Pattistory

Thankful for

2011-11-23T06:25:00.000-08:00

The Gratitude Wall on FACEBOOK Invited people to post 100 things they are grateful for this year. Here is my list:
1. Family
2. Health
3. Having a job...actually two jobs in this economy
4. My coffee maker
5. My church...a thriving spiritual community
6. A few day's break from work
7. Visiting relatives from Canada who traveled far to be with us
8. Cell phones, smart phones
9. My car
10. Road trips
11. My education
12. Teachers
13. Nurses and doctors
14. The Healing Arts Department at Radys San Diego Children's Hospital
15. Louise Hay
16. Wayne Dyer
17. Alan Cohen
18. Science of Mind
19. Sled dog racing
20. Friends
21. Food and farmer's markets
22. Being able to volunteer at the homeless shelter this week
23. Singing
24. The YMCA and working out
25. Digital cameras
26. Laptops
27. The Apple Store
28. Steve Jobs
29. National University
30. Travel
31. Friends in other places
32. FACEBOOK
33. Storytelling
34. Tellebration
35. Neighbors
36. Peaceful home
37. Military service members
38. Massage
39. New babies
40. Candles
41. Christmas presents
42. Sharing what we are thankful for
43. Books
44. Libraries
45. Literacy
46. Professors
47. Numbers
48. Passing difficult classes
49. Seaworld
50. Ethical zoos
51. Baby elephants
52. Giraffes
53. Tour guides
54. Email
55. Learning how to text
56. Ipods, Ipads
57. Scissors
58. Staplers
59. 3 hole punches
60. Good pens
61. Gas stations
62. Driving with a friend
63. Having dinner waiting when I get home
64. Taking a kiss break
65. Movies
66. Traveling with my aunt and uncle
67. The next generation
68. Being an aunt
69. Going to my niece and nephew's classrooms in MN
70. Christmas with the whole family
71. Our Christmas tree
72. Vacation, holiday and sick leave (paid!)
73. The Rose Parade
74. A sleepover with my friend
75. Time together with couples who are lovely to be with
76. Beautiful skies
77. Native American culture
78. Divine right action
79. Newspapers delivered to your house
80. Rain drops on roses and whiskers on kittens ;-)
81. Old movies
82. Great naps on a rainy afternoon
83. The Shake Shack
84. Calendars
84. Old friends
85. Birthdays
86. Talking to my mom
87. Wonderful parents-in-laws who have died, but were such a gift in my life
88. Museums
89. Money in the bank
90. Prayer support in a difficult time
91. Taking classes
92. E-cards
93. Morning quiet time before a busy day
94. Listening to someone speak from the heart
95. Random acts of kindness
96. Powerful quotes
97. Drumming circles
98. Collages and vision boards
99. New Years
100. Spirit

Send Beauty: One Teacher's Response to 9/11

2011-09-10T22:25:00.000-07:00

This story mean so much to me ten years ago after the 9/11 crisis. I so admire this teacher's quick thinking positive response to help her students and the world in a difficult, crazy time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dm5y14WsJxU&feature=channel_video_title

www.youtube.com

The Plot Thickens: A Night of Mystery at the Library

2011-08-01T10:06:00.000-07:00

The Intermountain Volunteer Fire & Rescue Dept. Auxiliary a.k.a “Hot Spots” Presents:

THE PLOT THICKENS..... A Night of Mystery at the Library
Saturday JULY 30TH
From 6pm to 10pm Tickets: $50 per guest

It all plays out at the
New Ramona Library 1275 Main Street
Dinner, Entertainment, Auctions, Costume contest,
Wine Tasting provided by the Ramona Valley Winery Association We encourage you to come dressed as your favorite literary character or author For more information call Lora at 303-502-4226 or email: hotspots2011@live.com www.ramonahotspots.com
This is a fundraising event in support of our local IntermountainVolunteer Fire & Rescue Dept

Goodbye Borders Book Store

2011-07-25T14:12:00.000-07:00

I got a lot of my very first storytelling opportunities telling stories at this Borders bookstore. I did a preschool storytime every Tuesday at noon for a couple of years....and they paid me in $40 Borders gift certificates....I bought a lot of books there. Built my basic storytelling library and told a LOT of stories. Very sad to see it close. (Even though they haven't hired storytellers there for YEARS!) I'll miss you, Borders!

Yaking and Yarning

2011-07-25T13:53:00.000-07:00

The South Coast Storytellers Guild has done this series every year for the past five years. Guild members share song and stories
Sundays: July 10, 17th, and 24th, 2011, 4:00-5:30pm.
Heritage Hill Historical Park, 25151 Serrano Road, Lake Forest, CA
949-923-2230 or 949-923-2232
714-482-9843 or Linda King Pruitt at storytaler@hotmail.com
Cost: Free
http://www.ocparks.com/heritagehill/

This year I was able to participate on July 10th and the 24th. Getting to tell stories in this fabulous outdoor setting in Orange County CA is such a treat. Thanks to Linda King Pruitt and her husband Bob Pruitt for doing the organizing, hauling all of the equipment and holding down the fort for all of these years. Thanks to the Orange County Park Service for allowing us to do the concerts this year at no cost to the public. Getting to tell stories with old friends is always a joy!

Happy Holidays

2010-12-24T00:04:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas! I have been enjoying sharing Christmas and Chunakah stories this last month.

Here are a few of my favorite Christmas quotes:

Christmas, my child, is love in action. Every time we love, every time we give, it's Christmas. Dale Evans Rogers

Christmas is a day of meaning and traditions, a special day spent in the warm circle of family and friends. Margaret Thatcher

Christmas is not a time nor a season, but a state of mind. To cherish peace and goodwill, to be plenteous in mercy, is to have the real spirit of Christmas. Calvin Coolidge

At Christmas, all roads lead home. Marjorie Holmes

Christmas waves a magic wand over this world, and behold,
everything is softer and more beautiful.
Norman Vincent Peale

What is Christmas? It is tenderness for the past, courage for the present, hope for the future. It is a fervent wish that every cup may overflow with blessings rich and eternal, and that every path may lead to peace. Agnes M. Pharo

Christmas gift suggestions: To your enemy, forgiveness. To an opponent, tolerance. To a friend, your heart. To a customer, service. To all, charity. To every child, a good example. To yourself, respect. - Oren Arnold

Christmas is doing a little something extra for someone. - Charles Schulz

Cities I have Visited Around the World

2010-09-12T14:10:00.001-07:00

Create your own travel map or travel blog

Find the best vacation rentals at TripAdvisor

Love Letters From students in China

2010-09-05T16:14:00.000-07:00

Here are some of the love notes and thank yous that my 4th and 5th grade students at Yucai#4 in Shekou, China wrote at the end of our three week American Scene Summer Camp:

China: Day 33: August 6, 2010 Friday

2010-08-08T20:11:00.000-07:00

It was a terrible night trying to sleep, and when I woke up and talked to Dick on Skype he suggested that I see if I could change my plane ticket and come home today instead of late on Sunday. I spent an hour on hold with EVA Airline trying to figure out if this was possible (actually, I taped the phone to the computer microphone so Dick could listen to the recording while I frantically packed.) When we never got through, Jenny suggested that I just pack up and go down with her and several others who were flying out today and see if I could change the ticket. This was a frantic two hours of changing arrangements, who would room with who, who was planning on getting a ride home from the airport with me, etc. but I was ready at noon for the hotel check out.

Five of us then undertook one of the silliest processions anyone had seen, with each of us having at least 4 suitcases and backpack, and couple hats.

We went through five subway lines, many escalators, a few elevators, and many times of bags falling over, nearly knowing people off escalators….several times nice people offered to assist us getting bags

off the subway train.

By the time we had made the hour+ride and arrived to drop off our bags, it was ridiculous, but we did it! (And saved about $12 each…WHAT a deal!).

I held my breath at the express airline counter for check in. At first they couldn’t find me in the system, but then they did and was a able to make the change of flights without it costing me any more money, and I ever got on aisle seat on the exit row for the long flight home.

I was thrilled! I was going home. My coughing and sinus headache were getting worse, but I was headed home to recover.

We spent some time in the afternoon going up one of the world’s longest escalators (strange! And we were VERY glad to have checked our bags!!!!) Then we went to a bookstore. Everyone, it seems, in Hong Kong speaks English and so the books store had nearly exclusively books in English. What a chance form the store in Mainland China, lonely about 20 miles away where we could hardly find an English book at all!

We had some little treats and then on to the airport for the flight home.

I had a slight scare when, once we were on the plane in Taiwan, I had a coughing fit and the woman next to me went to tell the stewardess that I needed a glass of water. Immediately after that, they made an announcement that there was seriously ill person on the place, and were there a doctor or nurse on board. I froze, imagining that I would now be in quarantined limbo in Taiwan…..it wasn’t me that they were referring, to, however, but someone who was indeed seriously ill. Whew! We took off and I was sooooo glad to be heading home.

I slept most of the night/day on the plane, and was really happy to arrive in LAX at around 10pm Friday evening with a very happy husband there to pick me up.

I am home. It was fabulous! But indeed, there is no place like home! I’ve been to China…and now back again. What a trip!

China: Day 32: August 5, 2010 Thursday

2010-08-08T19:50:00.000-07:00

Today we had the chance to do some serious sightseeing in Hong Kong. First, a large group of us took several subway lines to get to the Tram above the city. Then we rode about 30 minutes on the tram. This gave us a view of how Hong Kong is many small islands.

Once we got to the top, it was the funny combination of tourist mall and monetary. It featured one of the world’s largest sitting Buddhas at 85 feet tall on top of a hill. This was stunning. Jenny and Holley decided to use the opportunity of being in front of these beautiful sculptures to do a little acro-yoga.

We wandered around, having had a delightful lunch in a Japanese restaurant.

Then we went to a truly lovely monastery, the Po Lin Monastery. I bought our group some incense and we all had the chance to light incense for our prayers.

It was so peaceful there. Then we were invited into the lovely grounds inside the temple. A high quality recording of chanting played which just filled the room with sounds equally as beautiful as the art. “Besides as the must-go destination for prayers, Po Lin Monastery is also a top destination for tourists to experience the natural and cultural side of Hong Kong.

The Monastery was initially a small temple constructed by three buddhists in 1924. Over the years, more structures have been added, such as the big temple) and the world's largest Big Buddha.”

After this lovely time above the city, we caught a bus to go to the small fishing town of Tai O. Here is a description:

“This little place is sometimes called the "Venice of Hong Kong," though it is just a little village with many houses built on stilts over water. People get to their houses by walkways or by boats. Unlike Venice, few people would travel far to visit it.. But a lot of Hong Kong urban residents make a short trip to visit it for an excursion and a break from the norm. People go there as part of a hike on Lantau Island and can eat there cheaply, or they take motorboats. Dolphins are seen in the area, and tourists ride out in motorboats hoping to see them. It is unusual to see Hong Kong people living in houses on stilts.”

We took a quick boat ride, which included being able to see many of these houses on stilts and a very quick glimpse of the endangered pink dolphins. Then we shopped in the market. It is amazing that such a tiny village is so close to the mega city of Hong Kong.

Going back by bus and ferry, we hit a spectacular lightening storm, which was really stunning as we drove along, a long with a heavy rain. (Of course, I didn’t bring my umbrella, again!)

For dinner, we wandered around a VERY fancy mall looking for a moderately priced place. This mall could have been in downtown Dallas or Los Angeles. VERY nice and VERY pricey.

We finally settled on going to a Subway sandwich place, where we all truly enjoyed eating subways just the way we do at home.

By this time I was getting pretty sick, coughing like crazy. Several of us decided it was time to head back to the hotel, while others stuck around for the night market. It was a really nice day around Hong Kong.

China: Day 31: August 4, 2010 Wednesday

2010-08-08T15:35:00.000-07:00

Last day in Mainland China. It took some serious doing to get everyone packed and pried out of their hotel rooms this morning.

Chaos reined with some leaving, some staying, different buses at different times. Goodbyes and tears from many.

We are leaving friends in China, for sure.

Then a MOUND of luggage went with 11 of us to go out of customs in China and into Hong Kong. Hong Kong has the unique status of no longer belonging to the UK, but not exactly belonging to China. The pile of suitcases was daunting as all of us had done some power shopping in China (although no one had managed to spend more than $600 or $700 dollars so far. This is really a cheap trip as nearly all of our food, transportation expenses, and hotels have been paid for. (Of course, we worked our hind ends off!!!!)

Anyway, we made it through customs, onto the subway, where three of our people didn’t make it off at the stop with their luggage in tow. They had to take it further on, get off and come back, but we were united again. Then we got the shuttle from the Universality of China at Hong Kong, where we are staying at their onsite guesthouse/hotel.

After arriving, I decided that I needed to stop, regroup and catch up on my blog posts…Jenny stayed back with me. We wrote and checked in with FACEBOOK (which you can access in Hong Kong!!!!!) I got nearly a week’s worth of posts up. Sorry for the people who got worried that I was super sick or something. The Internet was pretty iffy in Yangshou.

Walking around the campus was very interesting.

Could have been a major university anywhere. And the people pretty much all speak English. Yah!

