Teach.Travel.Find.Design

Back home, we take field trips by class or grade.  At Guiyang No. 4 Experimental Primary School, we stick together as a school, all 1,000+ of us.  Due to the language barrier, we could not understand the buzz in the hallways or take part in the orchestration of such a large undertaking.  In addition to all faculty being involved, several policemen were on hand as well. Lizzy and I were instructed to enjoy.  And we did. Lizzy and I with the cops.  Don't buy their tough guy looks. They were smiling and playing with the children all day. This video is an overview of our day featuring photos and footage.  It begins with the students getting ready to board the buses, Lizzy entertaining them with a quick lesson on how to do the "Hand Jive" and pictures from the temple and picnic.  For something different, I put it to music and chose Eddie Vedder's cover of "Hard Sun" from the Into the Wild soundtrack because it was in my head all day.  En

Laughing until you cry is probably my most favorite thing.  Today was my lucky day. The teachers are in the process of evaluating each other this week.  This morning, Lizzy and I were invited to sit in on one of CiCi's 3rd grade classes to observe her lesson on transportation sounds.  After a series of activities, CiCi asked students to come up and act out one of the new vocabulary words.  The first student made airplane noises and moved his arms like a windmill: the students got that one instantly; the word was plane .  The next student hopped up and pantomimed driving and said, "honk, honk." Easy, the word was car .  The third student got up and began humming a tune.  At first, we were all perplexed.  Then, he started belting out the words, "Near...Far...Wherever you are...I believe that the heart does go on..."  Yes!  He was singing the song from Titanic .  The kid's a genius.  He was acting out the word, ship .   CiCi's Third Graders  I

I forgot to mention in my previous post that Lizzy and I took the bus for the first time to Yangming Temple! Public Transportation in China!  There's no stopping us now. On Saturday, we rented bikes and pedaled around Huaxi Park (Flower Stream Park) in the Huaxi District of Guiyang. This scenic area follows the Flowery River and we visited at the perfect time as many of the flowers were blooming.  The park was originally built during the Qing Dynasy (1644-1911) and rebuilt in the 1930's.  One famous feature of the park is the Baibu Bridge (One Hundred Steps Bridge).  In summer when water levels are high, it appears that one is walking on water! Baibu Bridge in Huaxi Park Due to a little rainstorm, we did not get to walk across the Baibu Bridge but since we now know that Huaxi Park is only a 30 minute cab ride, we will hopefully return one day and walk on water. As if Friday and Saturday weren't interesting enough, we decided it wa

Lizzy and I finished up our official first week of teaching at Guiyang No. 4 Experimental Primary School.  Since we are using the curriculum already in place, we are supplementing and enhancing with custom PowerPoint Presentations, read-alouds and props.  We have an English teacher in the room with us at all times and rely heavily on gestures and acting out words.   Look!  I'm teaching :) Today, I played a fun game with one of my second grade classes.  We were learning "-ing" words such as listening, watching, looking, reading and playing .  I asked Sally, the classroom teacher, to give the students the words in Mandarin to act out and then I would guess the word.  We had a blast.  They were so excited that I figured out every word.   The students also LOVE competing against one another.  With roughly 50 students per class, I usually break them up into four teams of 10-12 and we see which team is the best.  It's usually the team that's the loudest

Lizzy and I had many things to celebrate today, our first day completely on our own and we did awesome!!! First, we had a leisurely morning at our hotel.  I made us coffee and we spent some time updating our blog and making a game plan for the day.  Our main goal was to find the grocery store nearest to our hotel.  We had lunch on the way at a spot where we will become regulars.  The menu was in Chinese and we started to panic.  How on earth would we order?  There was only one other couple in the restaurant and the gal happened to be an English teacher at the High School.  Boy, were we lucky.  Her  English name was Elaine and we told her to order what was best at this particular restaurant.  We had sweet fish, rice, cucumber soup and a vegetable that translates to "good bitter."  It was no corned beef and cabbage but it was one of the best we've had yet! As we strolled around, we noticed another cozy coffee shop and finally arrived at the grocery store.  At this p

Today was a series of adventures.  The day started out mellow as we walked to school and met with Candice, practiced counting in Mandarin and ate lunch.  Friday’s are early-out, the students are dismissed at 11:45am.  Today, however, was a special day as the students and faculty were to perform in an exhibition at the government later that afternoon.   We had about an hour to kill so Candice took Lizzy and me to a great Jack Kerouac themed coffee house called Coffee Reading.  I had a cup of Honey Pomelo tea (absolutely delightful) while Candice and Lizzy sipped on lattes.  We picked up Professor Rhea at 2pm and headed over to the government.  Lizzy and I were assigned to stand in the hall.  We greeted the officials with a friendly, “Nĭ hăo, Huānyíng” or “Hello, Welcome” as the students on the in-line skating team graciously escorted the officials down the corridor on their skates.    The exhibition began around 3pm with a series of speeches from government and