There's no place like China for the holidays! -Nina

Abby and I survived our first Christmas away from home! Although it made me quite homesick, we had a great time, thanks to Skype, our wonderful family and friends who sent us packages full of presents to open on Christmas and copious amounts of chocolate, the teachers at our school who threw us a karaoke Christmas Eve party, our easily excitable and adorable students, and last (and perhaps least) expensive, imported butter that allowed us to make cookies. 

Cracking hands and colds--Nina

Although the title of this post is quite negative, don't worry, it's mainly pictures of cute kids in homemade pilgrim hats! The holiday season has come to Yongfeng! But with it, unfortunately, comes very cold weather, a lot of sickness, and horribly chapped hands. Our poor students. If you were to look just at their hands, you'd think they had just worked a 12-hour shift washing dishes in scalding hot water. But they're such troopers. They can definitely handle the cold much better than Abby and I can, even though they have absolutely no escape from it, since neither their classrooms nor their houses have any heat. We at least have space heaters in our rooms. Whenever kids come to visit us, they say things along the lines of, "Wow! It's so warm! So comfortable!"

True or false? Put your pencil-case on your hair --Nina

We got our midterm grades back today. This resulted in all of the teachers at the school enduring about two hours of lecturing and reprimanding by our principal and dean about how poorly our kids did and how we need to change our teaching techniques in the future. Although this made me feel pretty down for a little bit, I then got a chance to look at the county-wide midterms that our kids were required to take. It's standardized across our school district, and we didn't get a chance to see the tests until after they were taken. Here are samplings from the 6th grade and 4th grade English tests. 

Welcome Grandpa Bob! --Nina

On Monday, everyone at Yongfeng was very excited to welcome a special visitor to our school--Grandpa Bob! Grandpa Bob (otherwise known as Robert Lipp, for those of us who are not elementary school students) is the generous donor who helped to rebuild the school from the shack it once was, and he continues to support our school by sponsoring two foreign teaching fellows (that's us!) every year, financing extracurricular projects at the school, and just generally being wonderful and kind to our kids (and to Abby and me). All of the students love him, and they very much look forward to his visits a few times a year. This fall, it came at an especially good time, since they have been pummeled with midterm review this week, and it was a very welcome break. 

A Package! --Nina

I received the most wonderful package from my parents this week! It has everything necessary to get us through the holidays. Most importantly, Christmas Bear has now traveled all the way to China! Abby may or may not end up replacing my dad this year as the person most annoyed by Christmas Bear's incessant singing.

Morning Exercises -Abby

The kids have started learning a new routine for their morning exercise period.  For the past month and a half they have spent this period running around the yard in circles by grade while counting to four over and over, but this new routine is tricky and accompanied by some awesome music that may or may not have been taken from a video game.  


The whole school does it together and shortly after I took this video Nina and I were persuaded to join in.  We'll update with a new video as the semester progresses and the kids get their routines down. 

If you don't give me candy, I will do bad things to you, but they won't be with evil intentions!--Nina

We just had a wonderful Halloween here at Yongfeng. The weather was gorgeous, the kids were only slightly more energetic than usual (which means that they were their usual crazy selves), and everything was all-around adorable. I hope that everyone on the east coast has an equally great day, despite the weather. 

A Very Yongfeng Halloween - Abby

Halloween at Yongfeng was a big hit! 

Nina and I stumbled upon some Halloween costumes a few weeks ago and decided we needed to celebrate with our students.  We began making masks in art class last week from paper plates and bamboo skewers.  We collected them at the end of the period (so that they didn't all get lost over the weekend) and explained that we would give them out again on Wednesday so that we could celebrate Halloween together.  Some students took to the idea better than others. 

Patriotism in science class --Nina

I realized recently that most of my students are incredibly patriotic. There is nothing wrong with that, but sometimes this manifests itself in disconcerting scenarios. For example, my current science unit with the 6th graders is all about the earth. In the first lesson, we learned about different ancient theories about the earth (that it was carried on the backs of turtles, that it was flat, etc). After I had them draw some of the theories from different cultures, I asked what I thought was an innocent question: "Who thinks that the Indian theory is the most interesting?" As soon as I finished this sentence, Sam (the same guy who spilled milk on my computer) shouted vehemently: "Anyone who chooses anything besides the Chinese theory does not love our country!" Those who had raised their hands quickly put them down. Frightened, I then asked about who thought the Chinese theory was the best, and the vast majority of the class proudly raised their hands. When I asked about the ancient Greek theory, two girls timidly raised their hands, and I joined them in solidarity, also very timidly, feeling conspicuous for the first time this year as the only non-Chinese person in the room. Hopefully they'll maintain their current opinion that having a foreign teacher is a positive thing. (If not, I'll get our local police officer to come to my defense and argue that I'm Chinese.)

The past three weeks--Nina

Many, many many things have happened in the last three weeks, despite the fact that I haven't posted anything. This is my attempt to summarize some highlights.

The Silent Optometrist --Nina

This week has been a bit rough for me, since I lost my voice on Monday and haven't gotten it back since. I had a minor cold over the weekend, and I was expecting to be all better this week, but a lingering sore throat mixed with speaking in a teacher voice all day turned into serious hoarseness/laryngitis problems. At this point, my tactic has been to keep pushing my voice to its limit in class everyday, so that I can at least be heard over the roar of little voices. This is clearly not a sustainable life plan, but I'm hoping not to talk all weekend, so that I can recover for Monday. Abby and I are working out a sign language system.

