Shù=Tree

Today I went on an adventure to find material for my China's Tree Planting Day program. I found a flower shop that I had read about in a guide book. The shop was a few floors tall and had lots of beautiful flowers and seeds. My main goal was to find seeds and soil for the planting activity! With the help from Cindy text messages in Chinese, I was able to find the stall that was selling seeds and soil. I got quite a variety of different types of flowers and a few bags of soil that actually doesn't look too healthy, but it'll have to do.

I was so happy to find those items that I was feeling a bit more confident to find a potted tree for as the symbolic "Shù" for the program. I found a beautiful tree called a Rich Man's Tree that I was able to carry out by myself just barely. It came in a beautiful, ornate potting planter that was much heavier than the tree. Luckily, I was able to take a taxi back to school! I named the tree "Maxwell" during the journey back.

Later on today at work, I got an e-mail back from the organization, Save the Tigers, in Beijing. I had e-mailed a bunch of environmental organizations yesterday hoping to find someone who was interested in guest speaking at our event. The Save the Tigers person agreed to start the program for us with some information about helping protect animals. I'm starting to get really excited about it.

Tonight at work, I had an open door class where the parents watch a class. The class had a super case of the giggles as did the parents! Two boys got into a fight in the middle of the class and one got so upset when I said "stop" that he was crying so hard he had to be removed from the classroom by his parent and a customer relations staff member. That wasn't too fun...