This winter has seemed remarkably warmer and a lot less snowy than last year. Although there have not been as many flurries outside, this month has been filled with a flurry of activities.
Opportunities with Friends from Last Year
At the beginning of this month, I met with several girls who attended my English Corner last year. Because everyone was so busy, only a few girls were able to come. We enjoyed dinner together at a restaurant that serves a type of food called bing. Bing is similar to a tortilla, except it is thinner and more oily. When you order bing at a restaurant, you also order several other dishes and then wrap the other food into the bing.
The next weekend, some others came over to spend some time with me. We had fun together and took several goofy pictures.
For Christmas Eve, I had a special Christmas breakfast and invited seven girls from my English Corner last year. We had fun eating breakfast food, playing a game, and chatting. My co-worker from last year read the Christmas story from Luke 2 in Chinese, and then I read it in English.
Relationships with Students from this Year
Another co-worker last year had 3 of my 9 classes of current students, so we invited some of those students over for dinner one night. It was a lot of fun getting to know these girls better.
I’ve done a lot of baking this Christmas season. I had a student from camp this summer send me a message asking to learn how to bake something so she could give it to the class tutor as a gift. She came over one night, and I taught her how to bake brownies. Then, I decided to bake cookies for all of my students this year, so I invited some of my writing students over to help me make some. These girls were so much fun and are sweet and full of laughter.
The week before exams, I had Christmas activities in class. One of the activities was a White Elephant gift exchange, and the students really seemed to enjoy it.
The Activity Center
We had lots of fun Christmas food activities at the activity center this month. One Wednesday afternoon, I helped some students make Cinnamon Rolls. We ended up not having enough butter on hand for the dough and filling. A friend suggested we try yogurt instead, and they turned out great. The students did an awesome job mixing the dough and rolling it out. I was very excited to have one of my writing students translating for me through it all.
To celebrate Christmas, the center hosted a Christmas Eve party on Saturday afternoon and then a Christmas Carol Concert on Christmas day. Both events were well attended and it was nice to see familiar faces as well as some new faces there.
Semester's End
This week has been quite busy with finals and grades. I am looking forward to the break in the States and hope to see many friends and family during that time!