Hey,

Since I missed yesterday, I'll begin there. Yesterday I taught at the Middle School in the morning, followed by teaching at the kindergarten, and then I went to a discussion session about the experience. At the kindergarten I co-taught with one of my classmates. We have different teaching styles, so it was interesting to see how she teaches, know how I teach, and then teach together. After about 45 minutes though, we ran out of games and songs. The kids hardly spoke any English, so it was a challenge to think of things we could do that they would understand. The teachers knew very little English as well, so that also made it difficult because we couldn't communicate. It was fun for the most part, but I think we were all a little lost in translation. The discussion that followed was challenging because I could hardly keep my eyes open, but I didn't want to come off as uninterested. It just wasn't very informative, and after a long day I needed something fun to keep me awake. That night though, after dinner, I went out with my family and we had a blast. We went shopping and ate and drank with some of my host Dad's friends. Meeting new people was fun, and although I only had a beer, it was cool to "cheers" and feel so welcome amoungst new people. When I got home at almost midnight though, I was exhausted, and I woke up just as tired this morning. Luckily, today we had an easy day. We watched a few of our classmates model "American" teaching styles, and watched Chinese instructors model their teaching styles. I saw a lot of things I liked about how the Chinese instructors spoke. As for my classmates, they did well, but it's hard to say that they modeled American teaching as a whole, I guess we kind of all teach very different. Well after that, we had the entire afternoon off. I went shopping with two of my friends, walked around, and ordered my "thank you" cake for my family. I am picking it up tomorrow along with a bouquet of flowers. The cake says, "Thank You Love, Tara" but in Chinese. I hope they like it; I atleast know it will taste good. Well it's time for dinner, so I should go. I leave for Beijing in just two days! WHOA!

~Tara~