While You Were Sleeping

Hello all and thanks for your loving support. It has been a good time
of rest for us this summer. We got to see some of you on our short
visit home and that was really wonderful. Thanks for still caring
about us and everything. We still care about you too, so we're trying
to keep you updated on our lives. Unfortunately we haven't been able
to update our website because we haven't been able to access it. We
just wanted to let you know we haven't lost our interest in updating,
and so we're trying something new. Our new home on the world wide
internets is theinternationalts.wordpress.com The new school year is
starting up in just a few weeks now so hopefully we'll have lots of
new things to post about our awesome new students and our new
location and so on. We'll also get a real newsletter out very soon
about the english camp we've been doing this summer. We love love
love hearing back from you guys too so please don't hesitate to send
us some updates from your end as well. It helps us feel connected.
Thanks for reading and thanks for your "thoughts." They really really
really help.

Hugs and kisses when appropriate,
Josh and Allison[/FONT]

Day three was the Confucius day. He was born in in Qufu, Shandong, but our first stop and the first picture is of a temple for Mencious (and I have no ideas as to how his name is really spelt), a follower of Confucius. The temple is at least a thousand years old, or so the tour guide said.

















Takashi taking a picture of me... taking a picture of him




















Miss Li translated what the tour guide said for us, behind here are some tombstone looking things that each told a story about Mencius as a child
























I don't think that Felix was very interested in Mencius' childhood















This is a perfectly normal sight at our school, the guys hang on each other more than the girls do














That's most of the pictures I took at Mencius' temple, this is a picture of us walking through the tunnel into Qufu, where Confucius was born. It's a walled city- it was really cool.
















This is Terry and I think he's a pretty good guy... most of the time









Once into the city, we had to wait for a while to actually get a tour guide. The kids found various ways to amuse themselves, including sliding down the stairs.












I had Takashi fake throwing away some trash beacause I loved the trash cans!







People offering incense at the temple to carry their prayers.








Amy teaching about Confucious.

The kids all slept every time we got on the bus. Makes sense because they sure didn't sleep at night. To ensure we didn't have curfew problems, we just taped them in at night and told them that if the tape was unstuck or torn in the morning, they would be sent home at their parent's expense. They did really well with it, minus all the complaining.





On Tuesday we went to a cave and the national forest. The cave was pretty cool, but would have been much more so if it wasn't for all the neon lights. I had made up an assignment for the students, they had to find different kinds of stalactites and stalagmites, as well as other cave formations. They didn't do too well with the assignment. I found a couple of the worksheets littering the ground as I was in the back with the "pokey" students. I think it also would have been better if the we didn't have the guide showing us around the cave. She talked in chinese, so I couldn't understand, but when they translated it for me, it was pretty dumb. She would point to a formation, and say something like, "This part of the cave is called Pearl Beach. It's called this because if you look carefully, you can see what looks like millions of pearls. Isn't it beautiful?" Nothing about anything really.



















































































After lunch we went to the national forest, where we walked for hours on a paved road. It was pretty if you enjoyed being outside and looking at trees and such. Our kids don't seem to enjoy either. They complained most of the way. We came to the "great wall" of Shandong and they were mildly impressed. We came to the "rock ocean" and they didn't even bat an eye. I thought it was the most incredible things I have ever seen! Finally, we were back at where we started, and went down a side path and found a park of some sort, and they LOVED it. It was really cool, we had a lot of fun playing there.

































































































































































































































Then we headed back to the hotel. After dinner, we played saurdines and Amy and I ran outside and hid under a tree and waited till they found us. There weren't too many options for hiding places, just scragly trees. But they couldn't find us. We say them come past, heard them talking, and then saw them heading back to the hotel. So we yelled at them and told them how bad they were at this game... multiple times. Only five kids managed to find us in the end. We had fun. I don't know about the kid. The last picture is Emily and Me, she was my roomate, and day 2 highlight, I had fun talking and getting to know her a little better. The prank call I got at 1:30 in the morning was probably the uncoolest part, mainly because of how lame it was. I don't mind waking up for something worth my time, this was not.

The ex-pat community of Qingdao is pretty diverse and has a lot of talent. Back in January they put on a pantomime of Rumplestiltskin. It was pretty good. We had quite a few teachers and students from our company play in it. Here are some pictures of me and Rumplestiltskin, AKA Kristyn, one of our middle school english teachers. And then I just love that picture of Brandon, he's in the other fifth grade class, so I'll have him next year. The last one is Carl, Josh's principal.
More recently, the ex-pat community held an art exhibition called MAX07. There was all kinds of art work from photos to paintings, to sculptures, mix mediums, and videos and more. The school had an interactive mosaic wall that was pretty popular with the people. Most of our kids were at a soccer tournament in Tianjin, along with the choir. But the other school QIS, had a lot of kids show up, and some of them stayed and painted tile after tile. They were cute kids.
Funny story. On my way to the art exhibition I went in the wrong building but there was photos on the wall, and people all around, and someone asking for my name... and I didn't know I was in the wrong place. SO I walked up stairs and around a really small room, didn't see Anna, our art teacher who was running the mosaic wall, or any foreigners for that matter, and was about to leave when a chinese guy came up and started telling me about the purpose of the show, and asking me what I thought about the photos, and the theme, and all sorts of cultured stuff I don't know anything about. Then they start snapping pictures of me and him and then next thing I know they have a camera and are asking if they can interview me some news channel. I didn't know what to do or say, and I have no idea what the interpreter said I said. I'm just hoping they made me sound more eloquent than I am. After they interviewed me, they asked me to walk around some more so they could take more pictures, and I don't think I did it, but a bottle of wine that was on the table I was standing next to spilt all over the floor, and they're still taking pictures of me, and I just wanted to go to see Anna at MAX07. If I ever find a picture of me in a news paper, I'll send you guys a picture of it.
Anna is one of the art teachers at our school. Anna's on the right, that's Kelly on the left, the girls in the pictures all painted tile after tile until their mom's pulled them out of the room. I also took pictures of some of our student's work.

I thought I'd snap a picture of my desk at the end of a typical work day. Yeah, I'm not organized. But, check out all the cool stuff I get to use every day! Is your desk this cool? Do you have this awesome of a job? If there was a brochure for teaching 5th grade they would totally put this picture on the cover.

How many can you find?

Jump rope
Stories in the process of being graded (for English class)
A book on dinosaurs
My personal folder
My (quasi) daily journal
A daily planner
A box of junk (white board markers, yarn, scissors, staples, rulers, tape, glue, extra pens and pencils, paper clips, pushpins etc.)
Everyday Math-book teachers addition
Star stickers
Smile stickers
Washable markers
Scissors
My student's daily journals
A Bible
Paper cups
Materials for building pulleys (Science class)
Reward candy
Illustrated "Who's who in the Bible"
A timer
Whiteboard cleaner
"From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler" (Our current book in Reading class)
A Dictionary
Student SRA book (Supplemental reading program)
Stapler
Calculator
This week's spelling list
A red pen
A regular pen
All my encouragement notes from my students