random things this week (birthday, etc)

ok, so there wasn't that much more to post about Xi'an. We walked around the city wall, got harrassed by about 8 million street vendors, bought lots of fake stuff (i got a fake coach wallet, purse, and a fake north face backpack, on top of the other things i bought), bought dried fruit, and basically just wandered through the city. Actually, I was a little confused when I saw this:

but i've decided to stop questioning why there would be an umbrella set up in the middle of a busy street. Whatever, it's China.

So when we got back from Xi'an, I had a serious problem to deal with. Half of my 6th grade English class failed the monthly exam, which is completely unacceptable. So I had to figure out with a the other 2 teachers in my group how to give them points back. We ended up having them correct all of their mistakes and giving them back one quarter of the points that they lost. I think it was the best thing we could do, although I had made the mistake of circling all the right answers when I graded their tests. Even after doing this, 4 of my students failed. I'd feel worse about it, except that these students usually don't understand a single word I say. They don't answer me in English. As far as I'm concerned, that's unacceptable and they shouldn't be in Non-native. In fact, one of my students (who only communicates with me through another girl in the class) had an English teacher last year who would speak to her in Chinese and write things in Chinese on her homework so that she would understand them. I don't see how this was at all helpful because she obviously didn't learn any English in the class. It's sort of infuriating.

Monday was my birthday, and what an awesome birthday it was. Not only did I receive packages from my parents, Mike, and Sara, and a beautiful jade bracelet from Shannon and a card from Dania...one of my ESL students gave me a present too! Granted, it is a bedazzled scrunchi (google 'bedazzler' if you're confused) for my hair that I would never in a million years buy for myself...but this little girl is so adorable and it was so thoughtful that I feel like maybe I should wear it one day just to show her how I appreciate the gesture. Plus, then I could fit in with all the other women in Asia.

After school, I realized that the cake that grandma had apparently sent me had not arrived, and I mentioned it to Dania....so she showed up at my door with a cute little individual cake that she picked up at the store for me. It was really thoughtful. I feel really lucky to have such good friends here.

So we lived my dream a bit and went to Zapata's for Mexican food for dinner. Let's just say it was no Big Ten Burrito...but it satisfied the craving for now. We were going to go do karaoke after, but I was pretty tired and numbers were dwindling so we went bowling down the street from the restaurant. Being in the bowling alley was like being back at home. It was awesome.

Today was also a crazy day, for 2 reasons. The first was my speech. When I went to practice setting up at noon and saw that I was in the HUGE auditorium and that around 300 people were going to be there...I got a little nervous. However, I think the speech went really well. I had plenty of material to talk about (even had to skip some things), and Shannon and Dania told me that it was really good and that they thought it was interesting. In fact, 3 of the students (I believe they were all from the local division high school) came up to me after it was over to ask me lots of questions. They had been sitting in the front row. It made me feel so, so, SO good to know that there were people actually paying attention and interested enough to come ask me questions. When it was over I felt like a weight had been lifted.

The other reason today = crazy is because of skype. Skype is an amazing thing, and I still sort of can't believe that calling computer to computer is free. It's great. However, 2 weeks ago I brought my computer into my 6th grade non-native English class so I could use it to show a movie. The boys crowded around so they could inspect my computer, and happened to notice everything on my desktop. then I heard my favorite student say "Ooooh, Skype! I have Skype!"

I should have realized that he wasn't going to forget the fact that I have skype. Today I got home from the grocery store and he had found me on skype, requested my contact info, and had tried to call me. He is one of the 3 smartest kids in the class and I really adore him...but I feel so incredibly uncomfortable about the fact that he found me on there and tried to call me. And I can't really change my skype name because all you have to do is search for someone's full name and it comes up. I really really hope that he doesn't bring it up in class tomorrow and that I can just ignore the whole situation. i don't want to be mean about it but i don't want my students trying to contact me through skype.