Visiting Week!

Hey everyone.  It has been a while since my last blog, but I have not had really anything I wanted to write about.  I do not plan on saying much in this post, but rather to share some pictures.  As the saying goes: a picture is worth a thousand words.  Since this past Monday, my team and I have been visiting our former students at their schools during our lunch breaks.  Due to Friday being a holiday, we had an office week.  On office weeks we get two hour lunches.  Thus, we were able to visit three schools that came to the Character camp.  Two of the schools we visited had multiple grade four classes, so we were able to see a lot of students from a stretch of several weeks.

These first two pictures are from Fuxing Elementary School.  We only had one class from Fuxing.  I believe these students were from only three weeks ago.  The students were so ecstatic when we arrived.  They ran up to us shouting, "teacher, teacher!"  Some even throw themselves at us for hugs. We stayed with them for a while to eat lunch and play games.

The next school we visited was Yitan Elementary.  Now I do not know if I spelt that right, Chinese pingying is not so easy to figure out sometimes.  From Yitan we had at least two classes. 

The above two photos are from the same class.  In fact, we had these students just last week!  It was great to see their faces.  No doubt they were surprised to see us so soon after they thought they left us for good!  Talk about teachers that never leave you alone; never thought I would fall into that category.

These students are also from Yitan.  However, it has been a while since I have seen them.  I believe it was back in April.  I mentioned one of the student in this class in one of my earlier blogs, Samuel was his name.  He is not in these pictures, but I was able to talk to him.  Also, the girl on the right was in my small group.  Her English was very good and she was a great help in my small group class. 

The next few pictures were from Mingyi Elementary School.  From Mingyi we had, at the least, five different classes.  I did not get pictures of nearly half of my students, because I was too busy signing papers.  Yes, signing papers.  I honestly do not know why they wanted our signatures so bad.  It seems we made a bigger impact on them than I had thought.  The only other time someone asked for my signature was at Northland Mall, my previous job.  As for that time, it was even more confusing because most people who shopped there seemed to strongly dislike us security guards.  

In the left picture is one whole class.  And for the life of me, I cannot remember when we had them. It has been too long.  In the picture on the right, the student standing on the far left was one of my students from my small group.  

A couple of these students were in some of my small groups as well.  The girl in the right picture I remember well.  Her name is Becky.  She was homesick a lot while she was at the Character camp; she cried a good amount in the large group classes and during break time.  What surprised me was that in my small group she did not cry once, she perked right up and always made me smile.  I like to think we made each other feel better.  

The past week has been quite fantastic.  I have been able to distress from five straight weeks of teaching, and to see a lot of my students.  My only regret is not being able to visit all of my former students. But I do not get to choose what opportunities God gives me, all I can do is take advantage and thoroughly enjoy the opportunities He does give me.