Field day!

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I went on a field trip to East Lake with my first grade students today. East Lake is close enough to the school that we were able to walk there, but having several hundred five and six year olds with us made the trip an interesting task. I was only helping to chaperone one of my two first grade classes, but the entire first grade was there.

East lake is the most idyllically beautiful landscape I’ve encountered in China thus far. It’s surrounded by willow trees, and has nice paths for walking on. The kids were making crowns out of the willow branches. It was a nice treat to be able to spend a day just playing with them, without having to structure a lesson or teach them anything in particular. Even though we weren’t in class, a lot of them were eager to learn any new words that they could, and were pointing to everything they saw and asking “What’s this? What’s this?”.

I also got the best chance to practice my Chinese that I’ve had since coming here. Several of the kids’ parents came along on the trip as chaperones, and they were more than willing to put up with the horrible mess I was making of their language in order to find out more about the person teaching their children. Since the parents mostly didn’t speak English, Chinese was the best option for communication.

I haven’t been speaking Chinese with the kids, so they were shocked that I knew a few words. They started pointing to everything to see what I could name. Whenever I got something right they’d get excited and bounce around everywhere, and when I didn’t they were eager for a chance to be the teacher.

The kids are very clingy with me, even fighting over who would get to hold my hand. Somehow I ended up, more than once, with over ten children attached to my two arms. The worst part of the day is that I forgot to bring my camera.

I’m off to Shanghai tonight. The bus comes at 7:00, and I should be arriving there first thing in the morning, after 12 hours on the road.

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Comments

[mumsisdaughter]

Sounds like you had a great time! All the best for your trip to Shanghai.

[Bruce]

Glad to hear you are enjoying most everything......Can't wait to hear your impressions of Shanghai..........cc; to Betty and Carole

[Milady605]

Rereading old entries, and leaving a note to point out that the place I thought was East Lake at the time, wasn't. It was just a normal park near the school