China! After English Camp!

The night English Camp ended all of the teachers went out for some delicious HOT POT! It's like fondue except instead of hot oil, it's boiling soup. We got a pot with half spicy and half mild, and let me tell you, the spicy was HOT! They served us plates and plates of thinly sliced lamb and beef and we dumped them in the boiling broth, waited a few minutes and then ate them. They also gave us some gluten balls, the brown things in the picture, which were pretty bland and crunchy if you ate them straight, or they were nice and soft if you dropped them in the hot pot. It was a delicious meal, we loved it.


The next day some of us went to a park about an hour and a half from the school. It had huge beautiful cliffs and nice shallow water we could walk in. As soon as we got off the bus there were some people walking towards us with horses so a few of us gave in and went for a horseback ride. They said it was only 10 yuan, which is like $1.50!!! Who could pass that up! So we went on the ride, it was like 5 min around a small circular path. Then they said it was 10 more if we went over by the rocks, so we did it, I mean $3 c'mon! Then they said it was 20 yuan more if we wanted to go IN THE WATER. I was not interested, I could just see one of our horses losing it's footing on the rocks and then we'd end up with a horse on top of our broken leg, in a river, IN CHINA. But Mitch convinced me so we went for it. It was pretty pleasant and the guys leading us kept offering to take pictures of us so that was nice, except they kept instructing us to pose certain ways.... Well the whole trip ended up costing about $15 TOTAL for the both of us, so I guess it was worth it!


Oh another thing we saw at this park area, were about 20 ladies in Wedding gowns prancing through the rocks and water! We could not figure out what was going on but then we guessed it was maybe a photo shoot for a bridal magazine or something. Pretty crazy, you don't see that every day!
After we left the English camp school we stayed with a family and did some sight seeing. One day Mitch and I went to the Summer Palace. We visited there 2 years ago with the Purdue Marching Band and loved it so we wanted to go back. It was still beautiful, but about 20 degrees hotter...

Another fun thing we did was go to Pizza Hut!!!! MMMmmmMMMmmm! We were definitely craving some western food, specifically pizza, so it was a great meal. The funny thing is, Pizza Hut in China is like ritzy high class restaurants with snail appetizers, shrimp, and mashed potatoes, in addition to pizza. Oh yeah and about the same price as the US, which seems like a lot when everything else in China is way cheaper.

Our Summer Since China

I have to apologize again for not updating this blog sooner with our summer adventures. Here's a recap:
July - CHINA! Helping friends move and teaching at English camp, more posts to come
August - Week long camping/fishing trip in Canada with Mitch's Dad's side of the family, got
some good pictures for this adventure
- Apartment hunting in Chicago, it was a success!
- International Student Check in and Furniture Giveaway at Purdue, a great time to be back at Purdue and Kossuth


But most importantly, well at this moment at least, is our move to Chicago!!! We are moving tomorrow, well technically today (Saturday) to Evanston! I start work on Monday the 30th with Nestle. Here's a sneak peek of our living room, we'll give an update once we get moved in!

Wow, what a summer, it's truly been great! I'll post more pics soon :)

CHINA! Meet our class!

Here are some details about our students. We had 9 cute, energetic, Kindergartners, and we LOVED spending 11 hours with them every day!

SUNNY

Calm, quiet, always paying attention.
She is a sweet girl and very well behaved. She always took her nap every day, and walked quietly through the hallways. Towards the end of the camp she started to open up a bit more and be a little silly with the other kids.

BOBBY
Rambunctious, mischievous, full of energy, but sometimes a bit grumpy.
We got to meet his parents and we talked with his father almost every day after class ended. We learned that his Chinese name means "a new one to help others". It was sweet to learn that his parents named him that, and it helped us remember to love him during times he was being exceptionally grumpy.

JAKE
Smart, quick learner, studies English regularly.
He's a pretty smart kid, but also a bit crazy at times. He loved practicing his English but sometimes acted like he didn't understand us when we asked him to sit down or quiet down.

PETER
First he day said "My name is Banana!" We said, "hmm how about Peter instead?"
Rambunctious, always wondering "shénme yìsi?" - "what does that mean?"

AMY
Sweet, quiet, obedient girl.
Very deliberate in what she does, takes her time for coloring, eating, walking, everything!
Poor Amy was afraid of Mitch for the first few days!

LUKE
First day said, "My name is Monkey King!" We eventually found out that Monkey King is a popular comic in China. We still didn't let him have that name though, we said "how about Luke instead?"
Full of energy but often attentive and very sweet. Unfortunately he was sick the last 2 days of camp so we didn't really get to say goodbye :(

PAUL
Crazy kid! Full of energy, always jumping, dancing, hollering, getting some water, going to the bathroom, talking to us in Chinese, wondering why we didn't understand what he was saying. I don't think he ever realized that we didn't speak Chinese!

