Please don't pop!

Have you ever walked on water? Well, I had the chance to this last weekend. K, this was pretty much the FUNNEST thing that I have ever done! They actually have these all over China, but this was the first time that I had seen it. Brielle and I were the only ones in our group that did it, and it was a blast. It is extremely hard to stand in the bubbles. Once you figure out how to maintain balance though, you can do it. So while Brielle and I were out there we had quite the audience. There were probably 60 Chinese people standing there watching, laughing at us, and taking pictures, it was awesome. We were in the bubbles for about 10 minutes. 

This was the moment when I realized (from the people on land waving their arms at me frantically), that the Chinese people forgot to attach me to the cord!! It had to push my way back to shore so that they could attach me!!!

Bubble

do re mi fa sol la ti do

Here are some fun pictures of me teaching my music class. I teach a 4 different separate classes throughout the week. Each one lasts for about an hour, and it is so much fun! The classes are level 2 which are the ages 6-9. There are 40 kids in each class! I have been having a lot of fun with the kids.

Today I taught three of the classes and they all went really well. I do a lot of rhythm exercises with them, activities, and solfege. Today we learned the song " I wiggle" and they loved it! Last week we learned "Give Said the Little Stream", that one was a little bit harder but they still understood. I am so excited to teach these classes throughout the semester. It is going to be a challenge for me in many ways. I have to constantly keep their attention, the moment that they get distracted, the kids go crazy! I have learned that yelling "hey!!!" does not workout so well. They listen to me more when I am doing something new that they have never seen, or when I focus on the good kids, instead of the bad ones. Sometimes it is hard because they are just so cute I want to squeeze them, or they are so funny that I want to just die laughing!! I try to stay calm though and keep my cool. :)

I am so grateful to have the opportunity to teach music at the school. I know that it is a HUGE blessing. My major at Berklee is Music Education, so this experience could not be more perfect. I look forward to the rest of the semester to learn, grow, and especially to love these children.

Little Wigglers

The girls of Changzhou

I just have to brag about these amazing girls. I am so blessed that they are here at the school with me. I am the head teacher so I have had a lot of training to do with them and teaching them how to be fabulous teachers. They have been so patient with me and willing to learn everything that they can. We had a practice teaching a few days ago and I was so surprised with how well all of them did. I know that they will make great teachers and that the kids will love them. We have already become so close as a group in these short two weeks we have known each other. What a fun semester we have ahead of us! 

Bielle Romney, Abby Tryon, Kayla Orton, Nicole Pond, Carly Jo Porter, Katherine Voge

We are READY!

So far we have been at the school training and preparing to start teaching. This is the first semester that ILP has had an english program at this school so it has been quite the job getting it all set up. Working with the chinese at the school had been difficult because they do not speak english very well. Our friend King has been translating but sometimes he gets very confused. They will tell us one thing about our schedules of teaching, when they are thinking a completely different thing. We were going to start teaching this week but they wanted to "test" our program first. Tomorrow they are going to have the parents of the students come to the school and watch us teach, if they like it then they will sign up their kids for the program. I have faith in all the teachers here that they will all do great! There are 6 of us and we will each be in separate classrooms of the 30 students and most of their parents. We have each prepared a 20 minute lesson that we will demonstrate for them. We will then rotate a few times so that the parents can see the different teachers. I think that it will go really well!! 

Abby and I welcoming the students to the school!

These are big posters that they made of the 

foreign teachers! They are really cool, it has 

a little description about each of us in Chinese.

Time to eat!

Here are some pictures of what the food is like at the school every day. We eat in the cafeteria with the teachers and students. Breakfast usually consists of rice water, eggs (sorta scrambled?), and some sort of bread. Lunch and dinner we always have a bowl of rice and then 4 or 5 dishes to choose from. I am having a really hard time with the food. I have never been much of a vegetable eater so it's really hard. I do try almost everything though, I usually just don't like it. The meat is decent but there are so many bones that it is really hard to eat. I guess I will have to learn to eat like a chinese person, right? The girls that are with me will eat a lot of the food, I am just extremely picky (thanks mom :)OH and a few days ago they served hardened pig blood! 

Where I live

Here are some pictures of where I live at the Tsing ying International school! I have my own personal apartment room with a bed, furniture, refrigerator, and bathroom (and yes that is a squatter!)