AND they appear to have Western toilets in the bathrooms (complete with directions on how to use them….we might have forgotten since being in China.)

Resting while others went into the city was really fine. Tomorrow will be time enough to explore Hong Kong.

China: Day 30: August 3, 2010 Tuesday

2010-08-04T04:00:00.000-07:00

Up today and plans were made. We ran over to the market to pick up an additional suitcase for me. I’ve got to get all of my shopping purchases home SOMEHOW.

Then first five of us and then an additional five road bikes over to the Moon Hill Water Cave.

We are getting to know this really very well, feeling almost like locals. While we waited for the rest to arrive, we ate some lunch ad chatted at the Moon Hill Café.

These water caves are like nothing you have seen in the States. The geography in this area is the aftermath of ancient seas retreating, leaving these mountain formations and many caves.

The cave tours they do are part normal tour and part going to the spa or the hot springs for a mud bath. We changed into our swimsuits and then were taken inside by boat. Then we walked (in flip-flop shoes) up and down and around and through the cave. It was full of crazy dangerous stores with some railings, some lights and lots of muddy floors.

The one concession to safety was we had to wear construction helmets (which we kept bumping when we ducked under low places in the cave.)

I didn’t bring my camera along because I was worried that it would get dirty, but they took photos of us especially in the mud baths. These were hysterical. It was very dirty and the water quite cold. We ended the trip with a soak in a natural hot water pool. We got out dirty but really refreshed.

In the pool outside there was a whole group of Chinese young boys swimming in their underwear.

We rode back to the hotel, showered and went out for diner.

Tonight Indian food was the food of choice. Very good food. Then our bus to the airport was delayed so we all hung out in the hotel lobby until the bus arrived at 8pm, exchanging info on our various adventures. Some people went kayaking, some went and toured an area with terraced rice fields, others went down the river on whitewater rafts. This whole area is really an outdoors paradise and very, very fun.

We then sat at the airport until we finally got on the airplane to go back to the city we were in before Shenzhen. We said goodbye to the first of our colleague who are now on to Beijing.

China: Day 29: August 2, 2010 Monday

2010-08-04T03:58:00.000-07:00

No school today! I got up at 6:30 and struggled for a long time with my computer. The internet here at the Happy Hotel is very sketchy……Skype access goes in and out, I have and then don’t have Internet access. Finally Melody, our 18-year-old videographer was able to change some settings on my computer and I had access again, but it went back out later in the afternoon. So glad we had much more reliable access during the past month. I know have a pile of blogs ready to post, but haven’t been able to upload. Hopefully will catch those all up in the next day or so.

This morning, seven of us went on a small boat ride on the Li River. Three on one boat, four on the other with a driver and a motor on each. We had a lovely about hour and a half ride upstream, looking at all of the lovely scenery along with way.

The shores are covered with giant bamboo and the karst mountain formations surrounded us the whole time. The riverboat traffic was less scenic, however, with there never being a time that we weren’t’ surrounded by these little boats or larger double decker ones with a hundred+ people on board. It was lovely to see this great landscape. This was one of Dick’s favorite things when he was in China in the 1980’s, and we have a framed print for this area hanging in our family room. So it was so special to be actually on this famous river. Our other boat with the younger travelers had a lot of water fights with other boats. It was really quite fun.

We stopped for a snack and then I was THRILLED to find that there was another of the stands that let you try on traditional costumes and take photos.

These clothes are worn by the people from Inner Mongolia (I know, you are thinking, I thought it was Outer Mongolia…but to have an Outer, you must have an inner.) You may say, didn’t you do that yesterday and a week or so ago? Yes I did, and it was just as fun this time. Don’t we look lovely?

Then we had a little snack. I had a patty of sweet potato fried and on a stick. Delicious!

Then back down stream with the current for another half hour. The time went quite quickly. The van ride from our hotel and back was rather hair-raising. We heard from our young Chinese staff person who was along that there are no rules for driving on the roads in the countryside, you can drive on whatever side of the street you want and pass whenever and however you wish. It sure feels like it, with many near misses and white knuckled turns! Yipes!

The afternoon brought Jenny and I a nearly 4-hour nap. Things have finally caught up with us and slowed down enough that we rested. Up at 5:00 pm and out for dinner and more shopping.There are so many fabulous and wonderful stores, it is hard to stop, and the prices are so cheap that it just seems like you need to buy two of many things. Getting it all home still is feeling like a challenge!

We heard that some restaurants in China are now hiring white people to sit in the front of their restaurant and eat so that other white people will know it is a good place to go eat. We thought that this may be a new career move for Jenny and me.

To bed and downloading photos. Tomorrow is our last day here and then back on a flight to Shenzhen. Time flies!

China: Day 28: August 1, 2010 Sunday

2010-08-04T03:55:00.000-07:00

We slept in late and then had an American style breakfast with eggs and toast.

With REAL brewed coffee, not instant!!!!

First one since we left California. It was a little bit strange.

Then we got somewhat oriented to our new city. Trying to get a group of 25 who does or doesn’t want to still hang together to figure out who does or doesn’t want to do anything is quiet a challenge.

We finally got sorted out that most of us would go to a big show on the water in the evening.

Jenny and I then headed off to find an ATM and scout out our options. We walked and walked until we ran into one end of the city and then turned around the other way.

Jenny suggested that we rent a tandem bike, we that did for $1.50 for the whole day. This was a great choice. We had a blast on our bike. We got set at the hotel and then were off on adventures.

The area that we are in, Yanghshou, is on the Li River, one of the most beautiful rivers in all of China. We are surrounded on all sides by these karst mountains: large rocks and hills like you have never seen before. They are fantastic and so beautiful.

In many places throughout China we went, people would stop and ask to have their photos taken with us.

We rode out of town and by rice paddies, water buffalo, and really lovely views. At every turn.

We stopped at The Big Banyan Tree National Park. Wow! A huge ancient tree, river all around, beautiful views and a chance to Jenny and I to get our photos taken in traditional costumes. These were hot, but it looked so good. ?

Our Chinese friends say they think these costumes are those of the Miao people who were some of the local ethnic groups in the area.

Getting to wear these clthes in such a beautiful area was a great treat!

Then we rented, again for $1.50 a piece, a little bamboo boat that that we could pole around a protected part of the river, very safe, but VERY cool!

We loved it, because we weren’t with the rest of the group, it was easy to get into conversations with others and we got our photos taken often.

Then we also had the chance to have our pictures taken with three smartly dressed monkeys. They were cute, but it was a bit creepy!

Then on to a lovely farmer’s lunch and a hike up to Moon Hill.

It was about an hours round trip climb, mostly up steps on a nice path. The view was spectacular! And we talked to nice tourists from Denmark. How fun is that. The whole way we were surrounded by bamboo. Beautiful!

Down and back to our hotel. Jenny has a lot of tandem experience, so she steered, through some crazy traffic at various times, but we made it. A quick super, some more shopping and on to the show.

This was a show that featured 600 actors in costumes, some on boats, with lights, lasers, music, torches…like nothing you have seen before. We couldn’t, of course, understand the language of the singing, but it was quite a spectacle.

Having just created shows with 400 students, never all at the same time, this gave us a new appreciation for how much work it was to put this one.

Quite a great thing. The audience as maybe 7-8,000 people!

Crowds swarming together. This is China! Tomorrow another day in the sun (although most of us got sunburned, so more sunscreen seems to be in order!

Here is a sign that show the power of literacy and being able to read. This one means "exit" (okay, it also says it in English, but we can read it!) Very cool!

China: Day 27: July 31, 2010 Saturday

2010-08-04T03:54:00.000-07:00

My first thought on waking up today was, “I don’t have to try to teach anyone anything today! I am on vacation!” So far, this hasn’t been a vacation at all. We have worked out butts off. Everyone is very tired, and a couple of teachers are still quiet sick, went to the Chinese equivalent of urgent care and got IV’s for a third time.

We are getting close to the end of our China poriton of the trip, so time to take stock of the money form every nook and crannie.

I spent a good chunk of the morning consulting with my husband by Skype as I packed my suitcases.

One that will remain packed until we leave, one to bring along on our weekend excursion, and one to go along to Hong Kong. It was hysterical to get the computer camera set so that Dick could say, okay, take that pile of t-shirts and roll them and place them on the right side…. now put the book on top of that. It was so funny, but very useful. When you have been in a hotel room for 27 days, who have the chance to accumulate a LOT of stuff. Especially since there has been such interesting shopping.

Three of us had a late lunch and then I was off for one more massage.

This time I took the deluxe one for nearly $40. This included a private lovely room, a shower before and after, a soak in my private hot tube and a two-hour oil deep tissue massage. This was wonderful. She kept saying, “You neck, no good. Too tight.” No kidding after all of the stress of trying to make these classes work. I was glad to begin to relax.

Then a last dinner at the hotel and off to the Shenzhen airport.

This is a super huge, modern, major airport. We had some little glitches getting through security, and then waited to catch the plane. Airline food is a little different in China, including the seaweed coated peanuts.

We arrived in Guilin, the center of a really beautiful tourist area, at about 1:30am. Then we had another hour bus ride, arriving and checking in at the hotel at about 2:45. This is a slow motion check in with there being a special form to fill out that they would just give one at a time. Sigh! Then there were no pillows in our room and I temporarily lost my backpack. We were all sooo tired! Finally to sleep. Although there were people signing in the street until who knows how late. Here we are at The Happy Hotel, on VACATION now in China.

China: Day 26: July 30, 2010 Friday

2010-08-04T03:53:00.000-07:00

Last day of school, final performance today. It really has the “last day of school” feeling, even though we were only together with the students for 3 weeks.

Students have been working on Pop up books, and I got to read some of them about their thoughts about the differences between Americans and Chinese. Some of their thoughts were VERY interesting!

Morning classes where regular, hour-long classes that gave me the chance to have the kids do some writing about working with me. One child wrote, “I will remember you until the future.” Got lots of love notes, in English and in Chinese. I also was able to get through for one class and have them tell me their Chinese names and I tried to say them. Some were really hard for me to say.

I was able for two classes to tell them the classic American ghost story “Whose Got My Golden Arm”. It worked like a charm. One 4^th grade boy told me it was VERY frightening! Bringing these children stories that they have never heard before was a great joy!

We had short classes in the afternoon filled with handing things out and doing final evaluations, then we moved into somewhat chaos.

It was decided to have all 100 students gather in front of a new mural that had been created during the camp for its dedication. It was so hot, and they were crowded like crazy. I had to break up an honest to go fistfight between too overly hot boys. The sound system was terrible and no one could hear.

THAT was a picnic. Then we had official photos taken with each group of 25 campers. This took nearly an hour. We had a little time left before going into the final ceremony and speeches.

A couple of us ended up supervising some students wading in a shallow pond on the campus catching tadpoles with their hands. I was afraid that they would fall in and have wet clothes for the remaining time, but they were okay. Then there were speeches for an hour from everyone: a student, teacher rep, principal, government officials, you name it.

And THEN, the performance began (oh yeah, first they used some kind of cool cardboard tubes that shot confetti all over the stage which then had to be cleaned up before we could get kids up there.)

The students pulled through, as they had the two weeks before. These are very talented kids.

My group performed some Latin American and Caribbean music: La Bamba, The Banana Boat Song (day oh, me sing day oh…) and did the Mexican Hat Dance.

The older students had a series of songs about Africa and African American experience, including a kid who did an amazing “rap”. The youngest ones sang This Land is Your Land. It really did bring tears to my eyes. That somehow we were bringing a deeper understanding between peoples.

Then we had a feeding frenzy of students wanting our emails, wanting to get their photos taken with us, wanting us to sign their camp t-shirts.

This is the closest we will get to being a rock star, for sure. It was really special and pretty sad to say goodbye to these lovely children.

Then VERY quick showers and we were off to the official banquet with the Chinese teachers at a very swanky hotel.

Lovely, with great food and lots of “toasts” and more photos all the way around.

Then, we had rented out a private Karaoke disco in the hotel. For the next two hours people sang their hearts out. It turns out that the Chinese love Karaoke and can sing in English and Chinese. Some of the very shy Chinese teachers were excellent singers. I did my part on Twist and Shout. Lots of dancing and singing and fun.

Headed back to the hotel at 11, tired but pleased at finishing up in a beautiful way.

China: Day 25: July 29, 2010 Thursday

2010-07-30T09:49:00.000-07:00

More stories. This time I told Robert Munch’s Stephanie’s ponytail using a girl from the class to demonstrate a ponytail in the back, the said, the top and the front! This hit the Chinese funny bone so hard that the students were literally rolling on the floor. The understood the story and it was so much fun. I also told a couple of classes “Where the Wild Things Are.” Also quite fun!

Then we had another of those rehearsals from hell where we get 100 kids who have been practicing a variety of things in different classrooms all up on stage and chaos issues.

So far, we have done this each week and the performance has come out okay. This time we have three songs, some introductions and a couple of short poems. Kids are also dancing The Mexican Hat Dance. You could pray for us that somehow it works out!

After school, Jenny and I took a cab to the big bookstores. (Thanks to Smiley, the Chinese teacher who wrote out in Chinese the name of the place.) We got there and really enjoyed poking around through the five floors of books.

