Calissa - another COLD - darn!

My day! I…am tired. I’ll write about it tomorrow…

Okey dokey, it’s the day after tomorrow. I taught again, and this time, I ROCKED! I did it, I did it, I did it! I taught six successful lessons to second and first graders! The lesson was making paper dolls, and not only did we use the BMCs, we finished the craft! Today is Friday, so I only teach ELE once, then the second graders once. We’re making Easter baskets, which will then be used in the egg hunt for ILP kids. <3

I’m pretty excited for the weekend. I asked the Chinese teachers what they do for fun, and the most emphatic and frequent answer was ‘sleep’- after my first crazy week of actual teaching, I must say I agree. Sleep is a many splendored thing, it’s like oxygen! All you need is sleep~ …oh, wait, was that love? Okay, love too.

*sigh* I have a cough, and my sinuses are killing me. Getting over the flu, then catching a cold, reeks to the high heavens. It doesn’t help that everyone else has the same thing, and that Laura, China, and Kara sound like they’re dying of it. I still have a voice at least, but teaching is not fun when random sneezing and coughing interrupts the lesson. Thank goodness for vitamin C!

I’m bushed, so I’m going to get through the last stretch of today, then sleep like a log. Hopefully my brainpower will have amped up enough to describe more aspects of my experience by then. My group’s zombie-esque demeanor will probably dissipate by Saturday afternoon, but if not, I will let you know!

Love you all! Calissa

Calissa - Week Three and TEACHING Yeah!

Dear Family,

Thanks for your letters, Mom and Dad! Dad, I do not think I was there for the Chicago deep dish- was that a recent thing? You’ll have to make it again when I return, as your question has fanned a smoldering obsession with all foods cheesy and American into a Balarog. I loved to hear how things were going for you all- even though I have nothing but sympathy for your collective week of blah (did Shanan catch the flu, too? I bet she didn’t. She probably stole Rambo’s immune system.). It’s great that things are otherwise going well! I am glad Brandon is having a thoroughly typical time arranging for the wedding, as it would concern me on many levels if he were to find the process an easy one. Mom says he’s being driven crazy with it all, and I must say, I almost snorted my mouthful of tofu when I pictured him standing at the altar, frothing at the mouth with bloodshot eyes, mumbling under his breath about bunting and invitations. LOL! I anticipate much struggle and grief over mine (eventually…breathe, people.), and I might have just throttled him if he were breezing through with the preparations for a wedding I won’t even see, gosh darn it!

*cough* No hard feelings about that, by the way. :D

Anywho, I tried to access the Family Blog, but China has a thing against it apparently. Too much flavor of love and freedom, perhaps? Either that, or the computers caught a new virus for the umpteenth time, this one exclusive to blogs. I’ll continue trying to get to it, but for now, emails are the way to go.

And now, on to recent events! I wasn’t able to use the computers much this week, because now they’re letting me try…teaching! For real! Without obvious supervision! My own lesson plans and everything! WOO! In fact, Laura decided that the best way for me to get caught up and filling my quota was too learn by experience, namely, ELE (English Language Enrichment). Did I tell you about that, yet? I can’t remember, so I’ll do it again. In ELE, the volunteer goes to a classroom for 35-45 minutes, and either teaches a lesson or assists the Chinese teacher with their lesson. I had my first day of it Wednesday (Tuesday for you guys), and also my first breakfast. Before then, everyone sort of blew off breakfast which started at 6 am. This was Not Good, as Doing So is an Insult to Andy the Chef. I didn’t know this, and would have gone earlier, but I got conflicting information from my fellow teachers- Anne said to go, Lisa said it wasn’t a big deal, William (know as The Boy Teacher) said to ask Laura, and Laura said to stop asking questions. Yeesh.

I go every day now, even though it’s pretty funky food. For example: the main dish is still rice, but it’s in a liquid state rather than a solid one. This would not bother me, except for the fact that said rice no longer tastes like rice. It tastes like water. So. Imagine hot, slimy, water-flavored mush with pickled peppers in a packet for flavor on occasion. On Thursday we had big, pale, dense muffins with breakfast. I ate mine and noticed a distinct fishy smell to it a few bites in. This is suspicious in a supposedly non-seafood item, no? I guess my puzzled expression as I proceeded to sniff the treat tipped off Kara and William, who were with me, and they asked me what was wrong with nervous expressions (William was on his second muffin). I replied that my muffin smelled fishy in a confused tone, which Kara thought might have been caused by my fingers smelling like the pickled peppers I had just opened and dumped into my rice mush. I sniffed the peppers…nope. They smelled like picked peppers, not fish. I wanted to be able to finish my food, so I accepted her solution. Later, she told me that everyone smelled their muffins after I left for class and they all smelt like fish. How weird is that?

