Wednesday, April 05, 2006

Yippee!


Well, I made it through the School's 61st Anniversary! Our role as foreign teachers was very, very minor: just visit the carnival and have fun. All the classes worked on making a booth (most selling various food and small trinkets). Kids were just wandering around all day, and some parents and dignitaries came as well. The hard part was definitely saying no. Not because I was dying to try all the different food, in fact, it was quite the opposite ("Umm, what is that?") It seemed like every one of my students came up to ask me to buy something had to say no to their sweet desperate faces. I did buy a lot, but there is a limit.

So now for the best part... I won an ipod nano! I'm a pretty "lucky" person when it comes to contests and draws, so I'm always optimistic. Last year I splurged on draw tickets for the ipod and didn't win, so I had determined not to waste more money this year. Ahh, but the temptation was too great. I bought three tickets and went down to wait for them to draw the name. I was surrounded by 30 grade four and five students, but I think I was the most excited. They drew the name and said something in Chinese. I heard one of the kids shout "laotzu" which means teacher, and I soon all my students turned and started pointing at me. Of course, I was thrilled (although, as I said, I was strangely optimistic that I would win, so not too surprised). I am now the proud owner of an ipod (just like all the cool kids!) I 'll put in a picture for any non-techno people who have no idea what I'm talking about. My roommate's regular ipod is on the left, my new nano is on the right.

Now, you may be wondering about the ethics of my win. Yeah, I thought about that too. Especially looking around at the little faces (although they all seemed really excited for me). I have two justifications in my mind:

1. These kids are soo rich. The middle class kids are a tiny minority. For example. We have a three day spring break: one student is going to Hawaii for two days.

2. The students came up to me saying "Teacher, teacher buy a ticket, pleeeeease!" I was helping them out!

So I'm a happy camper. Especially with spring break and three days to totally relax and recess into my introvert self. By the way, more pictures to come (I'll give you a clue: pool)

Posted by Kathleen @ 11:03 AM