October 15

My Creative Students

I have a poster of Albert Einstein on my front door.  It says, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.”  This is what I try to encourage in my classroom.  These students are very creative when given the freedom to be so.  In reading we worked on one Reader’s Theater play of the Emperor’s New Clothes.  They designed their own costumes out of paper.  Every unit I try to do a reader’s theater play.  This second unit we’ve been working on Where the Wild Things Are.  They love reading and acting it out.  Today they spontaeneously asked if they could make invitations to some other classes.  I loved their initiative and independent endeavor so I went with the flow and to encourage their creativity.  It is so neat to see a claws working together and doing something they think is fun. 

October 12 Making the Planets

Making the Planets

I’ve been having so much fun with my students.  We have been studying space.  Each student was assigned a planet and we made paper mache planets.  I did this last year, too.  The children love making their own planet.  Today they were painting their planets and saying, “We are planet artists.”  I’ve been playing Dvorak’s Symphony Number 9 when the students work on space stuff.  I don’t tell them it’s Dvorak I tell them it’s the space song.  When they start working they ask, “Can we listen to the space song?”

Pittsburg B-B-Q in Hojie October 4, 2009

My Chinese neighbor invited me to a friends house for dinner.  Yes the Chinese have houses.  Sometimes I forget this amid the sprawl of skyscraper apartments.  But the wealthy have homes.  We drove to Hojie, a neighboring city to Dongguan.  I didn’t know it was going to be a B-B-Q, but it was fantastic.  So many delicious hot dogs and ribs.  I felt like I was back in America.  The man of the house was an American from Pittsburg, who had been in China for 15 years.  So many families came over.  So many different languages were spoken at the B-B-Q, Chinese, German, French, Thai, English, Indian.  It was fun to see all the children running around, white children, mixed races of children, playing, speaking Mandarine.  Very cool and very fun!  On the way home my poor neighbor ran out of gas in the middle of the road-very dangerous in China.  She called some friends to help.  Now I can say I’ve run out of gas in China.  hahaha

Mid Autumn Festival October 3, 2009

In China the next big holiday celebrated besides Chinese New Year is the Midautumn Festival.  It takes place during the full moon in October.  People give each other moon cakes all the way leading up to the full moon.  My Chinese neighbor invited me over on the night of the full moon for a dinner, tea and mooncakes.  We watched CCTV’s special performance.  The Chinese love musical performances and dancing.  It’s really neat to see a country united for special performances for their special holidays.  Traditional songs are sung.  One interesting performance I saw was a combining of Chinese opera singing with modern pop singing; quite different and unique.  So many fireworks went off it was beautiful.  The Chinese sure know how to put on a fireworks display.  All the songs were about the moon, poetry about the moon, how it unites people and lovers.  That night under the full moon I saw lots of floating lanterns in the sky.  I bought myself a wishing lantern and lit it under the full moon and watched it float away.  It’s very magical.

The Coconut Bar and Beach

The last day the sun came out so gorgeously and graced the island in a lovely, romantic glow.  The beach in front of our hotel was still off limits for swimming.  I jumped in, but agot whistled at by some guard.  So I walked a little ways down the beach where other Chinese were swimming.  The water was so warm and the waves were perfect for body surfing.  It reminded me of my summers as a child on the California beaches.  After the typhoon so many shells and coral had been washed ashore that I was able to collect several beautiful pieces. 

 

The three of us were able to eat dinner out on the beach at the Coconut Bar, which was part of the hotel.  Of course I can’t eat coconut-I die.  So I’ve learned how to very dramatically express this to people who I order from.  Anyways I didn’t drink any coconut, though it would have been nice.  But I sat at this bar sipping a Corona watching the sunset, feeling like I was in some James Bond movie.  Now I’ve experienced a James Bond moment.  haha

Philipino Band

So one night my Philipino teacher friend and I set out all decked to the nines for dinner near the Crown Plaza at Yaloong Bay for dinner and shopping.  As we were walking we ran across some live music-a Philipino band.  My friend was like, “oh they are philipinos I can tell,” and then the lead singer looks at us and points and says, “hey philipino.”  We stayed and listened.  I danced crazy while my friend just watched.  Some Russians started dancing too and I danced with them.  I had fun and tried so hard to get my friend to dance, but we must all keep up appearances sometimes.  Yet I say who cares let loose sometimes and be fancy free.  I’ve learned this from my family.  Thank you crazy family. Celebrate life while you can especially in a typhoon. Hahaha

Butterfly Park

One thing I did on Hainan was rent a bike and bike around Yaloong Bay.  I found the Butterfly Park, which I really wanted to see.  It was pretty rainy from the typhoon so not too many butterflies were flying around, but it was still neat to walk around the park.  I saw a strange spikey turtle that was supposed to be 1,000 years old.  Don’t know if it was true or not.  It was said to be a lucky turtle.