Lesson and Feeding the Five Thousand

OK so Friday's lesson went well even though all of my higher ability kids had gone on a trip and I was given some new ones with, lets just say, questionable English. So now I am teaching about 20 teacher's children on top of my original 20. Teacher's children are so badly behaved! I had to be quite strict with them to get them to focus. Friday remains my most challenging day because I have to engage both the high achievers and the younger students who don't speak any English. My lesson plan went down the drain slightly so I had to improvise a lot; we talked about the difference between English schools and Chinese schools and answered some questions as a class. For the last bit of the lesson I gave up and just put Mr Bean on, they LOVE Mr Bean.

Now it was somehow decided that Easter was a big deal and that we must have a party for it, so the evening was filled with preparations namely making pass the parcels! I decided I should take one to my trip too because we were having a party. Alex did one and I did another, it was actually rather fun because we put Priscilla, Queen of the Desert on (I love that film).

Yesterday was trip day, YAY! Today was Jia Xiaozhuang we were going to the Children's Park, that park with the stream running through it. We played games and I boomshiboomed in front of a rather big crowd of confused onlookers! It was a lovely day and with 45 kids and a good half a dozen teachers, hard work though! Little did I know the hard work was yet to come. 

After a stroll in the park we headed back to school for a picnic; little did I know that the teacher had told the children to bring in some food for me to try and the children had taken that to mean bring in a portion of food for me! I was quickly surrounded by 40 odd plates of food! I had to be polite and try everything; some of it was very nice, some of it wasn't but either way I quickly became full. That is when the teacher brought me some mutton she had bought freshly cooked just for me. Despite cries of  "Wo Bal Lu' (I am full) I was made to continue eating for a very long time. I had to bring lots of it home too! I now have gallons of the finest Qinghai yoghurt (made from Yak's milk) and lots of dried beef (and by beef I mean Yak.). 

After being force fed for ages I played some games with the kids. Badminton was fun and then we did this weird catching game, I don't think I understood it very well. We then settled down for pass the parcel! They got the idea very quickly and soon began having lots of fun! This was definitely a hit! Next we did over and under (put something over their heads, then under their legs). They loved that too! We finished with the Okey Cokey which went down well as well.

On the way back I was introduced to a child with fantastic English, when I asked her what she wanted to do when she was older she told me ' I want to be an Astronaut and the first woman to walk on Mars' talk about aiming high (no pun intended)! Most of the time all I get is 'I want to be a worker/ teacher/ doctor'. I was very impressed by this child!

We finally made it back to the Complex, where there was still people working hard because apparently kids arrive on Sunday! It was such a lovely day that Cecilia, Alex and I took our books out and sat in the sun reading, it was glorious! It soon got a bit too warm for me so I went for a nap before dinner which was well needed! 

The evening was passed by watching Hell Boy with Alex, Cecilia and Mike, after a brief blackout that is!