MARY
Cute little Mary. Usually quiet and paying attention, sometimes she rather wanted to do her own thing, instead of what we asked.
One of the last days of camp she walked up to me (Alice), pinched my arm, and said "You are fat". I said "Oh, good English Mary, now go sit down please" I guess she just wanted to practice her English.

CICI

Very sweet girl, energetic, quick learner.
Loved to play with "Miss Ala", she did my hair, wanted to be swung around, hold my hand, sit by me at dinner. She was so sweet and fun! Check out her milk mustache, she had milk in her water bottle ALL DAY.....she offered me some at about 4pm, it smelled pretty rank....

This is the whole class, minus Luke, he was sick :(

They are performing "If you're happy and you know it" during the closing ceremonies on the last day. All of their parents came to watch and it was so sweet to see how happy they were that their kids learned some English and got to meet foreigners.

We LOVED spending so much time with these kids! The first couple days were hard and I was about in tears around 2 or 3pm because it was just chaos. But we got into the groove and I think they really had a great time! Oh, and hopefully learned some English :)

CHINA! English Camp!

Here's a review of English Camp, mostly in pictures, enjoy!

Our class was a group of 9 Kindergartners, a couple 5 year olds, mostly 6 year olds, and one 7 year old. We represented team Brazil as part of the overall camp theme of the World Cup. Most of our kids had learned a bit of english previously, but it was still a challenge to teach the class because of the language barrier. Plus it was their summer vacation so it was sometimes a bit difficult to get the class to focus, oh and did I say they were only 6 years old?!?!

The first day of camp we had our students write their names on their shirts and decorate them. This is Amy, she did such a great job decorating her shirt and including such fine details.

Here's a group picture of the class, minus one, Bobby was sick that day. Notice the tiara on CiCi, it was her birthday that day!

Here we are in line for lunch, Mary, Paul, Alice, Sunny, Peter, and Jake in the front. The kids did a pretty good job in the food lines every day. They brought up their tray, got their food, and almost always made it back to the table successfully without spilling everything!

This is during playtime. Our kids LOVED playing with the food & kitchen toys! Bobby had such focus with the food, he made some pretty elaborate plastic meals; cutting and slicing the vegetables, cooking the fish, crab, chicken, adding the spices, etc. It was pretty impressive.

Here's another shot from "playtime". The little boy brawl....I'm not sure what exactly they were playing but it involved wrestling most days. This is Peter on the bottom, Bobby pinning him down, and Paul trying to get in on the action.
Here's nap time. We had some "tall" beds and some short beds. Of course everyone wanted to sleep on a tall bed, and by sleep I mean jump from bed to bed yelling and doing fighting moves. Eventually we started bribing the kids and told them they'd get a sticker if they were quiet and rested during nap time.

This is our sticker chart. Sunny and Amy pretty much blew everyone out of the water because they are just quiet attentive girls. Our more rambunctious kids were able to earn stickers when they were exceptionally quiet or helpful during class. I must say the sticker chart was pretty effective in encouraging and rewarding the kids.

Our kids also loved coloring time. This was probably the quietest most focused time during the day, well except for TV time. Here are Paul & Amy coloring Easter eggs on the day we learned about Easter.

Here's our chalk board for the Easter Lesson. It was amazing how focused the kids were during the lesson, praise God! They were so interested which was incredible, and then a few of them even said "I know this story!" or "I've heard of him before!" It was so amazing to see this from our kids and to see first hand what God is doing in China!

CHINA! Pre - English Camp

Hi everyone!

We finally got our pictures uploaded and we have some time to update you on our lives during the past month & a half. We'll start with the first few days before the children arrived for English camp.

We stayed in a hotel on the north side of Beijing, the Birds Nest Olympic Stadium was the view just outside the doors to our hotel!

We had some free time during training so we walked over to the stadiums and saw this sign.

in other words: Stay off the Grass!

After our group training we headed to our school on the south side of Beijing. On our first night there the dancers did a performance for the English Camp Staff. Here are all of the dancers in one of their costumes.

They perform some traditional Chinese dances and sing a couple of songs. They are so precious!!! They'll be doing a tour in the Midwest this Sept-Oct and we might be able to host them in Chicago for a couple of days.



Since none of the English camp students had arrived yet we got to know some of the dancers. They came and visited our room a few times and we loved getting to know them.

We also got to visit a grocery store & mall before camp started so we stocked up on some snacks like chips and gummy snacks. Fortunately the food at the school was pretty good so we didn't have to resort to all the junk we got too often.