Wow, off topic. ELE. I had no preparation for it besides some advice not to mess it up, and thus armed with knowledge, I entered Class 6 Grade 1 with mixed expectations. I walked in while the Chinese teacher, CeeCee, was finishing her first lesson. I had no clue what to do, so I asked her if she had anything planned that she wanted me to do- she did, thank goodness. I got to learn “Clap Your Hands” with the kids, I taught the parts of the face, sang “Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes” with them, and then I taught them “Do As I’m Doing”. CeeCee helped me when I got nervous, and sort of tag-taught with me to show me how it was done. She is now my absolute favorite Chinese teacher. I taught another class right after, where the teacher seemed just as nervous as I was- although, really, I wasn’t going to grow tiger claws and eat anyone! I think we mutually acknowledged our slightly freaked-out states, and then backed away a bit. I got to teach them alone, by request of the teacher about my hobbies and family, and made the second grade collectively gasp when I numerated my family members. My third class was a bit of a bust, since the teacher was in a very bad mood, wanted to micromanage everything, and had an accent as thick as a brick. Needless to say, it was awkward. Luckily, I had lunch next- hoorah! I got to eat with Kara and William, my ELE buddies, who had just finished their ELE stuff for the day. I ate my mystery meat and rice, and got back to teaching, which was now marginally easier than it had been! I got to teach fifth graders last, and joy of joys, CeeCee was also their teacher! She must have noticed my more confident bearing, because this time she sat at the back and took pictures while I taught them about my hobbies, my home, and my family. It was awesome, I love her classes! By this time, it was 2:30, so I headed over to the other building where ILP is taught to get ready for the 3-4:55 classes. I still haven’t taught one of those ILP classes yet- where it’s just you and 6-9 kids and a lesson for 35 min- but it’s coming next week. Wish me luck! Back to Wednesday, I sat in on Shelly’s drama class (I’ll be teaching one of those on and off in a week), and after two classes, Shelly got a paper cut and I got to substitute for five minutes while she got a bandaid. It was…wow. So much more fun than ELE. I’m getting the hang of taking control of a room without raising my voice or dropping my smile, and I can now discipline like a champ! The key for the first seems to be getting, and holding their attention, and the secret to the second seems to be relaxing and radiating an aura of authority…

Dude. I radiate.

And after that epic of a storytelling, I’m a bit put off of talking about classes. So instead, let me tell you about some fun things I’ve realized about living here:

1. I really love these children, even though they run in herds and frankly that scares the insert descriptive noun of choice out of me. I think they’re fantastic, even though it’s clear some of them don’t shower with any sort of regularity. I want to be here, even though the sound of them stampeding up stairs of any kind makes me duck into an unused room until the noisy crowd has finished migrating (you laugh, but it happens; both parts.).
2. I think that Andy, the school chef, is the most patient, longsuffering, good-humored guy on the continent. And he knows just how to cheer a person up, with hard-boiled eggs. <3
3. My body can adjust to any temperature between freezing and burning, and cold can become irrelevant. This makes me a little happy, as I can now stop wearing my coat indoors, but mostly annoyed- why couldn’t this have happened a week ago?!
4. There are many ways to cook a fish, and sometimes the tastiest is not cooked at all.
5. I don’t think I’ll get culture shock. I’m pretty sure that I’m the most comfortable person in our group right now, aside from Sam (she grew up in Taiwan). Everyone else is complaining of various aspects which distress them, but I’m finding myself responding rather naturally. Even using the squatter isn’t so traumatic anymore.
6. Yogurt is Heavenly Father’s 2 yuan gift to dairy-deprived ILP teachers.
7. Laura is evil. She knows I listen to her, so she tells me evil lies for her own evil amusement, because to see me take her evil words seriously gives her an evil sense of vindication. Like today! I stayed behind from the massive shopping trip to clean up my room (because Johanna is a bit…lax in that department), and I asked if the computer building was open- she said, in a perfectly serious manner, that it was not, and that I was not to leave the building while they were gone! Guys, they were gone for six hours. I was ready to leave my dorm room in three. I was even afraid to go to the cafeteria building for dinner because they were late getting back! Andy had to come and get me, and he doesn’t speak English! We were the only people in that entire cafeteria building, just me and this older Chinese guy who started to look a bit…miffed…that I was the only one there to eat his prepared food. I guess he saw that I was anxious, so he brought me some hard-boiled eggs. I was happy. Then Laura the Evil One came back, and laughed at me because she had been joking! I could have walked around campus, and used the computers, even hung out at the trash pile if I had so wished! ARG! I was reduced to swabbing the squatter for amusement, and she thought it was funny?! T-T
8. My speech patterns will be so annoying when I get back home! We’ve started to use ILP-ese when we, the US people, speak to one another (“Do you like the rice? I like the rice!” “Holy cow, did you just use the kid voice on me?!” “OMIGOSH! I did!”), and it seems like it’s definitely a dominant speech pattern. I’ve also picked up some Chinese teaching gestures and used them, so I may randomly point my hand, twirl my fist, and make barking noises to stress a point… @_@
9. The Chinese market is fantastic! Everything is so very inexpensive, even considering the exchange rate- roughly 6 yuan to the dollar.
10. Quai and yuan are the same thing.
11. Apologizing for bumping into someone makes them think you did something horrible to them, and they will give you incredibly dirty looks for any and all of the many varied slights you presumably did to their person whilst their back was turned.