Teacher's Day --Nina

Teacher's day is a big deal here. In America, I'm not sure if anyone really acknowledges its existence, but it's celebrated here at every school. That sounds very sweet and all, but it's actually a very strange phenomenon. Here's how it went at Yongfeng: Classes proceeded like normal until 11am, at which point all of the teachers left their classrooms unattended for an hour to go to the Teacher's Day Meeting. (I'm still not sure what was going on in those classrooms for an hour. There was definitely a lot of screaming.) In the meeting room, we encountered various local government officials, who proceeded to give lengthy speeches about the value of teachers. Then, each teacher was expected to give a brief speech. (Mine was a lot of mumbling about being new here, and about how I'm confused by this holiday since we don't really have it in America.)

The first week --Nina

As you can imagine, there is a lot going on here, since we just started school on Saturday. So many posters and tracking systems to make, so many names to learn! So, that is my excuse for not posting in such a long time.

Vietnam! (Food) -Nina

This post documents a large portion of the food that we ate in Vietnam. There was more. A lot more. But these are the most memorable things. The first section is all fruit, since we (namely, Cam's mom) prioritized that. Vietnamese fruit is delicious and there is so much more of it than in America! Cam's mom spent the majority of our time there putting plates of fruit in front of us. Just to put things in perspective, Cam's mom speaks very little English, and we speak no Vietnamese. But, by the end of the trip, the only phrases we learned were "eat more," "I'm full," and "thank you." 

Vietnam! (Not food) -Nina

Although you probably can get a good idea of what our trip to Vietnam was like from Abby's last post, I also have a bunch of pictures to share! Hopefully there won't be too much overlap. When we were there, we allocated that I would take pictures of food, and she would take pictures of scenery, but I couldn't help myself and also took some pictures around the city. Don't worry though, there is a whole post of food pictures coming up! 

Vietnam Part One - Abby

At the end of SI, Nina and I split up for a bit.  Nina left Summer Institute a few days early to fly back to the US for her sister's wedding.  I spent a few extra days in Lincang, and then flew to Xi'an with a one day layover in Kunming.  Nina and I met up again in Ho Chi Minh City where we stayed with her friend Cam and her family.  The trip was amazing - we hung out with Cam and her parents, saw some great sites, ate some delicious food and recovered - me from Summer Institute and moving all my stuff to Xi'an, Nina from spending 72 hours traveling back and forth between Asia and the US in under a week.  Here are some pictures from the first half of our trip:

some long overdue SI photos - Abby

Nina and I are in Xi'an, getting ready to begin teaching!  Our trip to Vietnam was awesome and we will post many photos soon, but first I want to share some pictures from Summer Institute.

72 hours in planes and airports, all in 1 weekend! --Nina

Abby and I are currently in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), staying with Cam's family. We are having a wonderful time, and Cam and her parents are great hosts. In the next week, Abby and I promise to post pictures of the sights and food from our trip! But, I wanted to share pictures from my last days in Lincang and my voyage to America and back last weekend for my sister's wedding. Here are some of my students and me on my last day. I received lots of adorable presents, like bracelets and pens, and many pictures were taken. On their last day of class, my students took their final exam. I'm still waiting to hear about how well they did from Yongyi, who very generously graded the tests after I left a little early. Hopefully we improved the class average from a 40% on their diagnostic to at least passing! 

Summer Institute in a Nutshell! - Abby

Ok, first of all I have to apologize for being the worst blogger ever! Summer Institute has been seriously hectic and I haven't been very patient about dealing with our internet issues, but from here on I vow to be a better blogger.

So much has happened in the last four weeks that I hardly know where to start. Our first week here we attended class every day where we learned about all sorts of teacherly things - how to write lesson plans, how to write assessments, strategies for tracking students behavior both as a group and individually, strategies for tracking students academically both as a group and individually, etc. Then we got assigned our class and curriculum and had a weekend to begin writing lesson plans and making posters and getting ready to teach. For the past three weeks, we've been teaching one class per day, and then continuing with our other classes until about 5:30 pm - and then grading and lesson planning frantically while hoping that the little print shop around the corner doesn't decide to close early again.

Goodbye Lincang --Nina

I am leaving Lincang and Summer Institute on Wednesday to head home for my sister's wedding! I am only leaving a couple days before everyone else, so I shouldn't miss too much. I'm very very very excited. 

More pictures --Nina

Here are some more pictures of my class! Whenever I say "we," I'm referring to me and my co-teacher, Yongyi. We actually never teach together at the same time, but we share the same students, so we collaborated on the room decorations. However, all of these pictures are of things that I personally made.

My class! --Nina

Hello! I'm sorry again for the delay! This time I have some good excuses. (Like, for some reason all of my old blog posts are disappearing, which makes me wary of posting more. And, the internet is so slow that it takes 5 minutes to upload a single picture.) I was hoping to make this a post full of pictures of my cute students and my classroom with its beautiful decorations. Unfortunately, I could only upload two pictures for now. I'll try again this weekend. Hopefully the internet will be stronger.

Life at Summer Institute --Nina

I'm very very sorry that I have not updated this in over a week! My excuses are that our internet is very spotty, and that I am more busy than I have ever been in my life (not an exaggeration). I still don't have time to write a long post with a lot pictures, but I promise to over the weekend. For now, I will tide you over with a schedule of what our days are like, so that you have sympathy. I also included some work and a picture by Leo, since he has decided to be the teacher's pet and is adorable.