This Week The Trend~♫

I’ve actually been meaning to type this up for ages, but you know, life gets distracting. ^.~ Update on week two shall commence!

First off, it’s going to be the 7th here in about an hour, so Happiest Birthday wishes to Dad and Lilli. ^_^ Also, belated wishes to Emma, Matilda, and Gracie. (Even more belated to Suki and Lara. D: Aish, I fail.) ♥♥♥ Hope you all had a ton of fun.

So it was our second week teaching our ILP classes as well as carrying out our TA duties with the older classes(our ELE classes). My ELE class is grade 6 and they’re 12-13 year olds. I have four girls and fourteen boys and I actually know all of their names now, which apparently impressed their Chinese English teacher.

I like my ELE class. They’re handfuls, they just want to play games, but they’re also rather responsive and eager to work with me, doing their best to explain things to me in English and so on. ^^ I teach them for about forty-five minutes in the morning on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

I might have a second ELE class of 16-18 year old kids, but I’m not sure about that one. Right as we were heading for breakfast on Friday, Kim informed us that Tim wanted us to teach this class… in like, an hour. But it was older kids and I was curious, so me and my roommate, Nicole, decided we’d go ahead and say yes, at least for that day. It was a ton of fun, though they’re don’t have as good of a grasp on English as either my ILP classes nor my ELE class. But yeah, it was fun. They all think I’m crazy cause I was running around in my t-shirt while they were all in their coats, but IT WAS TOO HOT, OKAY. u_u; really.

Anyway, regular ILP classes… Thursday was super hard. I nearly ended up crying by the time five PM came around. It was my first time trying to teach a drama class without using a book as a plot focus/visual reference and it just went AWFUL. They were all disasters and right at the end, Jake, this little seven year old, thinks is hilarious when he runs his hand over my boob. Yeah, kid, not cool, ESPECIALLY after I told you no. Guess who got a severe scolding. |:

So yeah, between everything that happened, I nearly cried Thursday and I was DREADING Friday. ELE in the morning kept me distracted, but I just did not want to teach the ILP classes.

But we got there and we got started… and everything turned out surprisingly well. It’s a challenge, getting them to concentrate without the book to explain the story, but it was SO MUCH SMOOTHER than Thursday. It also turns out that we only teach until four on Fridays because they have computer classes that day. We teachers spent the hour between classes and dinner just wandering around, talking about Disney classics. (: I don’t think I’ve said this yet, but I LOVE my ILP teaching group, they are awesome.

To prove they are awesome, I will now relate to you an adventure… that I missed. I was kind of tired after dinner so I told myself I’d take a quick nap and then we’d all hang out. I wake up three hours later and apparently missed out on all the fun. Kim, Ashley, Bryndi, Desi, and Nicole all dressed up in the most ridiculous clothes combinations they could come up with and went around the campus to do impromptu photoshoots.

Guys, I don’t have the pictures with me right now, but they were EPIC. Seriously, we did a slide-show and I about died. These girls are totally my kind of crazy.

Apparently they tried to wake me up, but I slept through that. Oops. D:

What else is there to update on… Oh! Bryndi’s birthday was yesterday, so the school prepared a special dinner for us. :D It was great, guys. Like, they have this thing where they… I think fry the shrimp. They’re whole, so they still have the tail and head on them. I eat them whole. O: It’s AWESOME.

Nicole and I also got to keep the leftover juice, which made me happy because ZOMG JUICE. 8DDD

Speaking of Nicole. I feel the need to share more about her, because we live together. She is awesomeness. Not that they aren’t all, but I’m glad we’re roommates because our personalities coincide together rather nicely. :D She really likes classics (as in, the literary ones), Singing in the Rain era movies/musicals, and writing. It’s a lot of fun.

Her family is much more bent on seeing every moment of her life, they skype nearly every day. Since I live in the same room, they are inevitably curious about me as well.

I even got a letter from them in the mail. It’s from her younger brother and is basically telling me ‘KEEP BREATHING, INHALE, EXHALE’. He’s a scream. (This is the result of me being ‘too quiet’ during one of Nicole’s skyping sessions. XD)

But yes, we geek out over a ton of stuff together, we’re also the kind to space out and huddle in our own little worlds, which occasionally worries the rest, but it’s a lot of fun. :3

Oh, and on the subject of food… I’m starting to get tired of rice. They rotate through all the other dishes enough to keep me occupied, but rice at every meal… aish. I mean, I could potentially just not have the rice, but almost every meal has a spicy dish (and the spicy ones are usually the really good ones) so I end up eating rice with it. Not to complain, it’s just a LOT OF WHITE RICE.

One last thing before I go is talking about Lory. Lory is a student who was added to our ILP classes. He’s one of the smallest and youngest, but he’s also one of the most advanced kids in our entire group. He’s an attention hog, liking to shriek ‘TEACHER, TEACHER’ to get it from us during class, and he’s super sweet and affectionate.

Did I mention he was a little piano genius? ♥ Kid started playing the piano while we were cleaning up and it was just awesome. He could play Fur Elise, Do-Re-Mi, and We Wish You a Merry Christmas without even looking at the keys and it was just THE CUTEST THING EVER.

So my favorites are probably… Jack. Ted (who is in the same class as Jack and almost as advanced, but not quite. He makes up for this by not being as much of a butt as Jack is), Lory, Gabby, Mark, and Reece. I will show you all pictures as soon as possible, they are the cutest things ever. ♥