Well…that’s about all I have the time for right now…so I suppose I shall have to tell you about the cool stuff I did while on vacation tomorrow.

Love you all! Calissa

Sumo Wrestling - homeschool style

We were learning about the warlords of Japan and what they did with all of the warriors who were no longer needed for fighting. They became wrestlers and fought safely with no swords or bloodshed. We turned the living room into a dohyo ring and learned to do the shiko ritual of stomping each leg to drive away bad spirits. This was adult sanctioned rowdiness and the kids loved it!

My First Week of Teaching

Hey guys!

The computer lab isn’t open today (‘tis Sunday), so I can’t reply to your questions or news until tomorrow, but I can give you the skinny on current events in the good old school.

Our rooms are chilly but not…cold, exactly, except for Laura and a chosen few who have properly functioning heaters in their rooms (which means that the temperature hovers just below ‘decent’), and overlook a scenic construction site. It rains, and yesterday snowed, almost constantly, and so the scenic construction site is also full of muddy water and backlit by moody gray skies. Fireworks herald the beginning and ending of construction, so distantly we hear what sound like gunshots at sporadic hours. We’ve each got a washer in our rooms, but we’ve been warned that they are pretty harsh on clothes, so most of us hand wash then hang our clothes up on poles above the bathroom area. The squatter and shower in a tiny room to the side share a tile floor, and the water heater above them provides exactly 15 minutes of hot water an hour (supposedly) for us and the conjoining room. I am now a master of the two-minute shower. We’ve also got a little fridge/freezer, a microwave, and a non-functioning TV. Our floors are tiled, and surprisingly nice, and I’ve already described the beds- which no longer earn my adulation. I have discovered that comfort is relative to your exhaustion, and after 10 hours of make-up sleep, the sleeper finds that the spine has assumed the flexibility of a steel girder. The muscles thereof are a tight as piano wires, as contorted as a pretzel, and as sore as Cailyn’s legs after a long lacrosse practice. Do NOT throw out the mattresses, guys! L

Hm…Changzhou. It is dirty, VERY dirty, and full of people who sound angry all the time. I’m serious, some people smile at each other and make such very angry sounds that you think a fistfight is just waiting to happen. On the other hand, the kids are nice. The kids…wow. They are about the rowdiest, loudest, most hyper kids I’ve ever seen outside of a nursery. Chinese reserve? Not with the kids! The teachers don’t try to control the behavior, so I guess that’s the norm. I can’t help but think, though, every time I hear them shouting in the classrooms or halls that this would never fly in an American school, especially a boarding one. But even with the crazy behavior, they’re really very sweet and cute, and they’re just so precocious! *squee!*

The guards at the school like us, which is great, because the kids like us, which is awesome. Andy, our chef, also likes us, and therefore he makes sure we don’t have to have chicken feet for every meal. Yay!

Since we are all kind of feeling our way around still, we aren’t going to try to find a church today, but we will have a lesson in Laura’s room.

Oh, I just had a thought- who is feeding Christopher?

