Oct. 28, 2016
11:30 pm
Beijing, China
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen! Actually, for me it’s good night, but who cares.
Anyway, guess what! Today was my last day of onboarding/regional training! You know what that means? No, actually, you probably have no clue because you don’t know how EF’s training schedule works. So I’ll just tell you. It means that I start working at my actual school on Monday! YAY! I don’t actually know what I’ll be doing there yet, but YAY!
So to finish up my training, today was focused on the two oldest groups of EF learners, Trail Blazers and Front Runners. I also got to observe a Trail Blazers class this evening. It was really cool to see how the curriculum and way of teaching changed as the kids got older and more advanced. Although, I don’t think I’d be good at teaching that age group. They’re at the point where they want to push your buttons and test you. As with the class I watched today. It was only their second day with that teacher and they kept pushing her. If she told one student to stop doing something (like speaking Chinese in English class), other students would then start. It was irritating to me, and I was just watching from the back. I think my patience is too thin to handle that. So I’m really glad I’ll have Small Stars classes. But it was nice to hear and see them actually interact with her on a deeper level. They could hold real conversations and tell her detailed answers to the questions she asked. Before the class, she got to hang out with them in a fun and playful way, but then was able to turn around and teach them, which was interesting to see.
We still had to do a little bit of teaching today, which was unexpected. It was interesting to work with some of the other people in our group. But I was happy that Brian was in one of my groups today because we’re going to be working together at school and it was nice to see how his teaching style worked.
Other than that, though, there’s really not much to tell you about. It was a pretty uneventful day. I did get to FaceTime Aunt Kim’s and Uncle Ed’s family tonight. Although the video connection didn’t work too well, I was so grateful that I got to talk to them.
Words to Remember: Proverbs 2:2-5
Challenge: Ask Abba to give you wisdom. Ask him to be with you throughout your day and all that you do. Let him guide you in your decisions, even the small ones.
I’m off to bed!
Bless,
Kristen
P.S. The videos from yesterday’s blog post are up. They aren’t playing for me, but I’m hoping that’s just slow wifi. Let me know if they’re not working and I’ll try again.
P.P.S. I posted a new page today. It’s about preparing to move to China, but it also has my packing list. You can find it over on the left hand side of your browser. There’s a little peach-colored dot in the upper-lefthand corner with white lines in it. Click on that and then you’ll see the menu. Also, there is an About page, a Contact Me page, and a Pictures page. While you probably don’t care much about the other two, the picture page has all of the pictures I have from China (or at least what I can upload as of right now). Go check them out!
