Entry #1:
Busy, busy, busy! These past couple of days have been crazy! We had open house (which is always fun, right?) and then yesterday was just recovery day. Okay... so open house wasn't really all THAT bad. I only had about 5 parents come talk to me, one of which was the mom of one of my best students (my only Indian student). She was so nice... like seriously! She went on about how excited she was that her daughter was finally in Biology, and how we live in buildings adjacent to one another (which I kind of cringed when I heard). I guess I need to stop thinking of all the parents as "parents" and start thinking of them as part of my expat community here in Xiamen.
Yesterday (Friday) was pretty boring at school. The one redeeming thing was that Rex convinced me to boycott our usual PBJ's and walk across the street with him to this Chinese garage-like place that sold what he said was awesome food. Thankfully he wasn't lying! We had a huge lunch of Sichuan-style food along with 6 or so other colleagues for about $1 per person! I'll be going back there for sure! I also met one of my CAS students that I'm supervising this year. What is CAS? *sigh* Let me take you on a tangent...
Last year I was the CAS Coordinator at my school in ZengCheng. CAS stands for "Creativity, Action, Service" and is a component of the IB Diplomma Program. Students are required to do 150+ hours of CAS in order to earn their diplomma. It is the job of the coordinator to insure that there are many "challenging and meaningful" projects as part of the program. It took me a few months to get my feet on the ground, but once I did I was so gung-ho! We started going to the local orphanage early on in the year. This place was SO SAD, as you can only picture an orphanage to be. There were so many kids (probably about 50 here) and only about 5 women looking out for them. Needless to say, they got very little attention and were starving for it. We went twice a week every week for the first semester, and then started only going once a week because we started up a new project at a local school teaching English.
The school was also very interesting to go to... it's insane what these kids use as classrooms and textbooks! Their school building is literally a cement skeleton of a building that someone has put desks into. The teachers there just have such a different mentality. They walk around smoking (smoking is such a cultural thing here) and never really seemed to be engaging the kids at all. The kids, of course, were so excited to have visitors that they did whatever my students told them to do... it was really neat! They REALLY liked me, too... because I was white (I still LMAO at this). The first day we were there the entire school gathered in the courtyard to take a group photo with us,and me as the front-centerpiece! LOL!
As awesome as the school was, it was truly the orphanage that I held dear in my heart. I really connected with a few of the children there, and they would run over to greet me every time we came. Most of the kids were under a year old, and most were physically handicapped in some way. This one little boy who I fell in love with was probably almost 2 yrs old when we left... and he still couldn't walk because they never took him out of that damn walker thing to let him strengthen those muscles. I was frustrated with that place for so many reasons. I cried my eyes out the last day we were there... and still tear up when I think about leaving.
Busy, busy, busy! These past couple of days have been crazy! We had open house (which is always fun, right?) and then yesterday was just recovery day. Okay... so open house wasn't really all THAT bad. I only had about 5 parents come talk to me, one of which was the mom of one of my best students (my only Indian student). She was so nice... like seriously! She went on about how excited she was that her daughter was finally in Biology, and how we live in buildings adjacent to one another (which I kind of cringed when I heard). I guess I need to stop thinking of all the parents as "parents" and start thinking of them as part of my expat community here in Xiamen.
Yesterday (Friday) was pretty boring at school. The one redeeming thing was that Rex convinced me to boycott our usual PBJ's and walk across the street with him to this Chinese garage-like place that sold what he said was awesome food. Thankfully he wasn't lying! We had a huge lunch of Sichuan-style food along with 6 or so other colleagues for about $1 per person! I'll be going back there for sure! I also met one of my CAS students that I'm supervising this year. What is CAS? *sigh* Let me take you on a tangent...
Last year I was the CAS Coordinator at my school in ZengCheng. CAS stands for "Creativity, Action, Service" and is a component of the IB Diplomma Program. Students are required to do 150+ hours of CAS in order to earn their diplomma. It is the job of the coordinator to insure that there are many "challenging and meaningful" projects as part of the program. It took me a few months to get my feet on the ground, but once I did I was so gung-ho! We started going to the local orphanage early on in the year. This place was SO SAD, as you can only picture an orphanage to be. There were so many kids (probably about 50 here) and only about 5 women looking out for them. Needless to say, they got very little attention and were starving for it. We went twice a week every week for the first semester, and then started only going once a week because we started up a new project at a local school teaching English.
The school was also very interesting to go to... it's insane what these kids use as classrooms and textbooks! Their school building is literally a cement skeleton of a building that someone has put desks into. The teachers there just have such a different mentality. They walk around smoking (smoking is such a cultural thing here) and never really seemed to be engaging the kids at all. The kids, of course, were so excited to have visitors that they did whatever my students told them to do... it was really neat! They REALLY liked me, too... because I was white (I still LMAO at this). The first day we were there the entire school gathered in the courtyard to take a group photo with us,and me as the front-centerpiece! LOL!
As awesome as the school was, it was truly the orphanage that I held dear in my heart. I really connected with a few of the children there, and they would run over to greet me every time we came. Most of the kids were under a year old, and most were physically handicapped in some way. This one little boy who I fell in love with was probably almost 2 yrs old when we left... and he still couldn't walk because they never took him out of that damn walker thing to let him strengthen those muscles. I was frustrated with that place for so many reasons. I cried my eyes out the last day we were there... and still tear up when I think about leaving.
Me and a little boy I became "friends" with.
So anyways, that's my tangent. I couldn't be CAS coordinator this year, but instead I joined the CAS committee to help out with CAS still. I met with my first student yesterday. Her name is Crystal and she was so on top of things! She had so many ideas for her program and was so driven to do well for her community. Those types of kids are what give me air to breathe. I'm so fortunate to have such wonderful students!
We spent all of last night researching online trips for our upcoming break. It's already September so the date is drawing near... and we need to make a final decision! I think we are going to go back to the Philippines, this time to an island called Palawan. From our research, it is difficult to get to the best part, which is good and bad. Good because that means fewer tourists, bad because of the obvious reasons of it being hard to get to! I think we're going to do it, though!! Now, if I could only find cheaper plane tickets...
We also had a death in our fishtank community the other day. It's seriously dirt cheap to put an aquarium together here, so that's what Rex has decided to do. We started out with three Pearl Gourami's and a Black Ghost Knife Fish.
Black Ghost Knife Fish
The Gouramis seem to not like our tank environment, or something. They've been slowly dying off for the past 3 weeks. We lost our last one on Thursday =(
Pearl Gourami
Since our pets are back in Texas with Rex's parents, these are kind of like our children here. It was kind of sad, losing George. We bought five Neon Rainbowfish to fill the void. They seem to be about as happy and healthy as fish can be! We're eventually going to get some Discus Fish to be the centerpiece of the tank. Rex doesn't want to kill them, though, so we're waiting for the environment to be stable enough. Maybe soon....
Neon Dwarf Rainbow Fish
Plans for today include massages and a milk bath with Yvonne and Olivia. Not sure what the milk bath entails, but I'll update you on that once I've experienced it. Lunch at Tuscany's (4 course meal for $3!!) and hopefully booking our flights to the Philippines...
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