressions, yes my strange weird faces that i make go down exceptionally well with my class....they must think i've totally lost my mind! We started on the days of the week....incredibly boring....so i tempted fate and thought ah its fine, no one knows me...and began to sing the Happy Days theme tune!! My original plan had been to take in my laptop and play the video on youtube and thus not have to sing but kindergarden ain't got no wifi! So there i am standing waving my arms about attempting to sing the theme tune, imagining myself after a few beers and therefore invincible and i was simply stared at with very blank expressions before an eruption of laughter!!! But i battled through and after the third time i had them up clapping their hands and finally saying the days of the week....TEACHING SUCCESS!

September 22nd was Mid-Autumn Festival...so we had Moon Cakes, they are incredibly strange things! The festival is all about missing people you can't be with and has something to do with a goddess and a human lover, i think! But the moon cakes have the yolk of an egg inside them, its possibly one of the weirdest things to eat EVER!!!! and raw egg, gross!!!! some Moon Cakes have green bean or red bean paste in them, others have fruit and nuts etc but they are just not nice! So as its the month of sharing in kindergarden we all got moon cakes, and well we shared them! Due to that fact that many of the kids are korean their faces turned in disgust at the taste of the cake thus i wasn't alone in secretly spitting it into a tissue....the kids however spat it all over the table, themselves and cried out yuck, yuck! Maybe not the best sharing lesson i've had this month!

After several stressful weeks with my youngest class i decided that teaching is not the way forward, chaos is! So after five seconds of reading, well attempting to read peter and jane i decided that my animal flashcards were much more exciting, especially when worn as a hat! Then during music time i got them all up dancing, it was great, i was climbed on, i was strangled, i was swinging them about and thankfully no one got hurt, but they loved it...teacher lily wasn't impressed "they are suppose to sit quietly and listen to the music" but  kids love dancing!!! so i defied the sitting quietly and continue to let them dance, albit quietly, but at least they can move to the music and thus they bond with me more and actually speak the ocassional word of english! But the biggest achievement this week was getting a hug from Trixie, she is really really shy and doesn't speak and used to cry anytime someone looked at her but last week she came up to me and gave me a massive hug and then held my hand up to the canteen. ah in Yantai its the smallest things that make one very happy and give you the encouragement to keep on teaching even when you feel like giving up!