Boom! Five Months

I woke up today celebrating being here in China for five months and was greeted by a truly disgusting skyline. Not sure what was going out there in Beijing, but the pollution was as bad as the few ridiculously humid, hot days we had in July. It was really sad because we've had a few truly beautiful and clear days over the National Day holiday.

My classes all went well. I taught a small star class that I just started teaching last month, but I have not taught it in the last few weeks because of all the holidays. The students there today were all new to me and their parents were very interested in me and were anxious to hear from me how their student did in class. It was nice to start with a positive, hopeful conversation with these parents.

I had one of my favorite classes today that is composed of all young women in eighth grade or high school. They are so delightful and the two hours just flies with them. I worry that I don't always get through enough grammar with them because I get caught up just talking to them. They told me that my birthday being the number 6 is very lucky in Chinese culture. It means that my life will be like a river. I liked that.

My last class was a bit more demanding. We were working on a reading from their text books and I asked the students to underline any words that they did not know. There were only four of them that day and a few started glancing at the book, but most of them told me all of the words. Then, I asked what the word "entrance" was and no one could tell me! We took a little field trip to the computers and I showed the students how to use dictionary.com online to look up English definitions. They were upset that I wouldn't let them look up the words in Chinese, but were soon starting to look up words that were not in their text books!

I went to the gym after work and got the light turned off on me again since they are opened shorter hours this week because of the holiday. I still had 20 minutes until the gym officially closed so I just kept going by the light of the treadmill and my ipod!