April

The last half of April has been pretty good. I have a lot of stuff I can share, so I consider it a success.

First up, I was a featured teacher in the AYC newsletter, yay!

I also received a plaque for a cultural award! It's from AYC but my school gave it to me during the morning meeting so all the school saw me get it.

I'm too humble, I know.

This week I held an egg hunt for the whole school. This took a lot of time to get the eggs and candy, which thankfully the school paid for. So Sunday night the English club and Nikki and Dionne helped me stuff eggs, and I repaid them in pizza

The place we got them from only had yellow and blue

1500 eggs!

And the next day at the morning meeting, I explained the rules of the egg hunt. Which were:
1. Do not touch the eggs until it is time for the egg hunt
2. There is only one egg for each person
3. Only grab an egg when it is time for the egg hunt
4. If you have one egg, do not grab another egg
5. The eggs are everywhere around the school.
6. Once you find one egg, you are done.
7. No touching the eggs until the afternoon.
8. If you see an egg today, don't touch it until it is time for the egg hunt.

(FYI: This is how I talk now. I say the same thing over and over, just in different ways.)

Despite my opinion, no one translated for me.
The teachers had faith in their students. "They will understand, Victoria."

To which I wanted to reply: Are we thinking of the same kids here?

Now, don't get me wrong, as I was saying it, Grade 2 got it. They are mine after all, and are used to listening to me. I could see their little ponytails and heads nodding as I was saying it. But Grade 1 and 3 were just way too pumped to see me. No joke. I am not exaggerating when I say these kids freak out when they see me. I wish I had Google Glass to show you sneakily how crazy it can be. Grade 2 plays it much more cool now, I'm one of the them, haa. But the majority of Grade 1 and 3 still get nervous and all Chinese fangirl on me when I talk to one of them.

This face is what I'm dealing with on a daily basis.

So of course, we hid these eggs in the morning (not my idea, btws) and they were gone within like two hours. Partly with the students and partly the school gardening crew, which was confused when they kept finding plastic eggs while weeding. I knew that would happen. I wasn't even surprised. But apparently the Chinese teachers were. Nancy asked me how I would punish the students. My face:

I'm sure I was just as excited and crazy at my
first egg hunt 20 some years ago haa.

But that wasn't okay apparently. So Shelly went on the school PA and chewed the students out, and at some point told the students to put the eggs back, which resulted in students opening windows and tossing them 3 stories down, haaa. I'm pretty sure she also told them they offended me because this is a cultural tradition and they ruined it. So I had students coming up to me, shaking with nerves, telling me sorry or handing me notes because they were too shy to talk to me. 

One example.

I have never been feared! Well, the kids I used to babysit might say otherwise, I do have a fabulous glare that has caused tears before.

Anyways, I felt bad that they felt bad! 

Poor kids, they were just excited, and the rules were explained in their second language. If some one told me rules to something in Spanish, I'd probably be confused on a few things, too. I think the other English teachers were embarrassed because they thought a little too highly of their students and what happened was exactly what I thought would happen.

And it was a similar issue with the activities I had planned. I planned a water balloon toss, three legged races, and a few other games. But instead of the kids choosing one activity and rotating, which is what I had said to do, they all just went to the one I was standing by at the time. And the Chinese teachers were no help. Dionne was there thankfully, or I might have lost my mind because she was the only person on the same page with me and we were having the worst time getting other teachers to stay at stations and wait for the students to come to them. In Chinese culture they love watching, so the teachers were just as bad as the students and followed the crowd. I was herding cats.

But they all seemed to still enjoy it, and in the end Dionne pointed out that they don't know the difference of what I wanted to happen and what did happen, so it's okay. I made the school website, so I got that going for me, haa.

Nancy was the announcer

I was just feeling done with everything when this picture was taken, haa

Notice the teacher on the right watching, not helping.

Searching for eggs!

This was a game where they had to carry the eggs with chopsticks to another bowl.

I'm glad to have shown them a tradition we have, especially because as Nancy showed me, they learn about our Easter traditions in their books, but had never seen anything in person. They love the eggs, too. Most students kept theirs and lovingly snuck it to their desks.