Everyone is asking me about Christmas. We started decorating our house yesterday. We have a lot of Santas that my wife inherited from her mother.
At church, I played the part of a wiseman in the nativity scene. The scene shows the birth of Jesus, and the angels, wisemen, and shepherds that visited Him. We were all volunteers from parts of the church. Last night the Mary was from Kazakhstan and invited friends and family who passed by to sit down and have their pictures taken with us if they had a camera. Almost every Russian speaking family had a camera.The nativity scene was outside the church. The first night it was in the parking lot, but almost nobody came. The next night we moved it next to the other Christmas events.
Inside the auditorium there was a musical, a play that told a story with songs.
Another booth ouside allowed children to dress as shepherds, wisemen, or angels and have their picture taken and then given to them. We had a table where people could have some hot chili to eat in the cold and then the gymnasium/high school room was filled with desserts where people could sit and eat at tables while musicians sang.
My friends in Enping know that I began the year with only one or two students in my afternoon class. I worried that my class might be cancelled. That changed about two weeks ago when I began to get more immigrant students. I now have students from Moldova, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Iran, and Mexico. Today I had 22 students and last week I asked the principal if I could have students on Friday again and he agreed to let me do that. I’m excited!
Here’s site that may be of interest to those of you hoping to improve your vocabulary: Lextutor There are tools for analyzing texts and testing your vocabulary level.
I am not able to come to China this summeer. I have longed to come, and I hope to come in 2008. I won’t come in 2008 for the Olympics, but I will come to Enping to see my friends and help teachers and students with their English. Since I can’t come to Enpin this summer, I plan to change the Enping website in the next few weeks so that it is easier for students and teachers to have their own blogs and articles. I will let you know more later.
Here it is November, and I haven’t written anything. I am teaching five days a week in the morning, from 8:30-11:30 (Friday stops at 11:00). My morning class is an intermediate low ESL class. My students are from Mexico, Hong Kong, China, Korea, the Philippines, and Thailand (Hmong who came from Laos). It’s a fun class In the afternoon,