It is like a Barnes and Nobles supersized. Despite the size, there was very little that we could read, including the signs, and few books. We both found some Chinese books and some bilingual that are wonderful. I could have stayed for hours, but we needed to get back because Jenny was meeting her Chinese host mother at 7.

When we came out of the bookstore it was raining…..not raining, POURING! And did I have my umbrella with? The answer is NO!!! So, Jenny graciously shared her tiny umbrella with me and we ran and waited for a taxi and when we couldn’t catch one, we walked on an overpass and then stood at the bus stop for a while, all the while it rained and rained. By the time we finally caught a bus, I was nearly soaked to the skin and quite worried about my new books I had bought. Jenny lent me her extra shopping bag and I was able to double wrap the books and keep them safe.

After riding the bus for a few miles, we then had to walk another five blocks in the RAIN. By the time we came into the hotel lobby, we were so wet that the hotel manager sent me directly upstairs to change and had someone carry my wet bag up. Very nice. I put on a polartek jacket. I was chilled. I THINK I learned a lesson about carrying an umbrella during monsoon season.

Supper and then some writing time. Keeping up a blog is hard, disciplined work. Tomorrow is the last day of school Wow! The time really flew by.

China: Day 24: July 28, 2010 Wednesday

2010-07-30T09:48:00.000-07:00

Stories, rehearsing, getting ready for a new show: number three in three weeks. We are all VERY tired, but will miss these kids! Some VERY lovely children. I had a stereotype that the kids would look so much alike. Especially here in Shenzhen, people have come from all over China and form all ethnic groups. There is a great variety in what the kids look like.

They are really enjoying hearing me tell folktales from Mexico and other Latin American countries. Very, very fun to share these cultures with one another.

Today when I was telling the older students a scary story from Columbia called the Rooster’s foot, when I held my hand up as though it was a chicken foot and said, “This is no ordinary chicken’s foot…” a huge rolling noise of thunder filled the room and all the kids gasped! How cool is that? Those times when the universe cooperates perfectly with your story are very precious!

Today was my roommate Jenny’s birthday, so there was a message on the school marquee. A brunch of us went out for a birthday dinner to a VERY excellent Chinese restaurant that Jenny had gone to with her host family. We were highly grateful when they brought out the English menu so we could avoid the braised dog and peg ear and shallot salad. The food we ate was great!

Then a couple women had bought her a birthday cake. It was highly interesting with a combination of something like spice cake on the bottom, and a layer of cheese cake with purple jello on top, with whipped cream, kiwi, peach and a cherry TOMATO on top. Jenny tried it to make sure it was a tomato and IT WAS! Hmmmmm. I guess technically tomato is a fruit, but really!

Then we strolled about shopping. There are so many interesting places, cool shows and funny signs as we try to find our way around. We all feel quite proud of our abilities to navigate, especially because we never really got a map in English. That makes some of it pretty tough.

To bed and then let’s do it again!

China: Day 23: July 27, 2010 Tuesday

2010-07-28T22:03:00.000-07:00

Today I got videotaped with a class that has at times been crazy out of control.

Put a camera in front of them, and they were angels: interested, volunteering, expressing themselves, having fun, enjoying the stories. After the camera crew left, one of the school officials stayed around and she was impressed. Yah!

I told the story of Monkey and Crocodile. The students LOVED that. Then in a couple of class I was able to share Just Enough to Make a Story, the paper folding drawing version. IT was a HUGE hit, even for the 5^th and 6^th graders. I love telling these tales to kids who have never heard them before.

I went to lunch along with a class of high school freshmen who were in a special American culture class taught by one of the teachers. They were going to The Holiday Inn and wanted a couple more people to be part of table time conversation. We had pretty American style buffet (including a GOOD salad bar) and a dessert table. YAH! And serviced with silverware, not a chopstick in sight. Interesting! We got to model for the students how Americans would eat at a buffet. One student was totally puzzled by how to eat a chunk of French bread. She tired to figure out how you would put it in your mouth with a fork and knife. Things you never thing about.

I enjoyed the conversation with the young people. When I asked them about the censorship, such as not being able to be on FACEBOOK (and they added Twitter), they replied they felt it would change. That they were young and could wait.

Back at school to finish the day, and then to the hotel. Plans are still very much in flux as to the closing day’s schedule. Trying to meld east and west in terms of expectations get difficult often. We looked a t a list of possible “awards” to give out to campers and it was suggested that we give awards to the most obedient and behaved, the one who won every game, and most popular. That didn’t fit with what we were trying to reinforcements so we spent times trying to brainstorm new awards.

I was interviewed by our young filmmaker for her video on the teachers. It will be so interesting to see what she comes up with.

China: Day 22: July 26, 2010 Monday

2010-07-28T22:01:00.000-07:00

The final week begins today. We are all in “the swing” of things. And we will finally have it about figured out when we have to close up shop and go home.

Several of our teachers have gotten very ill. One may have gotten food poising at KFC, a couple more have some kind of terrible bug. I am struggling myself; kind of achy and intestinal track is iffy. Being in a different country has its serious drawbacks.

This week we are focusing on world cultures my level decided to especially focus on Latin America, which I like because I have some very nice resources for this. It is a week that will include telling some favorite stories. Today included the story of The Barking Mouse, about why it is important to learn a second language. I also told my version of Coyote and the money tree. I used American money for this and they were VERY interested in what that looked like. All of these stories are well received for the children. Kids are so curious and interested. We just have to give them things that they can connect with. They are also learning to dance and sing The Mexican Hat Dance and La Bamba....sometimes Ihave to remind myself we are not in Mexico, but China;-)

I am very interested in poling the children to find that at least a third of them have traveled internationally. Most often to Japan, Singapore or Australia, but some have been to the US and some have been to many countries. Also many of them plan to attend University outside of China. These are not provincial shelter children.

I actually fell asleep during my lunchtime phone call with my husband, and then took a nap before dinner.

Jenny and I went over to “The Blind Massage Place”, although I have YET to see anyone blind giving a massage. There we had our feet worked over quite seriously by a couple of guys who were NOT giving Swedish nice soothing massages. They beat your back and your feet and worked those sore places really hard. I had some VERY sore spots on my foot, connected to my sore tummy. By the time we were done, I felt quite a bit better. I will sleep well tonight.

China Day 21: July 25, 2010 Sunday

2010-07-28T22:00:00.000-07:00

Up early for a talk with my husband and then roommate, Jenny, and I went to the flower shop to buy some flowers for our Chinese host families.

My family arrived at 8:25, five minutes earlier than promised. I met them: Ken, Alice and daughter Mary. (How funny, I have an Uncle Ken and Aunt Alice, so I have those names down.)

Mary had given me pretty good schedule so I was somewhat prepared, but it turned out to be even a better experience than I had hoped.

The day began with a great tour of their apartment.

Most everyone in the city in china lives in an apartment, which is most often owned not rented. The Chen family live in a very nice apartment that they have been in only two years.

It is so lovely. I got the kind of tour that could especially be facilitated by a young person: all of the nooks and crannies and storage areas. The home was spotless and wonderful. The kitchen was really space aged. They even let me look inside their dishwasher.

The bedrooms were spacious, and they had a guest room where grandma used to live when Mary was a baby. It was fun to see the things they had set up for Feng Shui (the Chinese art of how things are placed and arranged for the best flow of energy.) There were two mythical creatures that were part dragon and part lion that were placed facing a window out of which you could see the hospital.

These creatures are set to protect the family from the bad energy of sick and dying people.

The daughter, Mary is quite an artist and she let me look through her portfolio of drawings. They were lovely!

And then we walked around the complex gardens. These were very extensive being surrounded by many apartment buildings but having the same common space with a swimming pool, community gardens, children’s play areas, walking paths. It was a relief to know that although the building is very dense, there are these lovely green spaces.

I went with them to a two-hour badminton coaching session for their family.... I haven't had such a hard workout in years. I was dripping with sweat.

Luckily they thought to bring me a shirt to change into. I thought that I would watch Mary play and take some video, maybe hit a bit, but it was a huge workout and lesson for all of us! The coach was very serious. I really enjoyed it, but stated with quite a humiliation because I couldn’t hit a serve over. I probably missed 75 of the first 100 serves I tried. And they would just give me back the shuttle cock (really nice ones with feathers on them).

FINALLY, Ken thought of allowing me a really lame little backhand shot which I could do (thank God!) We played and played. Mary finally told me I could rest for a while and she would play with her friends. I join in a bit more, but was really grateful I could stop.

The coach asked to have his photo taken with me and the whole gang got in on it: coach, assistant coaches, Mary’s two friends, their mothers, even the video camera guy….oh yes, I didn’t mention that I had a videographer from the school following me around this whole day shoot me in my glory and the agony of defeat. I don’t know what I would have done without that spare shirt! Oh my! I am going to try to get a copy of the raw footage from that taping. Should be a good show.

After badminton, we went to the mall to a bookstore.

Ken helped me to find two wonderful books in English of authentic Chinese folktales and classic tales and myths. I had previously asked four of the Chinese teachers who teach English and none of them knew of such a book. I will enjoy learning these stories when I get home.

Mary then surprised me with a beautiful original piece of artwork that she had drawn for me and that they had had professionally matted and framed. Wow! What a special gift!

We then went to lunch (Mary invited her two friends t o come along). We had very wonderful food. Much better than to nice food we have everyday at the hotel and at the school lunches. What a feast. We ate and ate!

Then a little stroll behind the restaurant. I played some Rock, Paper, Scissors. They were playing in Chinese first and then switched to English to include me. Very nice!

An additional walk in the park was last on the agenda.

There, we found the local version of a dog park or dog beach with tons of dogs and owners. They would throw tennis balls for the dogs and dogs would swim like crazy. Some things need no translating.

During the walk, there was more chance to talk, especially with Ken about his observations about china, and worries he has for his daughter’s future. He and Alice have already set aside $140,000 for Mary’s college education. He acknowledged that this might not be enough, but that she is only 11 years old. Ken finished his MBA degree a couple of years ago. He would so enjoy talking to Dick, my husband.

They invited Dick and I to return to China and that we could stay at their home and perhaps we could all travel together. How cool would that be?

It was such an incredibly wonderfully great day. Wow! I thought several times, “Now THIS is what I came to China for!”

Evening took a meeting and getting ready for week number three. Tired and sure I will feel sore after all that exercise today. Ken and Alice both said they thought I did well with the badminton. Alice called and told the school that I very clever because I learned the game so quickly, and Ken said that someone my age in China would not be expected to have done so well, so I guess I wasn’t a total badminton loser. Whew!

China: Day 20: July 24, 2010 Saturday

2010-07-27T06:48:00.000-07:00

Last night we went out for dinner and a little shopping. We ran into one of the Chinese teachers at the mall. what a little small world it is...even in China.

Up and ready for breakfast fairly early. I have now taken to calling home by Skype when I first get up in the morning (like 6:45) and then over lunch about 1pm. Nice to touch base with my husband back at home.

Today five of us American women had an adventure in Guangzhou, a city hypothetically a and half hours away from where we were, but with Saturday traffic and maybe an accident it was three hours by bus. It is China’s 4^th largest city.

We were VERY lucky that Lulu, a 22 year old Chinese man who ahs been helping with our project agreed to be our tour guide for the day. He is from that city (we heard it was his “hometown’…yes, if you can have a home town of 8 million people.

Lulu guided us all day long from bus, to bus to subway to park to museum to temple. He did a wonderful job, although he said he wasn’t prepared to drop out of the University in order to drive Americas around on tours.

Highlights included a lovely park (China saved some amazing land in green space.) We saw a 7000-year-old wall from the Ming Dynasty and the statue of the 5 goats or 5 Rams.

Here is what we learned about it:

The sculpture of five rams is the symbol of Guangzhou. It is located in Yuexiu Park, the largest urban parkland in China. Legend has it that five immortal beings wearing robes of five colours came to Guangzhou on the backs of rams. Each being carried rice and gave it to the people as a sign that Guangzhou would be free of famine. A sculpture was erected in Yuexiu park in 1959 to pay tribute to this story, and to the origins of the name Guangzhou (which means city of goats).

Did I mention it was beastly hot and we were dripping in sweat? That is a refrain often on this trip.

We also went to a lovely Taoist temple:

The open-air Taoist temple offers visitors a quiet retreat from Guangzhou’s busy streets and a chance to see some lovely architecture through the incense smoke.

As so many of these lovely spiritual sites, it was a peaceful pleasure to just be inside.

We got the added bonus of being there when a monk climbed the bell tower and played a huge drum. Yah!

Then we shot a couple of photos in front of the Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Hall. Lulu explained that he was “like George Washington” only Chinese.

Then it was off to Shamian Island which “was Guangzhou’s foreign enclave. The island, translated to Sandspit Island, is home to former British and French warehouses and factories. It’s a quiet area blanketed in the shade of aged trees, is now home to cafes and boutiques.

The former Victorian-era buildings are a stark contrast to the rest of Guangzhou. The riverfront area is a hive of activity in the mornings with locals doing tao chi and fishing in the Pearl River.”