Later-

We had awesome testimonies after the lesson on service, and then everyone kind of napped until dinner (which was delicious). Dinner was an egg soufflé, which tastes like a spongy egg, chicken nugget-bits, chicken in sauce, beef-and-peanut toppings, and the staple food, rice! No chicken feet, hallelujah. I’m pretty glad Andy likes us!

OH. Before I forget! You know those ‘English names’ that every Chinese person is getting these days? Well, you’ll never guess who names them- we do! We, the English teachers, in the first semester of teaching, get to assign our students an English name which they will have for the rest of however long they are in school, and then beyond! Some of the names of the students are sweet, like Cherry, Jim, and Heron, but some of the kids got some pretty…odd names as well, like Roxas (a video game character), Sully (her name is from the guy in Monsters Inc), Bruce (another girl), and Michal Jackson (must I expound on the weirdness? Well, the kid is a little weird himself…). Yeah…we weren’t here for the first semester, so we didn’t get t name any kids, but it’s still pretty awesome.

Anyway! Goodnight, love you all! Calissa

Monday! (9:30 am)

Hey guys, what’s up? I started my day at five in preparation for my first day as an ELE teacher, much to the dismay of my roommate who does not start teaching until 12pm, and waited for 7 (and my first Chinese breakfast) with glee. Unfortunately, it seems they do not serve breakfast on Monday, as today is the day students return to the school, and presumably they are fed at their weekend homes before being dropped off. Blegh. I really wanted to try that gross porridge everyone complains about…

In other news, I will probably be called into a class to be the object lesson soon, which is what ELE teachers are for. I’ll practice conversations with the older children, give spelling/vocabulary tests, read chapters from books, and generally help out! This is terribly exciting for me, since I haven’t been in contact with any kids older than 7-8 years since I’ve been here. I hope I make a good first impression on the teachers and kids, and that the teachers who are teaching the English classes can actually speak it well enough to tell me what to do (this is a bit of a problem here).

Umm…yeah. Not a lot going on presently, but hopefully that will change. <3

Did I mention that Laura is teaching us how to say fun stuff in Chinese? We’re learning such useful expressions such as, “What?!”, “I don’t like you”, “Delicious!”, “Not _ yuan, _ yuan!”, and “Thank you”. I’m still a little shaky on everything but the “What?!” and “Thank you”, presently, but maybe I’ll be able to embarrass everyone with nonsensical Chinese on the cruise, right? LOL

And jumping to another topic, everything is four stories up and requires stairs to get there. It’s just like climbing to the Lofts at SVU for every class. Oh, the unspeakable joy. I better look good in a bathing suit after this.

Love you all! Calissa

Calissa Finally Made it to China

We needed to document the height difference before Calissa left!

It was hard to have her leave, but knew she would be fine.



Sisters and best friends!


Dear family,

Hi! I got to Shanghai at 9 pm, local time (so of course, I was cracked out on no sleep…so many in-flight movies…no self control…no sleep for over a day…), and was almost immediately scooped up by a Chinese guy named ‘King’ who is a teacher at the school- he teaches English, which is kind of funny (he’s not that good [he thinks he is XD], I thought he was an older student at first). He loaded me into a sporty little car with no useable seatbelts and off we went! It took about 3 ½ hours to get here, during which I alternated between dozing to country music and blearily watching Chinese drivers cut each other off in traffic. Hah, that was about as scary as it gets in midnight traffic, I guess. Anyway, I got here around 1 am and was escorted up 3 flights of stairs, and to my room (406) where my roomie, Johanna, was waiting for me. She sleepily welcomed me, I sleepily thanked her, and we both fell into out beds. Our beds, by the way, are 6’x4’ low faux mahogany crates with an inch thick pad on top, under a sheet and a thick comforter. It was positively blissful to sleep on! No joke, it was wonderful to be horizontal. And it’s surprisingly comfortable, firm with just enough give. Not that I’d recommend replacing our beds with boxes…rambling, stopping now.

I think I was out in five minutes- and woke to the sound of loud laughter drifting on the air, courtesy of the 800 children going to breakfast at 7 am. I rolled over and went back to sleep, waking up at 9-ish when Johanna got up. Since we don’t teach ‘til later, she said this was okay this week (next week, it’s up at 6 like usual, though). It’s Friday, so we can wear jeans, but I’m glad I have my four pairs of nice pants to get me through the rest of the time! We kind of lolled about for a while, then I asked about the art journals we were supposed to receive. Kara had mine, so I walked over to her room and got it, running into Laura at the same time. She pretty much picked me up and schlepped me bodily to the building with the only computers we can use with Internet (they just found this out, and Laura had a terrible time hooking them up to the ‘net). I was told to send my emails declaring my living status to ILP and my parents. I did so, as you know. :D

Laura has a bit too much to do by herself, I think. She has stress hives and it makes her testy. I hope that either they go away, or that things start settling down, otherwise our Head Teacher is going to have a miserable time of it (and consequently, so will we, minus the hives).

