After an unusually hard christmas away from home (I spent most of the day sick, not to mention a little lonely!) I received a Christmas package from home full of xmas cookies (what girl doesn't love baking?)
Andddd gossip magazines! (motivation to go to the gym tomorrow!)
Decorations in the mall changed magically overnight from Christmas to Chinese New Years
And i found this ginormous balloon display (is this not the coolest thing ever?)
I literally was at the mall the day before and it was entirely decorated for Christmas…insane!
One thing about China that I'm a little not used to is that students will contact us on QQ, a form of social media that is a mix of Facebook and twitter.
They also just like to chat with me from time to time. I have to laugh at some of the words they use--it always makes me wonder if they are speaking freely or translating everything before they say it.
(This is about the bball game we had today…further down in my post)
Here is another one from yesterday--a little miscommunication
When this student asked are you here at 7:30pm I immediately thought that I was supposed to be at some extracurricular event--not that he was just asking if i was on my QQ
haha.
So today we organized a little basketball game between the Senior 3 students and the Senior 2 and 1 students. I tried to make it a little organized by announcing it to the classes on Monday and then announcing who would be playing but it really didn't work out so well.
First of all, it was during lunch which was a little problematic because we only had a certain amount of time to play (I had a class right after lunch). We had trouble keeping time during the first half so half time was only 3 minutes long.
The Senior 3 students only had 5 players while the S1 and S2 team had about 20. They didn't really mesh together between the classes. I decided ahead of time who would start, told the kids, and then when it came down to it a group of S2's just started (3 of which who were not that great).
Anyway, I got to throw the ball up for a jump ball tip off which was fun. For the S1 and S2 students subbing in and out was a little disastrous--they would walk on and not tap who they were going in for so it took about 2 minutes to make sure there were only 5 people on the court at once.
The Senior 3 students won by almost 30 points--they were better skill wise but also because the S1 and S2 students had never played together, they didn't know what positions each other played, they were constantly subbing in and out without paying attention to who they were going in for and who they were guarding on defense plus they didn't shoot the ball!…they have a lot of room for improvement. And lots of potential--if they practiced a rematch game would be fun in the spring :)
''
Dun dun dun…
We didn't really have a ref so a coworker Emmanuel just called fouls from half court. The kids don't really know how to play defense so they were a little sloppy--a lot of fouls under the basket, traveling…double dribbling. Near the end of the game one of the Senior 1 students got brought down and went a little crazy. All the students started chanting that the ref sucked (in chinese) haha.
These kids don't have sporting events and rarely come together as an entire school (even though there are only 160 students in total bt the 3 levels in our international school)--so it was fun to get students out to watch the game and get a feeling of "community"
(can you imagine High School without the Friday night football games or basketball games?)
After lunch i taught my block class--we had a "Christmas Party"--we watched Elf and drank hot chocolate (a few of them did not like the hot chocolate but still drank it to be polite--ha)
I didn't really watch the movie before I showed it so I was laughing out loud in the back of the classroom. Even though there were Chinese subtitles, the kids did not really laugh at some of the really funny scenes--which makes me wonder if their sense of humor is just different or if they didn't understand fully what was going on.
I told my class today that they should laugh because its funny--there was a lot more laughing in my 2nd class.
Next week we get one day off for New Years, and then the following week i am giving my final exam. Its crazy how quickly this semester has passed! And how close seeing my mom, my friends in Shenzhen, Thailand and Camboida are! Counting down the days :D
Wishing everyone a safe and happy Holiday!
GO BEARS!
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