We saw some of the
hive of activity during a rainstorm when people were all gathered under an overpass of the freeway, a man playing the saxophone, playing cards and doing exercises.

An interesting feature of the card game was that if you lost you had to clip a clothespin to your ear. Lulu couldn’t really explain why. It is like playing something where if you drink you have to drink a shot or something. Who knew?

A highlight for me was going to the Swan Hotel:

The White Swan Hotel is the most popular hotel in Guangzhou for adopting families. All families adopting in China must end their trip in Guangzhou because the only American Consulate in China that handles international adoptions is in Guangzhou.

When we walked into the front door there were about ten likely white adoptive families with their adopted baby and toddler Chinese little girls. They all looked as happy and as serious as one could be being at the end of this VERY long process. It brought tears to my eyes. It especially was moving because my husband and I had explored doing a Chinese grille adoption about 16 years ago, and I so could see what a different road this would have mean for our lives. Wow!

wish great blessings to all of those families and am so happy that these children will have good homes. I used to have a bumper sticker on my car that read “every child a wanted child”. I still believe that would be the best for the world.

We made a stop to both McDonalds and Starbucks. Sometimes a little taste of home sounds pretty good.

We ended the evening with a very gracious dinner hosted by Lulu’s mother who is an English teacher at South China Normal University.

She has taught English for 30 years, and was so lovely in meeting us and offering us such a wonderful l welcome.

The food was great, and we also enjoyed the stroll across the campus. This university has 40,000 students and is where Lulu is a 4^th year student in graphic design.

Then we made a very mad dash across town through the subway to catch the last train back to Shekou. We might have just missed it, but they had told Lulu early the wrong time, so we actually had 20 minutes to spare. Whew! That was exhausting.

I also met a wonderful little Chinese girl on the subway whose name was "Lucky," Although she spoke only a

couple of words of English and her parents not much more, we spent a lovely 30 minutes playing baby games...peek a boo, and grab hands. Some things transcend language and are such a blessing! Yah for babies!

We arrived back home at about midnight havening had only a taste of the city, but a lovely time.

China: Day 19: July 23, 2010 Friday

2010-07-27T06:17:00.000-07:00

Rehearsal for the show and they a day’s worth of finishing things up, including making items to go on the mobiles that the students are making abut careers.

One of the fascinating things about China is that, although they seem to have scotch tape refills, there doesn’t not appear to exist tape dispensers. (Someone said that they DID see one somewhere, but we haven’t been able to get a hold of them.) This leaves us with having to tear tape with our teeth or cut with highly inadequate scissors. This gets compounded with the students having very little patience/wait your turn skills. (My husband has a pondering whether this is part of a result of the one child policy. Maybe if you never have to share at home, you don’t learn those skills.)

Any way, I spent a couple of periods with students surrounding me hands in my face saying, ”Teacher, I need two.” And “Teacher, I need four pieces ” “Teacher, teacher!!!!!” Scream. I can only cut tape as fast as I can.

One of our young teachers helped the older students through a really clever building project with used water bottles and hot glue guns. They looked fabulous!

My last period’s class played 40 minutes worth of a game like Duck, Duck, Goose, first in Chinese and then in English. I taught the how to shout, “Go, go Go!” And “Faster, run faster!” Important English life skills!

These kids were going to have to sit for a long performance later and I thought that running them for along time was correct.

Is it just us? Here is a T-shirt that one of the Chinese teachers wore to school this week, saying, “Math sucks”. One of our teachers talked to her and asked if she understood that this mean that she hats math and thinks it is of no value. She agreed that this is what she meant. Then I was talking with children about their talents and asked the Chinese teacher to share what his talent was and he answered, “I am talent at drinking very much beer.” Hmmmm. Today a child also brought highly realistic gun to school which our staff felt very concerned over. The Chinese teachers thought nothing of it. They said that the child wanted to be a policeman so of course he would need a gun. If he brought the same gun to school in the US he would have been expelled. Different values, and different sense of what is “appropriate”.

The evening open house went quite well dispute the plans needing to change multiple times. As it turned out, there was a microphone in the room that I was assigned, which game me the lovely chance to talk and be heard, and to allow the children who wanted to do so, to read the essay they had written about their future career.

Then we played a highly rousing game of pull your career out of the imagination box and let people guess in English what you are acting out. Nearly all the students wanted to do this and it was very fun.

The performance went fine. All of our kids did a good job.

It was highly challenging to pull together another performance so soon on the heels of the one last Friday. It is especially hard to keep hundreds of kids quiet during the hour plus performance that they have mostly already seen, and for the little ones is way over their heads.

We tried a new addition of putting the words to songs and reading up on screen to help the audience. This worked well except somehow the automatic timer got set, so kept moving to the next slide unexpectedly. Ah technology.

We weren’t as tired as we were last week. But this is still a very intense project. One more week to go!

Day 18: July 22, 2010 Thursday

2010-07-25T08:32:00.000-07:00

Getting ready for another performance tomorrow night. This week’s performance isn’t going to be as wonderful as last week, but it will be fine. We have been practicing little “runway” pieces where select students talk about their future careers. They are very sincere, and do a great job with these. We have an animal scientist, a writer (who will go to the coffeehouse shop everyday), a model, a mathematician, and a very famous basketball player.

Then they will be singing a rousing version of I’ve Been Working on the Railroad. We needed a simple song about careers so that one fit the bill. We had some squeamish feeling about having Chinese children sing this after the tragic history of the number of Chinese Americans who suffered and died building the railroad in the US, but we were assured that that doesn’t mean anything to the Chinese people. They did a cute job and sing with gusto.

We had a super chaotic rehearsal which was so hard. In some ways, too many teachers can kind of spoil the soup...to mix a metaphor. And we were trying to practice as the rain was POUNDING down on the roof. You couldn't hear the kids or yourself think.

At the end of the practice, we still had 15 minutes left to go, so I told the 100 students an interactive version of the story about the very noisy house. The children were quite shy about making the sounds of cows and chickens, but I think they enjoyed hearing the story. I so love telling stories to kids, especially when they are new to them.

The time is going by so swiftly. Tomorrow will be the final day of the second week. Wow!

I also did a tremendously successful exercise with the older two Advanced beginner groups teaching them about business cards and the role of business cards: why do adults have them. Then I had two children at a time come up in front of the group and present and received cards (both which two hands). Then we had a discussion about whether or not these two students could do business with one another. My favorite was the basketball player and singer. At first everyone said that they couldn’t do business together, but then I talked with them about the signing of the national anthem in America before very basketball game. They didn’t know the term national anthem, so I asked if they had watched the Beijing Olympics? Remember when the first wins and they put up the flag and the play the most important song to that country. Then I had them sing their national anthem and I sang a part of the Star Spangled Banner. It was fabulous. All of the students who did it were able to brainstorm some way they could possibly do business together.

This worked wonderfully. There was a lot of real life conversation, as well as true-life career skills.

We are making plans to go to another city, Guangzhou on Saturday. The time is so precious; we are trying very hard to stretch things as far as we can. So much China, so little time.

Did I mention that they really don’t have driers in China? Even in the nicer apartments (really no one in the city can live in a house) they have washing machines and they hang the clothes to dry on their balconies. We can see some clothes drying every day from the school where we are teaching. Just another interesting thought about China.

China: Day 17: July 21, 2010 Wednesday

2010-07-25T08:13:00.000-07:00

Moving along, this is hump day for the week, and for the program. Lots of really good interaction with the students. It is disappointing that we get very little time with the Chinese teachers that isn’t in class time. These teachers are working so hard. Not only are they assisting in the classes all daylong, but they also provide the before school, after school and lunch time supervision. Yipes! THAT is a tough work day for them. They are very interested in our teaching style, but everyone is getting tired out!

One of the really interesting exercises we did today with the students was getting them talk about the jobs that their parents and grandparents (and in some cases aunts, uncles, brothers or sisters) had. Lots of engineers, clerks, “bosses”, teachers, and “workers”. Workers turns out to be code word for blue collar workers with their hands. Then we wrote little scripts that said things like:

Hello, my name is Susan. I want to be a dancer because I like dancing and music. Everyday I would wake up and go to the dance studio. My job would be dancing and teaching dancing. My father is an engineer. My mother is a housewife. I want to be a dancer and a dance teacher.

A very interesting discussion was about whether their parents liked the particular job the students were choosing or not like. Even though these students have limited English, there is such power in these dialogues! I love these students!

A team meeting after school today and then off for another massage...this time an intense foot massage which included a special Chinese treatment called moxibustion.

My husband Dick and I took a workshop on this when we lived in Minneapolis, and found out that this process which is burning a compacted weed and having the smoke go over your accupunture points....actually when you do it at your house in the bathroom, smells terribly lot marijuana and the smell stays in the walls for about a month. In the spa, it was nice, and didn't even cause us any extra. This is the other part of the accupunture process. When in China, do as the Chinese do.

China: Day 16: July 20, 2010 Tuesday

2010-07-20T22:09:00.000-07:00

Up early to talk to my husband by SKYPE. Then off to another day. Today I tried a couple of my old tried and true teaching methods: a continuum exercise where you go to agree disagree or so so about different jobs. The Chinese love the word “so so”. And then we used a magic box to do mime of different jobs. You ad to take something out of the box and the group guess what the job is. Both worked quite well. It was really fun to see the students get excited about acting out these careers.

One group though got too out of control and after repeated warnings we stopped the game and went to silent writing. Sigh! No fun being the disciplinarian, but it has to happen if they are going to be unsafe. One girl got her arm hurt and was sobbing. The Chinese teacher stepped in and yelled at those kids like a drill sergeant. Wow! Hate to have that happen, but people can’t be getting hurt.

A little walking and shopping before dinner. We all found some treasures. I am not much of a shopper at home, but there are some many fabulous treasures. Pretty fun.

We also saw these kids in great homemade cardboard masks.

They were happy to pose for photos and then immediately wanted to take a look and see the digital images. Kids are kids wherever they are.

We enjoyed seeing a display that had photos of the students doing fun activities.

Here are a couple from the PE classes that I took for my dad, the Physical Education teacher.

When I told the students this was my father's job, they were excited and highly impressed. One girl said, "That is very healthy!" Then they brainstormed all of the fun things you got to do in PE. That was a hit!

Dinner brought us together trying frantically to make a reasonable plan for the Friday evening parent performance. Still no great plan. We are working on a new version of I’ve been working on the railroad, saying I’ve been working in the office, and I’ve been working helping people. We’ll see.

One of the PC users figured out how to get into FACEBOOK so there was a chance to be able to put a quick update there.

Tomorrow is another day. Quickly catching up with these posts, and then to bed? These school days roll along fast.

China: Day 15: July 19, 2010 Monday

2010-07-20T22:07:00.000-07:00

Back to school again. It is amazing how one week can make such a difference in terms of having some routines in place for the students and us.

Today was a pretty straightforward day. We did some evaluations for last week (one child wrote that Miss Patti’s class was his best one;-) ), as well as began to study careers. I was able to share the original story frame that I wrote about a little girl who always heard, “What are you going to be when you grew up?” and hated it. She started thinking that she loved math so maybe she could have a job with math (what jobs use math, boys and girls?) Also loved music, liked to talk. She hated cleaning, and writing, too much, so she knew she should avoid other jobs (again, group brain storming). This worked quite well with my classes and I was surprised at the vocabulary that the students had…they knew a lot of English job words.

We are trying to find the “culturally appropriate” ways to work with these students about career choice. We are in one of the first generations of children in China that have greater choice in careers. We will be very interested at what the parents have to say when they come on Friday. We will be having another performance, but this one is tougher in terms of gearing a performance on what we are doing about career exploration. Hold on to your hats as we try to work it out.

The older kids re making "inventions" out of used water bottles. Really quite creative. We really have rather random supplies available. It turns out that no one in China knows what "index" cards are. But they do have hot glue guns.

A student brought the song 2 What U Wanna B to us, which is a popular song that really encourages kids to explore. We will be sharing that in some way.

A number of our teachers have gotten sick. I decided to try and lay a bit low and take care NOT to get sick. That doesn’t sound (or look) fun: to be sick in China.

How about to bed early tonight? I continue to be able to SKYPE with my husband, sometimes right before we go to breakfast and then over lunch break. Being 15 hours different, and needing to work around when each of us would be available is challenging, but workable.

Somehow we are nearing the halfway point. This time will keep going by so quickly.

China: Day 14: July 18, 2010 Sunday

2010-07-19T06:14:00.000-07:00

Okay, the party is over….we had a day off, now it is back to the school for a Sunday am planning meeting. We are now needing to switch focus from dealing with Biomes and environmental issues and animals to career exploration this week.

Because this is all a newly developing curriculum, there are still some bugs to work out, so we spent a frustrating morning trying to understand and get things in order for the week.

Then, lunch an off to Splendid China and The China Cultural Village. This are is known as the amusement park center for all of China. (Kind of the Anaheim of China.)

This place had a combination of miniature

display off all of China’s riches buildings, temples and other structures (a quite SMALL Great Wall was featured. We figured that we couldn’t go to China and not get a chance to have our photo taken with the great Wall, even though it is very far away from where we are.

