October 18 9:15pm

I think this is day 5 without access to my blog site. I am so mad and disappointed that I could scream…..but who do I scream at??? That is a mystery. So…I decided that I will continue to blog on my computer while we are working through the “great firewall” of China and hopefully I can post these blogs at a later (hopefully sooner) date.

Yesterday was my second “teach English day”. To start off my day I had a Chinese lesson (btw…my teacher quit…..again!!!). Having a Chinese lesson just before I try to teach my native language is a very good humbling experience…..puts things in perspective.

The 6th grade teacher speaks very good English and is very “hands on” while I am in the classroom. The 4th grade teacher gave me “free reign” and by “free reign” I mean complete responsibility to work through the lesson. I found out what lessen they were on 2 minutes before I walked into the room. Yikes!!!! Staying as calm as I could….pretending I knew what I was doing….I charged ahead at full speed. Our lesson was this…”I want some (fill in the blank)”. AND “Do you want some (fill in the blank)?...”Yes, I do” or “No, we don’t”. These were our choices for “fill in the blank”... soup, noodles, ice cream, cake, fruit, rice, and pizza. In desperation I also added hamburger and hot dogs. I drew a little picture of our “choices” on the board and pointed. It seemed to work out okay but it was difficult to make it last for 40 minutes…..next week I will be prepared to lead the class. I think I am going to need a lot of visuals. The kids are adorable and you can’t imagine how fun it is to hear 56 little kids saying in unison and at the top of their lungs…”Good afternoon Miss Debbie”. It makes me smile just thinking about it. Before class started several of the kids showed me their toys. The boys had yoyos and the girls had cute little hack sack like things with bright pink and green tassels.

There are some interesting things going on at the river. Between us and the river there has been a coal transfer station. It was fascinating to watch the huge ships dock and then be unloaded. There are two cranes that lift the coal out of the ships and put it onto a conveyor belts. The conveyor belts took the coal and put it onto smaller ships. There was always something to watch. The coal station is now closed and they have removed all the coal and have been tearing down all the buildings and conveyer systems. This is also very interesting to watch. Last night….a huge and by huge I mean really really really big crane docked in front of our building. We are on the 36th floor and the top of the crane was level with our apartment. The huge crane was attached to a barge. This morning the huge crane lifted one of the smaller cranes (smaller is relative here because it is also very big) off the conveyor track and put it onto it’s very own barge. It was really interesting to watch all of this action….one big crane hanging from another really big crane. I said to myself….now you don’t see that every day! I am so easily entertained.

I had quilt group today and enjoyed myself very much. We learned fabric folding techniques. It is sort of like origami with fabric instead of paper. When you get the fabric sewn into the quilt you can open the folds and make flowers and other shapes. It was a little taxing on my brain but I finally got it. I said “Oh…the light bulb came on…I think I got it!!” Then I commented about my light bulb being a halogen bulb….it is slow to come on but it eventually get to full brightness. Everyone laughed and then commented about what kind of light they were. Another lady said she was a night light….small and not very bright… It is amazing how much fun you can have with this analogy.