The 1st of June was apparently Children’s Day! That means I made my first poster in Chinese Characters (don’t worry, I didn’t know what I was writing) and a loooot of fuss. The’re really big on Children’s Day it turns out. All the children from the Early Child Developement classes showed up at 9 o’clock this friday and there was a lot of singing, dancing, cuteness, noise, baking figure shaped bread, competing parents and snacking.
The children who are between 2-4 years old are getting pretty used to us now and we even get hugs from time to time, when they’re in a good mood (or their parents hand them randomly over to us for pictures). Although one of the children started crying because Mikkel was sitting close to her… Mikkel also made the mistake of accepting a “free” t-shirt, which actually was an invitation to participate in the parent’s perfomance, which he wasn’t instructed in. Wish the internet was good enough for uploading the video…
In the afternoon the LVS students invited us to join their activities. What a laugh. We were supposed to do a lot of games involving a lot of singing with very little explaination. Luckily the games were all very simular to some well-known Danish games (e.g. “Hvem tog kagen fra skabet igår” and “tre mand høj”), so we got through it with almost all of our dignity intact.
It’s so nice to feel they actually missed use while we were in Hong Kong! Even some of the guys I haven’t talked to that much really lit up when they saw me. That warms my cold, Nordic heart.I promised them to show them Danish money. They went crazy over them, especially the ones with a hole! We quickly ran out, so think we’ll have to import some more… Some of them are btw coming to visit our flat tomorrow! Very exciting even though a lot of them couldn’t come. I bought some “fake” Danish buttercookies (the real, imported ones a ridiculously expensive) for them..!
I really feel like the LVS students have improved their English a lot while we’ve been around (that, or we’ve got better at Chinglish). My classes are usually going pretty well – There’s a neverending problem with the students being tired and sleeping in class (they have to get up at 5 in the morning) and some of them are less interested than others, but the rythm of the classes is really good. A lot of the uninterested girls really participates when it’s about make-up or clothing and in general it’s been working really well with a lot of challenges e.g. drawing all the clothing on the whiteboard, listening for missing words in the lyrics for a song or finding their way through a labyrinth using English for directions.
Well, better start cleaning, the place is a mess and the students will arrive in the morning!
Aggy in China 