Then there were also villages, displays and houses representing the 56 ethnic minorities within China. This was Fascinating, although it would have been even better with a guide who could interpret what it is that we were seeing. AND it would have been better if it weren’t beastly hot. Sweat dripped down our shirts.

My roommate Jenny decided to take the opportunity of her training as an acrobat to pose on the shoulders of a copy of a terra cotta warrior. Really funny, and fun, especially sense the security guard didn’t come and kick us out of the park.

We got to see several dances and other shows, which were lovely. A highlight for me was the chance to try on an authentic Chinese costume. The one I chose was the one worn by the Emperor’s daughter, or Gege. It is basically a Chinese princess dress. I loved it, but it was so hot. Oh my, those princesses had to be tough!

At 5pm, the group met and saw a lovely show that focused on the amazing costumes from all of these ethnic groups. It gave you a much better sense of how huge China was. Some of the groups could have been Russian, some Middle Eastern or Roma/Gypsy people. All were amazing. The most interesting was a group of women who were all dancing with live peacocks on their hats. Yes, you read that right. White peacocks, full sized, were on their hats!

Now I may

have seen everything!

Did you have any idea that the Chinese have a version of salt water taffy? We saw it being pulled. (It tastes very much like what we get in the States....pretty sweet and chew.)

We came back and then had dinner on our own. We have a nice café that we like to hang out. This time I tried a club sandwich, just like home except it included a fried egg on it. You never know what the twist will be. While we waited for our dinner, a group was watching Chinese basketball, a very rough and tumble version. Some things the same as home, but also different!

Up late work on these blog entries. So much to say, but have to get ready for school in the morning.

China: Day 13: July 17, 2010 Saturday

2010-07-19T02:39:00.000-07:00

The entire group was in agreement. Today needed to be a “day off!” And it was. We slept rather late, and then all left for adventures. Jenny and I joined a group of about 14 of us who were going into downtown Shenzhen to go shopping. We decided to go to Dongmen. This entailed taking a bus and then a subway line into the city. It was a little confusing as to how all of these places fit together, so I was thrilled when the Chinese woman next to me asked (in English) where we were going and if she could help. Her name was Sherry and she used to be an English teacher. Her English was excellent although she apologized several times for how poor her speaking was. She was able to give us a lot of information and then helped Shepard the large group of us to the correct subway stop.

We exchanged email addresses and she sent me copies of some beautiful embroidery patterns. I had admired her shirt and she offered to give it to me. You have to be careful when you admire something here. People are so generous, but you don’t want to literally take the shirt off the woman’s back!

Once we got to Dongmen, we separated into smaller groups. Then we were let lose into a maze of shops and booths and stores and bargains to be had. Jenny, Sudan and I spent a lovely and highly successful day shopping our way through the city.

It was very fun and we found some great bargains as well as some VERY lovely and stylish clothing.

We had a great AIR CONDITONED late lunch in a noodle shop, and then it was time to attempt to find our way back to the Metro stop. Easier said then done. Although I had a small map, it was fairly useless. The streets are all in Chinese characters and none of them run in any type a grid pattern. At one point, we stopped and were peering the book looking at the map when a nice Chinese couple stopped us and asked if we needed help. Their English was excellent (and we must have looked pretty pathetic!) Once they ascertained that we were not very close to the subway, the woman wrote on a piece of paper (in Chinese) “Please give me directions to the subway.” Very kind, as we have found nearly all Chinese people.

Luckily, we ended up not needing to use the note, because we found a sign that actually was helpful to us. One of the only ones we have seen in China so far. It had the symbol for the subway with arrows. We followed and followed these signs and then tadah! The subway. We found our way back to the hotel, quite please with ourselves and very tired!

This may be a good time to add in some random findings about China.

Very often, there are no actual toilets and toilet seats in the stalls, only squatters….places that you squat over to do your business. It is also very rare to find toilet paper. Everyone carries with them small packets of tissues. Occasionally, you will find in a really nice bathroom either western style toilets, or at least one, but most often not. We do have a western style bathroom in our hotel. (Which we appreciate).

We almost always get our rice served at the very end of the meal (right before the watermelon dessert.) When we ask to have it served along with the veggies or stir-fry, the servers appear puzzled and slightly offended.

Chinese also serve pizza with Tabasco sauce, black pepper and ketchup.

Chinese love to play badminton and many people play it highly competitively. Here is one of our teachers, Chris, having borrowed the hotel’s badminton set to go off to a match.

The Chinese can pile a LOT on a bike or a tricycle. Wow! Sometimes you have a do a double take when you see everything on a bike.

Chinese babies also do not wear diapers, at least in the daytime. They wear pants with slits down the back in the butt. The kids who are walking around just go squat down in the grass or on a toilet. Babies are soon trained to cry or let mom know that they need to go to the bathroom, and then mom holds it over the toilet or by a tree outside. A woman told me that they do this because it is too hot.

I told her that American babies sometimes run around with just a diaper on. She said that Chinese babies would never go without a shirt, only with their butts hanging out. Go figure!

Chinese groups don't drink out of paper cups. They use the fancy tea cups with lids and then put their name in Chinese characters on them with tape.

China uses 119 instead of 911 for their emergency numbers.

The Chinese sell a lot of merchandize with English writing on it. Sometimes it takes some work to try to decode what it is that they are trying to say. Here are a couple T-shirts that I bought. Pretty interesting and a testimony to why they need more English teachers here.:

People love American basketball. Here is a large public poster of Kobe.

Even though it is about 90 degrees+ they still are featuring winter parkas in Walmart.

So, those are some random cultural observations. Hmmmmm. We are NOT in Kansas (or California) any more.

China: Day 12: July 16, 2010 Friday

2010-07-17T15:33:00.000-07:00

Today was SHOW time! We started out with two shortened morning classes and then were to rehearsal with EVYERBODY for the first time. This went considerable better than yesterday when each group was practicing but still quite a few “kinks”. 400 hundred children at on and off stage, as well as learning a LOT of new material in English in only really four days is AMAZING. And we also have the problem that when they are not on stage they are supposed to sit quietly and wait. For many children, not their best skills.

In my teaching time today with my four classes, I shared our new book How Baby Coyote Learned to Howl. I showed the book; talked about different vocabulary words and then told/read it to the students while my Chinese teacher/helper sat beside me and showed the other half of the class the pictures. It was a hit. When I asked them if children in China liked this book, my boy replied, “Off course!” Another girl said, “I want to buy this book.” Yes! What a joy to be able to share the result of all of that hard, hard work over these last several years and have it really pay off.

The book works well with a range of ages, as well as for English Language Development students. What a great field test to share it in China! Another teacher shared it with the teenagers, and, although they were clear that it was an easy book for children, they LOVED the story and the illustrations. It is very interesting for everyone to hear about the process of writing and book. The students in the younger groups here will be continuing to “write their own books” during the next week. They have never done this, but are very excited.

During the final 15 minutes of the day on Friday (primo teaching time of the week!!!!) the parents were invited to come to our class and observe. My students practiced their choral poems one more time. Then they were able to show and read to their parents the small books that they were writing for the reading class.

The parents were so encouraging of their children. It was wonderful to see them interested and so proud when their child brought their books and shared them. Wow!

Then everybody went down to the

school auditorium, which seats 700 people. Because it was at the end of the workday, some parents were not able to attend, but many were there. The theatre was full.

All of the staff was nervous. Could we really pull this off: 400 kids, lots of new materials, and songs with accompaniment? Memorized pieces, and ones with scripts? Props, backdrops? YES! We/they did it! Every group rose to the occasion and performed beautifully!

I was especially proud of our advanced beginner group. The filed on, smiled, said their lines with gusto, and did they sing?! The Lion Sleeps Tonight has never sounded so sincere. They sang loudly, and then very quietly on” Hush my darling…” coming back with Aweeeeeee aweeeuuumm away like angels. Go B Team!!!!!!

All of the other groups did terrifically, also. From singing Slippery Fish going through the water, to a medley of Somewhere Over the Rainbow and What a Wonderful World, to Jungle Love and Under the Sear (from The Little Mermaid).

Then we ended with the entire place singing We are the World, we are the children. Okay, we were skeptical that this song has been so overdone that it would just be silly. But it was lovely. Everyone sang with such power, and they loved doing the arm movements that went along. Even my 5^th grade boys who were texting during the show.

Afterwards, we were all exhausted, but very pleased. The Chinese school officials were stoked. They couldn’t believe that it had come together so well. One of the school officials said that he was sure Chinese parents had never seen anything like this before. The Chinese way would be for 2 or 3 of the very best students to perform. All of the parents got to see every child on stage. It really was fantastic.

As Americans, we had never seen such a pageant come together so quickly. These students can learn songs so quickly, sometimes just hearing a line sung through one time. And the really could learn to do movements so fast. My group poem had a line where they said, “give a little clap” which went with a “clap”. Everyone got it right on the beat. NEVER was someone off. We were highly fortunate that they could learn so quickly. We also had very talented teachers, especially those teaching the kids music. I was highly proud to be part of this crew. Everyone pulled together in such a GREAT manner. Go everybody!!!!

We went back to the hotel and then had the chance to meet with a master tailor who began orders to make custom clothing for us. My roommate has a couple of grand design she is wanting. I will likely get a silk jacket made. It is a very interesting process. Luckily, we are able to have Eugene, one of the heads of the program translate. He is also quite a clothing designer besides being an architect. This process will continue with fabric samples on Sunday night.

Dinner was on our own, and then Jenny and I joined the young music team for a midnight swimming party in the school district pool next to our hotel. Silly and rowdy, but super fun. Jenny was writing haikus about midnight in China, the sky is orange…which it was. The rain would come and go and the pool was a perfect warm temperature. Was a great way to end a VERY long day.

China: Day 11: July 15, 2010

2010-07-15T09:39:00.000-07:00

Well, sometimes when you are working in a foreign culture things change or get confused in the translation. We THOUGHT that we were staying late after school today to do a dress rehearsal with the 400 students, but instead, the school had rented out the auditorium to a group that was doing a dance program so it was not available. Sigh! Scramble! We were able to stagger having the groups run into the auditorium for a half hour each (the hundred students/four classes in each TEAM), and then each group found another space to rehearse for much of the remainder of the day. The children are really good sports about things are want so much to please, even thought what we ask them to do keeps changes ALL of the time.

Our kids are going to do a great job. You should really hear what they sound like singing “The Lion Sings Tonight”. They really wail on the Ayeeeeeeeeeeee eummmmaway! Somehow, tomorrow night we’ll do it and it will be lovely. In the meantime, we are having more practices tomorrow and the schedule will change again. It is a very ambitious schedule to have a performance every Friday for three weeks, all with children who are English Language Development learners.

We have a really talented group of teachers and we are working our hind ends off. Everyone was exhausted by the time we got on the bus.

Today I told “Goldilocks and the Three Bears” and “The Wide Mouth Frog”. I also taught some kids the game of Extreme Ring-around the Rosie…they were so brain-dead after rehearsing so much, they needed to run around. Luckily I have the air-conditioned room. I taught them the song and then “We all fall down” ended up with us all laughing on the floor, them we would get up and someone would say “Again” and we’d start over. These Chinese students can learn songs remarkably quickly. I also taught one group “Make new friends, but keep the old” today and they got after hearing it a couple of times. That makes it really fun to do songs. They often don’t understand the vocabulary, so we often have great discussions about things, like the word for “sneeze” in English and Chinese.

In several classes they will teach me the words in Chinese for things and repeat it over and over until I pronounce it right. Then they applaud for me. A Chinese English teacher told me that I have a good accent. A student caught me at the end class today and told me that I had pronounced a word incorrectly with a sh instead of a s sound. It had been bothering her. Smile.

After dinner, a walk over to get another hour long foot massage. Oh, it is a tough life to have to get massages every day or two!

Oh yeah, they announced that a typhoon is headed this direction. It is called Pacific Ocean Tropical Storm Conson over the south China Sea. It may arrive on Sunday (the day we are planning to go to a local cool ethnic cultural center park. We’ll keep you posted as to what being in a typhoon is really like. Winds of up to 80 mph and driving rain. We are all hoping it maybe will hold off until Monday rather than on our weekend. Hmmmm typhoons. How about a regular old fashioned earthquake or tornado?

China: Day 10: July 14, 2010

2010-07-15T09:07:00.000-07:00

I was in the local paper….Take a look! Well at least a photo of me and my group of kids. I am standing up in the orange T-shirt. If you could read Chinese it would tell you all of the basics about 400 children from this area are in the summer camp with teachers from famous Universities in America. (Not quite sure which famous Universities…) and then it talks about the curriculum and the cool stuff we will be doing with students. Nothing about any specific teachers at all. But, cool, how about a clipping from China? Yah!

All of our Chinese students have English names, and we have also been given Chinese names. (This is how my name looks in Chinese characters.)

Today we really got down to business with what our performance will be on Friday. It is coming together (more or less).

The kids that I am in charge of (100 3^rd-5^th graders) will be marching in saying “Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!” Then on to several little animal poems. We’ll end with a great version of The Lion Sleeps tonight….from South Africa to America to China. The kids LOVE to sing that. They are great singers. They are also going to have water bottles made into maraca shakers to talk about conservation.