So! That business done, I was taken back for a quick meeting before lunch at 11:15, where everyone welcomed me to the group and we discussed the messed-up state of affairs here. As it turns out, they’ve had a pretty stressful week. A ton of things changed, like the Internet (we were supposed to have wireless in our rooms), the TVs (we were supposed to have cable, ‘tis gone now), the food (we are not fed breakfast on weekends), the schedule (it changes by the half-hour), and other sundry items. I was given my marching orders to tail Shelly today, as it was a short day and I could do some absorption of teaching skills. This was a little silly, as they had only begun teaching yesterday, but it did help me a lot. I helped organize a bunch of stuff in the storeroom, where all of the Glitter of Evil, the dishes, the toys, the scrap papers, and the Ever-Useful Pom-Poms are kept. I got to display my prowess with a mop, which awed my new ILP pals- I’m not joking, they gaped when I managed to make the floor look clean with such a dirty, nasty mop. I explained that I had experience as a janitor at an office, and had a private giggle. Ha HA! That job is so useful for skill development for living at this place! It’s just as dirty as they said, although the squatters aren’t as utterly diseased and excrement-encrusted as I had expected them to be (actually, no worse than the boy’s bathroom at church). I’ll send you a picture. My first lunch was rice and a fried hunk of chicken, and I wonder with a bit of trepidation what dinner will be!

Just had dinner: delicious rice from lunch, egg drop soup, these delectable meat balls drenched in broth, and…chicken feet. These did not look like I had expected them to, fried. No, they were boiled in broth, and the flesh had the consistency of jell-o. They were white and pebbled, like fetal fingerprints, and had longish nails. They looked like the forearms of a boiled baby alien, not something I wanted to think about while a fellow ILP teacher is softly murmuring, “I dare you to take a bite of that.” Yeah, no. I replied, “Not all peer pressure is positive. I don’t take dares.” My ever-helpful roommate then said, “It’s the ILP initiation. We do need to try new things!” I looked at the chicken feet, thought about my private personal promise to try something new and Chinese while here, and internally remarked, ‘Even if it does look like an underdeveloped arm, these other people like it- maybe it isn’t so bad?’. I took a bite, on the condition that the darer do the same. She accepted, and we raised our chicken feet, simultaneously biting into the pale, tender, textured flesh.

Guess what. It tasted like chicken.

PS-

Dad- Thanks for the heads-up on how to act, and how to take care of my things at an airport. I was able to travel alone with aplomb and confidence (or at least, it looked like that to everyone else). I got through everything just fine, it was a smooth journey with a safe end! I miss you, and Robin says ‘Hi’!

Mom- oh my goodness, thank you so much for the long underwear. It’s raining, it’s been raining for weeks, the temp is low and about to drop, and I can see my breath everywhere but my room. I’m taking my vitamins and bundling up, and the boots keep my feet dry and warm.

I just found out what I need-

20 CD-Rs (because I can’t put all of my pictures on my computer, as it is almost full, and I don’t have time each day to put them online (30 min on a slooooooow computer is not much time)), pens, a notebook, and more calcium tablets (because we have no dairy).

Love you all! Calissa

PPS- I just got cheated out of 4 yuan by a dastardly rickshaw driver, and when we tried to make him go back to the original price, he laughed at us. What a jerk! *rage face* I’m not going to trust any rickshaw driver but the one who takes us to the market ever again! Also, the bus is fun, and the traffic is just as weird as you said it was, Dad. Write me, I love you!

Brandon Comes Home!

Elder Brandon Cristopher Wall became just Brandon Wall again on December 1, 2009. He returned home to balloons, cheers, hugs and tears as he completed his 2 year mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. We are so happy to have him home and look forward to seeing him grow at school and see what comes next in his life!

Brandon was so excited to get in his little Bimmer and take it for a spin. Sadly, he discovered the next day that it had a leaking head gasket...darn it all! So he spent his 2 weeks at home taking his car apart and putting it back together. He did a great job though...it drove all the way to Utah with no problems!