Starting to Make Connections...

The top picture is of Bartholomew in the kitchen supervising my appliances: the "stove top," water boiling teapot thing and the microwave. The second picture is of my shoe rack. Please note that the Shalom Y'all sign made the trek, too. Finally, the last picture is of my TV that I probably won't watch much unless I am interested about the news from Russia.

I taught one preschool level class this morning which was very fun. We continued to learn more about pieces of clothing, and I made this one boy, named Leo, put on an adult size pair of pants to demonstrate what "put on" and "take off" means. It was adorable. He was giggling through it and being a good sport in a room full of only girl peers.

I spent most of the rest of my day lesson planning for tomorrow. I have six and a half hours of just teaching tomorrow, which will the fullest day of teaching so far. I learned that in July and August we work six days a week of a split shift! That's going to be hard, but it will be so miserable outside, it will be ok to be in air conditioning. Today's weather was quite nice.

I went to find some take out lunch with a few of the other foreign teachers. They showed me a rice place just across the street from the school. It was all in Chinese, but the two others were able to help me find a chicken curry rice dish... There wasn't any meatless options. They told me that we should be getting another American teacher at the start of June, but they also said that Americans have the highest "chickening out" quota. However, EF teaches "American" English. I didn't realize what that meant until this afternoon when I observed my mentor teacher's oldest class group and they scolded her for writing "centre" instead of "center." I didn't think that was very cool. I very much enjoy having a staff made up of some many interesting voices! I often get most of their slang due to an enjoyment of numerous Hugh Grant movies.

I had a sweet moment today with one of the local teachers. She asked me why I had a "Splash" on my "The Office" traveling mug. I told her about Outdoor School and how we had special nicknames. She compared it to her having to have a "Western" name at the school. I told her I thought it is quite special that I have a group of friends that know me as "Splash," just like she has friends that know her better as "Cindy" then her Chinese name, which she told me, but I can't even begin to spell it on here.

I went to the Lotus after work to pick out a "summer comforter." They had a whole section of "summer comforters" and I just picked one based on the cutest print. My bed in the apartment is really, really hard and too short!