Sounds good, but trying to give solid stage directions in a second language to children who are tired and hot is a challenge. We decided in our production meeting today, that this all looks good on paper, and we’ll see how it actually comes together on Friday. Our team has some really great stuff going on.

One thing that I found highly interesting is that in China the schools do not have lunchrooms. Instead, lunch ladies bring a cart of food to the individual classrooms and the students eat there.

The same staff also brings a hot red sweetened tea drink around the classes mid-afternoon. The Chinese believe that this really helps you to cool down, by drinking a hot liquid. I had the chance tot try it for the first time today. Students were very interested if I liked it. Luckily, I did. I tasted sweet (although I don’t know if it really helped me to cool down.).

A very beautiful thing happened with a couple of our reading teachers today. They helped the younger children to do their own small books. Just two sheets of blank paper stapled together. The Chinese had never seen anything like this. It took a long time to explain to the students (and the teachers) what they were talking about, and then to allow the students to just use their own spelling and grammar and do illustrations. The books the students created a FABULOUS. These students at 7-12 years old had never done this before. One girl began to cry that she wanted to write a book about art rather than about the ocean, which was the assignment. When she was told she could do both, it was a very happy moment. They are thinking for the third week, maybe to make “pop-up” books. Being able to bring our methods of teaching is really different for everyone, and has caused some serious confusion and at times struggle, but it is really satisfying.

Then after school today, we set up 3 drum sets in the courtyard and three of our music guys in their twenties got in the drums and the kids loved it. It was so much fun. Then a couple of people started doing break dancing. I got in the action with doing some non-break dancing, as well as playing a tiny bit on the drum set. I am not where in their league, but how much fun it was!

It rained pretty hard over lunch today, which gave us a LITTLE break in the weather, but then the floors in the outdoor hallways of these four story buildings were super wet. I nearly slipped several times. Staff came out with mops and brooms to clear the water out. Unfortunately, they pushed some off the balcony right unto my roommate Jenny where she was resting before the final class of the day. So she had to teach soaking wet. This is so different that what any of us are used to.

Tonight, another massage seemed in order. We love the hour and a half-long full body massages for $13.00. Yes! We went back to the very classy place, which is why the cost was “so high”. Tonight we got the massage with oil instead of the usual Chinese way where you keep you clothes on or put on light pajamas and they massage you through a sheet. I had LOT of really tight places. Imagine that! After the massage, a musician was playing a traditional Chinese stringed instrument. Very cool!

China: Day 9: July 13, 2010

2010-07-13T07:19:00.001-07:00

Second day of school or camp or whatever combo it is that we are doing. Everyone is more in sync with understanding how it is supposed to work during the day. There is a strange fuse box switch in my classroom, so that took some getting some help to fix. Then the students arrived and it was “on with the show”. I try to find things in English conversation that they might not know bout. One group learned about the question, “How was your lunch?” with long discussions about what IS a lunch, and what could you say about it. Another was very interested in which things are “fruit” and which are not. These students do not seem to be used to being asked to crawl around on the floor, but they are very willing and seem to love to do it. We are also working on doing some reader's theatre. Very interesting how quickly they are able to memorize and "recite". this is very much a bit part of their educational process.

I did one of my very easy magic tricks, the magic coloring book to rare reviews. (Although several kids wanted to see my book so they could figure out how I did the trick.) This lead to having to learn “abracadabra” as a magic word.

Students were also VERY interested in seeing photos of my house in California, and of my family. They could hardly believe that there were four children in my family and that I had eight nieces and nephews. Due to the official government policy that each family may have only one child, virtually all of these students come form families where they have only their parents and grandparents. They have no uncles, aunts, cousins, brothers or sisters. They thought my family was a VERY LARGE family. Their eyes were glued to my photos.

The temperature is in the high 80’s and 90’s with a very high level of Humidity. It is really hot and muggy and uncomfortable. By the finally class of the day, which ends at 4:15, both the teachers and the students are EXHAUSTED and brain dead. Everyone does their total best, but kids are struggling….and some are poking and hitting bugging each other. Just like kids everywhere. One teacher had to take a couple boys out in the hall to talk to them today about their behavior. I had to ask a couple of teachers to move wherer boys were sitting so one wouldn’t bother the other ones.

One English phrase I taught the kids was “Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!” Sounds like that should take about a minute to teach, huh? Nope! In Chinese they do not have plurals, so students can’t hear or say those “s” sounds on the ends of the word.

Friday we have a performance for the parents. This is really a high level of pressure of the staff and therefore the students. One of the members of my team is working with the kids on singing “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” (A-wem-away, a-wem-away……In the juggle the mighty jungle the lion sleeps tonight…) I got to watch him in action today with getting kids playing piano, and on the drum sets, and singing all at the same time. Chaotic (and slightly disruptive to the classrooms around him) but totally awesome.

Some students are totally excited and really “into” what we are doing, and some are either lost or bored and talking to their neighbor as I am trying to get them to cooperate.

I loaned my picture book that I co-wrote, “How Baby Coyote Learned to Howl” to one of the teachers and she read it to the students and acted it out. She said they loved it and really understood what she was reading. Yah!!!! Baby Coyote rocks China!

There are times when I wish that I had more experience, or that someone who could REALLY figure out how to make the students tap into their creativity like my dad were here to help make this happen. Today as I was crawling on my belly on the floor trying to demonstrate what a tiger “creeping” would look like, I decided that I couldn’t let my pride get in the way of graphically showing what the English words mean. At times, the Chinese teachers seem puzzled (and maybe dismayed) at some of our styles and methods. We will have to see what it all looks like in the next two+ weeks.

We are driven to and from school and our hotel in the morning, at noon and then after school (or meetings) are done. We have a lovely bus, and enjoy the ease of getting around. It is funny to got a month without driving a vehicle.

After school, Jenny, my roommate and I walked over the grocery store and bought some treats.You can buy Pringles Potato chips and Snickers candy bars here. Yah! Sometimes you need a treat that tastes like home.

You gotta love the signs, "Food laying fallow" which we THINK means packaged food.

China: Day 8: July 12, 2010

2010-07-13T05:45:00.000-07:00

First day of school…. somehow, all of the planning and the communication and the miscommunication is behind us and we have now completed the first day of school. Actually, they are calling it the first day of camp, but it had very much a first day of school feel about it.

We were up early, and had meeting with other teachers over breakfast, arriving at the school at 8:15 with a lovely sign welcoming us all to the American Scene Summer Camp.

There was a bit of scrambling because some of the supplies that we needed had not arrived yet yesterday, but were there today.

The beginning part of the day included a one-hour assembly that was a remarkable opening ceremony. This was filled with lots of speeches and government and school officials, as well as being introduced on stage as the distinguished teachers from America.

One Chinese student gave quite a wonderful speech. We all had tears in our eyes as he encouraged all of the children to take advantage of the amazing opportunity to learn “authentic English”. I was reflecting that most of the English these students hear is by non-Native speakers. They played “We are the World” and, even though it was kind of schmaltzy, it was also nice. These really are very beautiful children.

When the assembly was complete, the students arrived in our classrooms. The students are group by ability level (beginning,

advanced beginning, intermediate, and advanced. And then within those groups they are also divided by ability, so the students really ranged in how much English they are able to speak and to understand. The students that my team is working with are mostly 3^rd and 4^th graders with one class of 5^th and 6^th graders. And there is quite a range within those groups, too.

The day went well. Some groups were able to really tear through a lot of material and activities, and some didn’t get through as much. All students introduced themselves with their English names. Popular names include David, Helen and Jenny, with some having chosen for themselves names such a Candy, Dodo, Killer and Martini.

The students were highly impressed with my photos of me telling stories in an actual classroom in the US. They also really enjoyed the movement activity where I had them move around the room ‘very slowly” or marching or crawling like a baby or on your stomach like a snake. The teacher in the room below me wishes I would do less marching, so I’ll try to keep it a bit more quiet.

We have the tension of a huge amount of curriculum that they would like us to cover, but also to have the students had a lot of fun. This is a tricky balance. Oh yeah, we also have a performance for the parents already on Friday afternoon. We introduced the concept of reader’s theatre (choral reading of short scripts) and then had the students try them. A range of how successful, but one group was able to quickly memorize a script and say with enthusiastic articulation.

Trying to figure out what vocabulary we need to teach is interesting. I ended up having quite a discussion with one class about the word "cave" verses "cage"….quite a different. They also didn't understand the word "partner" as in "find yourself a partner." Things that we take for granted, they have never heard of. We are supposed to be studying animals and their different environments around the world. Fun, but a challenge for some of these little kids for whom English is still highly mysterious. Thank goodness for the Chinese teachers who could translate as wee needed it. My last class of the day, which was the lowest class, ended up teaching me a few words of Chinese, and they laughed at my terrible pronunciation. They especially loved the moving around the room. We had very interesting discussions about the phrase “goodness gracious” (okay, try explaining THAT one!) They also often use the phrase, "Oh my God!" although they don't seem to really know what that means.

We teach only 4 hours out of the day, with morning and afternoon breaks, plus two hours off for lunch and trip back to the hotel…where some people sleep and I talk with my husband, Dick, by Skype on the internet. This sounds like a cushy workday, but this takes a lot out of the teachers and the students. It is more difficult because many of the classes are being taught in non-air conditioned rooms.

Which are VERY hot, dripping sweat hot.I am lucky with my air-conditioning, which I learned how to tell which switch was the on and off button…how cool is that?

So far, this is VERY hard work, but I am also learning a ton. For example, today I read the quote “every little makes a mickle.”

A typo you wonder? No, a British or Scottish proverb meaning every little bit counts or adds up. Who knew?

We have quite good comradely among most of the staff. It is a highly talented group of teachers. And everyone is teaching their hearts out. Another 14 teaching days to go…may it all allow us to touch the hearts and minds of one another.

After school, we had a big debriefing meeting, and them back to the hotel for dinner, a little more planning and off to bed. Tomorrow is another school day.

China: Day 7: July 11, 2010

2010-07-11T22:20:00.000-07:00

Up this morning, breakfast and then off to a dim sum restaurant. Some thing we are familiar with in the US and then some totally new foods. At times it takes some courage to taste things that look strange or smell "interesting”. But what fun to have the chance to eat these amazing foods! (Some of us are getting a little nostalgic for hamburgers, salads or even just fresh fruit. It doesn’t seem like that could happen in just one week, but there you go!)

We all got “The American Scene” summer camp T-shirts to wear today at meet the teacher time at the school. It was a challenge for these kids and families to find five different classrooms in four different buildings to meet us all. Elementary school kids here are TRULY not used to changing classrooms, so some amount of chaos reigned but it was good.

Parents brought their kids to the student’s “homeroom” where the teacher met the students and then sometimes ended up conducting an impromptu class for an hour or so. New students were still being enrolled during these sessions, and our Chinese colleagues were also involved in giving out information to the parents. THEN they took the students on a little bit of a tour to the other four classrooms that they will rotate through. Sounds simple enough, eh? Well, put in nearly 400 students, plus at least one parent each, 20 Chinese teachers, 20 US teachers, and various and sundry other Chinese staff people, and the understanding of what was happening got confusing at times. One poor mother asked, “Do I really have to try and meet 16 separate teachers who will be working with my son? How will I find them all?”

Despite the confusion, we all got through it, and met some VERY nice children and parents, with a variety of different level skills of English.

Everyone was very nice and we will really enjoy getting to know them much better over these next three weeks. We finished the day tired, but glad that we got through this meeting time.

By the end of tomorrow, we will all have a lot better sense of what this will be like. Although I didn’t have a “homeroom” class, so I didn’t have a group of students for a long time, I did get a chance to have everyone take a look at my great classroom: I ended up with the dance studio, with wood floor, mirrored walls and AIR CONDITIONING….something that not everybody has. I was also able to find a small drum today that I fill bring into the class tomorrow.

My roommate, Jenny, and I decided to opt out of a more formal supper and walked over to Wal-Mart to buy a few supplies for school tomorrow. Although we were warned about it, this is not your mother’s Wal-Mart.

The bottom of two floors has big tanks and lets of Chinese groceries (or as the sign says Dry Droceries). The tops floor has many sections similar to Wal-Mart back home, and then random additional areas such as the chopstick aisle. We were struck by the numbers of people standing and sitting around in the books section reading in the stores. And, of course, people gathered around the big screen TV’s. How things have changed in this country to go from such an isolated country to one filled with Wal-Mart,

McDonalds, KFC and Starkbucks!

In the midst of all that has been happening and coming at me, I read a good reminder quote today, “That which we bless with our gratitude responds by multiplying.” So I am coming today with a heart filled with gratefulness. I am grateful that I am here in China, that I have such wonderfully capable colleagues, that these Chinese parents are entrusting their children to us believing that we will bring good to them, that we have amazing new food (in plenteous amounts) every day, that I get to teach and tell stories to one hundred young Chinese children five days a week for the next three weeks, that I get to learn from my American and Chinese colleagues and from the children, that I am not alone, that I have done things like this before so I have experience, that if something doesn’t work out we can try something else and learn from the experience.

