Having my office at the school building means I get to see my children periodically throughout the day. I don’t get to my oldest as much any more because, now that she’s in middle school, she’s on the other side of the building. But, now that my 3rd is in elementary, I do get to eat lunch with both him and my 2nd!
These past weeks we have experienced many firsts as a family here in our new city.
Since everything we’re seeing is rather new to us, I thought it would be fun to share a few of the things that we see around us.
The other day some friends and I were invited to hear the local police explain how they can help us foreigners in case of a dispute. A local news crew was there ready with their cameras. We all sat down at the table while the police woman explained that if we have a dispute we can call the police and have a “sit-down” with the other party to resolve the problem. It is actually quite nice knowing that we can do that. After I volunteered to translate for English-speaking foreigners, the news team asked me why I volunteered.
Now, I’ve never been interviewed by the news before. I had no idea who to look at. To make things more confusing, it wasn’t the reporter that asked me the question, it was the cameraman. Should I look at the camera, the reporter, or the cameraman? In the end I looked at the cameraman. Is there a standard protocol when being interviewed?
You remember the first time you thought about flushing your brother or sister (nephew in my case) down the toilet? You wondered: where they would end up? would it be a fun trip down
? And what a big splash it would make as you reached the end of the tunnel. Today I actually got to experience it (except without all the human waste). At the water park that we went to there was a water slide we nick-named “The Toilet Bowl.” You start at the top going through a tunnel slide then shoot out of a tunnel and into the toilet bowl. After spinning around the bowl a few times you would be flushed out into a swimming pool. (click on image to see larger view) It was a lot of fun – except for when I banged my elbow on the side because I wasn’t lying properly.
Morning Star (aka ChenXing) is a Chinese school down the road from where we live that Jeremy & I taught at last year. Because our schedule is a bit busy this year we do not have time to teach there this year. The Bassetts and Vosslers are still very involved there, however. On Monday, April 30, the school put on a festival called “Happy Day”. There was a lot going on there. The kids put on performances for their parents, there were activities, games and food for all. People were selling things. (I believe all the proceeds went to the school.) Matt & Alicia headed up some games for the kids and I just got to enjoy everything! I love watching the kids – they are so adorable – as long as I’m not responsible for them (hehe)!
This Friday at school we had an egg decorating activity. It was a lot of fun to just sit with the kids and talk about anything (other than school work of course). We learned that Alicia’s favorite Veggie Tales character is Jr. Asparagus and Matt likes to destroy things. (He kept saying he wanted to throw the eggs off the roof.) Alicia left one egg in the yellow for so long that the shell got eaten away by the vinegar.
At the end of the day we had a contest in two categories: creativity and best color. Jeremy won in the most creative egg category with his egg named “Asylum” (the pink faced egg). Matt won the best color with his half blue-green & pink egg. The prize was a handful of black jelly beans. Since Jeremy doesn’t like black jelly beans, I (Jacquelyn) ate his. Anna didn’t get to color any eggs but she did enjoy holding them up and dropping them. She also really likes eating them.