China: Day 6: July 10, 2010

2010-07-11T22:19:00.000-07:00

We began today with some confusion getting our classrooms set up at the school. We arranged furniture, tried to get the handle on where our teacher partner’s rooms were, and got somewhat of an idea as to how this will all fit together. It is starting to seem much more clear. Two more days and “It’s show time!” We had the chance to see a few students walking on this beautiful Treble Clef walkway on the campus. It is so peaceful and lovely!

Most of the group decided to catch an afternoon ferry traveling two hours and go over to Macau (an island near Hong Kong.) After the sweaty morning, this sounded like more than I wanted to do. After lunch, I settled in for a nice two hour Skype talk with my husband catching up on the adventures abroad and at home. Dick reported in about the funeral of our dear neighbor, Charles who died just before I left on the trip. We both will really miss him, and it was sad for me to not be able to attend the funeral. Being in china was a valid excuse though.

The remainder of the afternoon passed with doing some lesson planning, reading a little, and then heading off to explore the neighborhood. I thought I was going to check out Wal-mart, but went another route that lead me through some interesting streets and in and out of some shops. I bought some light dinner items at a small grocery store, and just enjoyed looking at all of the products available. One thing that I am still not getting used to is not being able to read the labels which means you have to look a the pictures.

This can lead to some misunderstandings (brings me very much back to my days working at the adult literacy program!) Yesterday day I thought I was getting an orange Popsicle. It turned out to be red bean. Tonight I bought what I thought was a Minute Maid Limeade. Nope, it was Minute Maid aloe vera juice. Neither is these were my favorites….being able to ready labels is VERY useful!

Then there was time blogging as well as we are expected to keep a reflection journal as part of the research of this trip. I am writing a ton!

Nice to get a chance to catch my breath a bit. 30+ days is not a sprint. It is more of a super marathon. I learned when I was on a Fulbright trip to Mexico for a month that you sometimes have to opt out of something that could be cool and sleep. Just for your sanity. So this was one of those days. Maybe even early to bed. Hmmmmm. Good idea.

China: Day 5: July 9, 2010

2010-07-09T16:11:00.001-07:00

Day 5: July 9, 2010

Did I mention the breakfasts? Still struggling with trying to figure out what is what. I don’t think I have

ever had corn on the cob for breakfast, of some of the combinations of friend dough. It is delicious (mostly), although I may buy a banana to bring tomorrow.

Half-day teacher training again today. Things are beginning to come together, but there are every so many questions that we have as to what to expect form our Chinese students. Are they used to working in groups? Yes, groups of four. Are they at all familiar with American culture such as Disney movies? Will doing these performances be familiar? Have they ever seen anything like readers theatre with scripts? Can these young children actually read English?
I did find out yesterday that Chinese school customarily have a two hour lunch where the children can go home if they want, or at school they eat in the classroom and then can go to the nap room and sleep, watch movies or play “quiet activities” out doors.

It was really inspiring to meet these teachers and hear about their enthusiasm. We were also encouraged by the principal to go on a Chinese journey with them.

We feel rather bad for the Chinese teachers. The reason that they are only available for half the day today is that it is last week of school and they have graduation tonight! Yipes, what a GREAT time to be in trainings. We saw the students lining up in an assembly as we arrived. (And probably interrupted what was going on…that wasn’t the best teacher’s manners…) But they are a beautiful looking crew. We will so enjoy all of these interactions with these young people.
I am very excited that I will be able to somehow share my How Baby Coyote Learned to Howl picture book with the children. Not quite sure how it all fits in, but we are studying Biomes (desert, jungle, grasslands, etc.) so somehow that will be part of what I bring to the table. We found out that the word Biomes was unfamiliar to the teachers.

In my teaching, all somehow has to lead to doing these performances at the end of each of the weeks. We have a HIGHLY ambitious schedule of three themes in three weeks. First week biomes, second career exploration, third week world cultures. Highly interesting yet trying to keep the age level and language acquisition in place.

Second day training was easier. Everyone was less nervous and things are falling into place.

The range in level of English ability of the Chinese teachers is also great. Some are quite fluent and some are so shy and reluctant to speak, especially in front of a group. When we did the go around ending activity at the teacher training where you could say something about how it has been so far, only one Chinese teacher spoke and she spoke of being very shy (she was the brave one!) And these are the adults!

We have had some little interactions with a few students at the school. Brave ones coming up and introducing themselves. They also have a range of English, form being able to have a conversation, so only answering to what is your name and how old are you? We will have to see what the real language skills are once we get them in our classroom.

Following another fabulous school lunch, back to the hotel to try to sort out what to do with a rare free afternoon. Ten of us gathered in a hotel room and poured over guidebooks and a several pages handout that a couple Chinese teachers made for us of what would be excellent things to do in the area. This type of group decision-making is crazy. We eventually worked it out that 8 of us headed out on a bus to go to a Botanical Garden. We were told it would be about an hour by bus.

After an hour, two of our friends got off the bus in down town Shenxhen City (truly an 14 million person HUGE city that went on and on). The remaining half dozen of us hung in there and got off where the nice driver and conductor indicated. We used the info on a scrap of paper given by our hotel manger Holly (all of the English speaking Chinese have American names). She was so nice to help us. Having where you are going written in Chinese is essential because you can’t count on AYONE speaking much English.

We got out at what we thought was Lake of the Immortals Botanical Gardens which we found out was a poor translation for Fairylake. It was a HUGE forest and highly beautiful. We headed up a long hill not realizing it wasn’t really a place you could walk without having a day. A VERY nice man stopped and offered us a ride (all six of us in his tiny car!) It turns out that he works at a research botanist at this park, for the past 8 years. As we spoke of being from California, we asked if we knew Quail Botanical Gardens because he knew the director there. This garden (about 30 minutes from our house in Oceanside) has a special interest in plants form China, so the director has been to this garden many times. What a small world!

This man then took us with him to look at the orchid and butterfly gardens. Beautiful and very lovely to have a guided tour for a very nice man. Then he drove us to the Buddhist Temple.
This temple was about 28 years old, built after religious freedom was allowed to come back to China. When were arrived, we were immediately filled with peacefulness. It really was so beautiful and filled with a combination of tourists and pilgrims. We were offered several sticks of incense with which to offer prayers. We followed the examples of others and lit the incense in a huge fiery little house, and then placed the burning sticks in a giant kettle. They were altars and Buda statues throughout the many levels of the lovely temple grounds. This was all quite moving, and I said prayers for our safe trip and for the students we will be working with.
Then, as we were contemplating the fact that we now might miss getting back in time for dinner, we were assisted by a lovely young woman (no English) and young man, Anson, excellent English. Anson allowed us to use his cell phone for us to call back to the hotel and let them know. Then he invited us to come and have dinner for free at the temple. It was like being invited back stage at Disneyland. We accepted and went into a tiny serving room where we got lovely Chinese vegetarian food and then were lead back to a dinning area where we got to eat and marvel at the kindness of strangers. What a great blessing! Before we left, we all bought little bracelets to remember this grand adventure. I also bought a string of Buddhist prayer beads that are so lovely.
Here is a little info about the garden:
“Shenzhen Fairy Lake Botanical Garden is located in the northeast suburb of Shenzhen, with Wutong Mountain, the highest peak in Shenzhen, in the east and Shenzhen reservoir in the west. The garden was established in 1983 and opened to the public in 1988. It is a renowned botanical garden and scenic spot integrating scientific research, popularity and tourism.

Covered with lush lawn and dotted with palm trees, Fairy Lake Botanical Garden presents a strong tropical landscape. In shady plants garden, insectivorous plants are on the look out for prey while brightly-colored Oncidium orchids look like gracious maids in an imperial palace performing beautiful dances…In the first rays of the morning sun, the ring of bells and the recitation of scriptures in the Buddhism temple fill people with deep veneration. In the setting sun, the garden is so picturesque and tranquil with the bright ripples spreading. On the lake and the green trees and pavilions reflected in the water… What a wonderful and intoxicating garden!”

We caught a bus back down the hill, walked through a pretty typical poorer neighborhood and then caught the correct bus back to our area (nearly a two-hour bus ride back home! What a grand adventure. Wow! Wow! Wow!

China: Day 4: July 8, 2010

2010-07-08T06:30:00.000-07:00

The school we are at is YuCai Primary #4. It is a cutting edge, five-year old school that is so beautiful! It has such a beautiful theatre that we will be suing for the performances. And very nice classrooms and equipment. Everywhere in the building or little bilingual character signs encouraging polite, good behavior.

First day of teacher training which includes our Chinese teacher colleagues. There are twenty teachers who were picked to be part of this experimental process. They are from many parts of China originally, so this is quite a chance to get to know many different types of people.

The training is trying to get all of us caught up and on the same page in terms of teaching together.

A big task when you are crossing language and cultural barriers. We all cleaned up pretty well. No more tank tops and shorts but slacks and dresses and skirts. We need to look the part of distinguished foreign teachers. We were divided into our age level teaching groups and had the chance to begin building relationships with the Chinese teachers, as well as the people in our individual groups. I have a great group working with me: I have the performance aspect, Holley (a long term kinder teacher) will do reading and stories, Jake (young and enthusiastic teacher, who looooves music) has music, Jessica (young teacher with great classroom experience) has games, and Leigh (an artist, florist and wedding planner) has visual arts. Our Chinese teachers are: Michael, Billy, Yuki and Aileen (not their Chinese names….)

Th The Chinese teachers will each be assigned a group of children that they will follow through each day. They will also be our lifelines to understanding what we are supposed to be doing. We spent the day working really hard at cross cultural communication, plus just understanding all of the logistics of this highly complex, multi-disciplinary threes weeks that we have embarked on. It is exciting and sometimes nervewracking. Tomorrow will be another half day of training.

Still trying to get settled in as to what our days and routines will be. The truly serious jocks have found a fitness center to work out at. The shoppers are getting their beads set on where the deals and really fine dress shops are, massage will be a staple for some of us.

I am so far getting by on drinking a Folgers coffee singles in the morning for my coffee fix….not idea. There are some Starbucks, but not in easy walking distance. I will have to see those this all works out.

Being in China in some ways doesn’t feel real yet. But here we are!

China: Day 3: July 7, 2010

2010-07-08T06:27:00.000-07:00

Actually Wednesday today (I thought yesterday was Wednesday.) sigh!

Today I woke up at about 4am, WIDE-awake. So as not to disturb my roommate, I took my camera and laptop into the bathroom and spent time downloading the first the photos and writing the first two days of my blog. Time rolls right around. As it turns out, I was not alone in the early rising. Several people shared this over breakfast. We should have had a party then.

Today, following breakfast, we will get a tour of the school that we will be working at as well as some other places in the neighborhood. We have a great HUGE map, all in Chinese characters which aren’t really that helpful. Getting oriented is tricky, but good.

My goal is to learn at least one new Chinese word or phrase a day. So far we have

Ni hao-hi or hello and

xiexie-thank you

Today’s words are:

qing-please

zaijian- goodbye

haochur-delcious

My husband Dic

k and I were able to work out the glitches of getting to talk on Skype. The 15 hour time difference is the trickiest. I thought I was calling him at a reasonable time last night. It turned out to be 4am his time…not so convenient. But on the other hand, we can have audio and video contact across the ocean. Thank of all the generations of travelers who left their loved ones and had o

n option for contact. Wow!

We ate our first real brea

kfast in China (and interesting combination of hardboiled eggs, white bread with peanut butter, really vile instant coffee upon request…and then egg cakes with corn and veggies in them, a really thin rice pudding without sugar, dim sum buns and some other things I can’t quite recognize.) Then, my great roommate, Jenny, and I took a three-hour after breakfast nap and got up on time for lunch. We will not starve on this trip.

After some technical difficulties with charging my computer, I talk with Dick on Skype again. What a treat! I was even able to hold up the map I had discovered and he could see with enough detail that he was able to follow the whole route. Amazing!

Then we went a

little bus tour of the area, finding out where the local Wal-Mart is, may beautiful parks, other stores of interest, a high school that we will be able t use their pools, and then we got the first glimpse of the school that we will be teaching at. It is call Yaci Primary school number 4 and it is the premier school in the area. Ab

out 1000 students go there, and it has an amazing facilities including a theatre that seats 700 people (at an elementary a school!) This is where we will be doing performances for the parents on the Friday nights of each week we ar

e teaching. The temperature is hot here, so we were sweating as we walked throughout the campus, but got to see classrooms, art and music rooms, even a ballet class in session. We all enjoyed seeing huge posters featuring our photos and info under each of us about our bios. We hope to get smaller copies of these as a

souvenir. They are VERY excited that we are here.

After dinner (another feast) 11 of us walked over to another massage place. This time I got a full body 1-hour massage for about $9.00. Not quite as nice a place as the last one, but still got to keep releasing the tension. They do even the full body massages in a ro

om with three other tables and without having you remove your clothes. Not much privacy, but feels a little bit safer when the staff speaks nearly no English.

Places are beginning to seem more familiar in the area. Navigating without being able to read street signs takes some getting used to. Several people have been lost for hours at a time. Hopefully, we are going to get some hand drawn maps with English writing on them, but not yet. Our hotel is a bit obscure, so even asking directions doesn’t necessarily get you back. And the directions may be in Chinese, which is limited assistance to most of us.

To bed at a little after ten and getting ready for the full day’s teacher training tomorrow. Time to get our grown up teacher clothes!

Just a note: I am able to get email on my gmail account which is Patti@pattistory.com if you want to contact me. That is pretty cool, too.

China: Day 2: July 6, 2010

2010-07-08T06:11:00.000-07:00

Wednesday (although it is still Tuesday back home). Of course, there is the jet lag: what time is it REALLY? We arrived at 10am, and tried our best to stay up all day. Not an easy task despite how excited I was.

We are staying at the Shekou Merchant Hotel Training Center. This is truly a traditional Chinese hotel with a staff which has very limited English. The manager told us when were gathered for our first meal here that we were the first large American group staying here. They are working very hard at understanding our needs and taking good care of us. It leads to some funny conversations, though. People acting out what they need, like more hangers. Some are struggling to get used to the VERY hard mattresses, almost like sleeping on just the box springs. So far we haven’t been able to sort out whether or not the tea which is drunk with every meal has caffeine or not (I’m thinking it does).

We will be eating both breakfast and lunch at the hotel dinning room nearly every day, and every meal is a feast! Huge platters of food served family style around three large tables. So far it has been mostly wonderful. We have several vegetarians with the group and they are doing fine. Some of the meat falls into the “mystery meat” category…not really my favorite! But baby bok choy sautéed in garlic and butter…lots of amazing chicken dishes, and stir-fries, and fish of all types. The food is so fresh and delicious. It must be serious watermelon season here, because we see it everywhere on the streets and that has been dessert at every meal so far, too.

These first couple of days are just rest, settle in, figure out how everything works, like the internet, what time is it REALLY, the meals, the food and water.

Several of us went walking in the afternoon, getting the layoff the land and some Chinese currency. I had brought along cash and had some of my money rejected as “too old” (some of the older twenty dollar bills….they only like it new and crispy. Luckily, the ATM machines will give us money from Visa or debit cards.

The weather is so humid, and up near 100 degrees. They say it has cooled down, but even the breezes blowing blows hot. We are right next to a High School with a great out door swimming pool, which we are going to be able to make arrangements to swim in.

We were looking for foot massages, and didn’t find it them, but did find a grocery store to buy water. Can’t drink the tap water, except boiled in tea or coffee.

But when at dinner I asked staff where a good place was to get a massage, the hotel manager said that whoever wanted a massage should meet in the lobby at 7:30 and we’d go get one. Four of us women took her up on that, and we ended up being driven by van to a very nice salon. There were all put in a room with four lounger type chairs and each got a 70 minute foot soak and massage, as well as work on our shoulders legs, arms and back. They all happened while we were watching Chinese TV. How much did this service cost? 55 Yuan, which is $8 American. Best deal in town. We all about melted into our seats, the mounds of tension draining away. We will have to do more of this. We still haven’t found the “famous blind people massage center”. Hotel staff swear that blind people give the best massages. We’ll have to see if we can’t give that a try, too.

Finally, falling off into bed at 10:00pm local time, God only knows what time my body thinks it is. But we are here!

China: Day 1: July 5, 2010

2010-07-07T22:34:00.000-07:00

So how long DOES it take to get to China? Well, first you need to drive from San Diego to Los Angeles: about 2 hours, checking in and then going through security and getting ready to board nearly 3 hours, flying to Taipei Taiwan 13 hours, layover there 2 hours, landing in Hong Kong two hours, going through customs and getting to our hotel 2 hours=22 hours a verrrry long travel day.

As our group gathered in Los Angeles, we started to get ready for the long flight. Some of us laid down on the floor just because we could and would later REALLY wish we could stretch out!

Even though all the folks on our trip were given an aisle seat on the plane, I was asked by a very nice young woman who was traveling with her mother and grandmother, both with limited English, if I could switch seats with her so that she could help assist them. Although this meant giving up easy access to the bathroom, of course I said I would. They were going to Saigon to see family. A little awkward getting up and down, but in the morning the mom and grandma sent me over treats and thanked me profusely. The mom also offered if I was ever in Irvine, AA and wanted my nails done, to come to her shop;-)

Not a great night’s sleep, but the ear plugs and eye mask helped. We got some pretty darn good airplane food. I guess they do still serve food on international flights. Thank goodness! The plane was 747…huge! Yippi! We really are going to China!

Here is Kyle and I just after arriving in Taiwan.

China here I come!

2010-07-03T13:22:00.000-07:00

Day –1, July 4, 2010

So, a strange way to spend the 4th of July: doing the final preparations for a 30+ day out of the country to China. In case you missed what the heck I am doing, here it the plan:

The company that is bringing us to China is InterLangua , a group based of the San Francisco Bay area. The program is a 3 week Chin Summer school/summer camp program called “The American Scene”. There will be twenty of us from the US (mostly from the San Diego area, but also from some other places). We will be teaching elementary ages students (grades 2nd-7th grade). We’ll be in Shenzhen City in the very south of China, one hour by ferry from Hong Kong).

The focus of the program is giving the children, as well as Chinese English teachers an exposure to American teaching methods, especially using creativity and the arts. Each day the kids will have sessions in reading/stories, visual arts, music, games, and performance. We’ll teach for three weeks, Monday-Friday, with each Friday late afternoon culminating in a special performance for the parents. The school that will host and house us and our teaching teams is one of the most elite and innovative schools in China.

We will be staying in a small Chinese hotel in Shekou, very close to Shenzhen.

Weekends and then for a chunk of time at the end of the trip, we will get a little taste of traveling and seeing more touristy sites. Th s will include Guilin and a river cruise on the Li River. Then for the last several days, I am choosing to stay with a group for several days in Hong Kong, just for fun.

I will plan to blog here as often as is practical. The technical aspects of being in contact out of China are a bit more complicated due to some of the controversy over internet censorship. We’ll see if I can do it directly, or if I will need to email updates to my husband and have him post them. (It looks like that will need to happen.) We will also not be able to access FACEBOOK, but I may be able to do something of the same thing there….have my husband do some posting.

Plan on checking back to this link address periodically to find out what I have been up to. The address is http://pattistory.blogspot.com/

So the suitcases are ready to be packed, I have prepared for every contingency that I can think of....

Getting the last pieces in place and then leaving from LAX, Los Angles Airport at 1:50am July 5th. Look out China, here I come!

I'm turning 50!

2010-02-21T23:49:00.000-08:00

You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.

The man who views the world at fifty the same as he did at twenty has wasted thirty years of his life.

HAPPY 1/2 WAY TO 100!!!!! 50 YEARS OLD OR 18,250 DAYS YOUNG

You are the oldest you have ever been, but you are the youngest you will ever be again.

Let us celebrate the occasion with wine and sweet words.
- Plautus

Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be, the last of life, for which the first was made.
- Robert Browning

When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it happened or not.
- Mark Twain

Let us respect gray hairs, especially our own.

The man who views the world at fifty the same as he did at twenty has wasted thirty years of his life.
- Muhammad Ali

Whoever, in middle age, attempts to realize the wishes and hopes of his early youth, invariably deceives himself. Each ten years of a man's life has its own fortunes, its own hope its own desires.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Things That Took Me Over 50 Years To Learn

A person, who is nice to you, but rude to a waiter, is not a nice person.

If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be "meetings."

Never be afraid to try something new. Remember that a lone amateur built the Ark. A large group of professionals built the Titanic.

Never lick a steak knife.

Nobody cares if you can't dance well. Just get up and dance.

The most destructive force in the universe is gossip.

The one thing that unites all human beings, regardless of age, gender, religion, economic status or ethnic background, is that, deep down inside, we ALL believe that we are above average drivers.

You should never say anything to a woman that even remotely suggests that you think she's pregnant unless you can see an actual baby emerging from her at that moment.

You should not confuse your career with your life.

You will never find anybody who can give you a clear and compelling reason why we observe daylight savings time.

Your friends love you anyway.

It takes a long time to grow young. - Pablo Picasso

It is better to wear out than to rust out. - Bishop Richard Cumberland

Most of us can remember a time when a birthday - especially if it was one's own brightened the world as if a second sun has risen. - Robert Lynd

Nature gives you the face you have at twenty, but it's up to you to merit the face you have at fifty. - Coco Chanel

If only I may grow: firmer, simpler-quieter, warmer. - Dag Hammarskjold

The heyday of woman's life is the shady side of fifty. - Elizabeth Cady Stanton

You make me chuckle when you say that you are no longer young, that you have turned twenty-four. A man is or may be young to after sixty, and not old before eighty. - Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

A friendship counting nearly forty years is the finest kind of shade-tree I know. - James Russell Lowell

What could be more beautiful than a dear old lady growing wise with age? Every age can be enchanting, provided you live within it. - Brigitte Bardot

Try to keep your soul young and quivering right up to old age. - George Sand

To see a young couple loving each other is no wonder, but to see an old couple loving each other is the best sight of all. - William Makepeace Thackeray

Once I was looking through the kitchen window at dusk and I saw an old woman looking in. Suddenly the light changed and I realized that the old woman was myself. you see, it all happens on the outside; inside one doesn't change. - Molly Keane

Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been. - Mark Twain

At middle age the soul should be opening up like a rose, not closing up like a cabbage. - John Andrew Holmes

It's sad to grow old, but nice to ripen. - Brigitte Bardot

Sooner or later we all discover that the important moments in life are not the advertised ones, not the birthdays, the graduations, the weddings, not the great goals achieved. The real milestones are less prepossessing. They come to the door of memory unannounced, stray dogs that amble in, sniff around a bit and simply never leave. Our lives are measured by these. - Susan B. Anthony

I still find each day too short for all the thoughts I want to think, all the walks I want to take, all the books I want to read, and all the friends I want to see. - John Burroughs

Very few people do anything creative after the age of thirty-five. The reason is that very few people do anything creative before the age of thirty-five.
- Joel Hildebrand

Enneagram-I'm a type 2

2010-02-14T22:54:00.001-08:00

Righthand (female):
free enneagram test

Valentine's Greeting

2010-02-14T18:11:00.001-08:00

Make a Smilebox slideshow

I always wanted to be a drummer

2010-01-27T09:04:00.000-08:00

Last weekend I got the chance to go to a drum circle in Fallbrook CA. It happened at the end of a VERY rainy week where we got six inches of rain in five days....really a whole year's worth of rain in a normal year. It was such a blessing to gather with a circle of people and play, chant, shake, rattle and roll.

I wanted to be a drummer since fifth grade, where I ended up playing french horn instead. I drummed a bit in women's spiritual rituals in the early 1980's...satisfying, but then life moved on (and a child stuck a stick through my drum that I was letting him play with.)

For the past 4 years I have had the previlege of playing in a drum and storytelling circle at Radys Children's Hospital as part of the Healing Arts Department. We play with the children and families of kids in the hospital. It is always a blessing, and sometimes AMAZING.

God bless the drum, the drumming and the drummers of the world.

Getting back to writing

2010-01-17T13:22:00.000-08:00

Last week I was going through one of the mountains of boxes in our garage...New Years is a great time for sorting out, clearing out. I found, among LOTS of things that can be recycled, files of old stories, essays and poems that I have written over the years...including the first "real" poem that I remember writing as a 16 year old. Some of the stuff is really bad, trashy even, but some is pretty darned good (if I do say so myself).

So it may be time to drag it back out and share some of them with the world. Here is one of my favorites:

Chopsticks

18 three- and four-year olds

practiced with chopsticks today.

Poking, prodding, puzzling

over the mysterious sticks

used by a billion people

yet new to these little ones.

Can we build a bridge across the gulfs

that divide us

with picture books and chopsticks and

snacks with strange names, but taste good?

I cannot negotiate for peace among nations

or put a stop to war

but I can offer children

the chance to know

there are oh so many ways to live

and speak and love

and eat.

Chopsticks for peace.

Patti Christensen

Happy New Years from Patti and James

2009-12-15T07:20:00.001-08:00

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Early morning ponderings

2009-09-11T22:42:00.000-07:00

As I sit writing in the early morning hours at my computer

I look out the window and see my neighbor, coffee cup in hand,

Walking around in his white gym socks, no shoes.

Surveying his acreage, or looking for the cat?

Thinking about the day, the lawn, the state of the world?

After a time, he walks by his American flag and closes his front gate.

Gone.

What will the day bring?

We both wonder to ourselves.

Hey it's good to be back home again!

2009-09-07T13:02:00.000-07:00

Thank you John Denver.....just got back a week ago from a five week driving trip with my husband driving form San Diego to Alaska and back. We put over 9,000 miles on the car, and saw a lot of wonderful countyside. If you'd like to read about the WHOLE experience, look at our blog at www.pattidicksgrandadventures.blogspot.com

It was clear that there are stories, stories, and storytellers where ever you go. During the next months, I will be digesting the tales and seeing how they will come into my storytelling bag of tricks.

In the meantime, inspired by Julie and Julia, I am ready to embark on a new blog. Welcome to Pattistory.blogspot.com Glad to have you onboard.