Nov. 6, 2016
10:30 pm
Beijing, China
大家好！
Once again, I find myself in a spot where I’m having difficulty finding a good story to share with you. Today was another early morning at work. I spent the first hour observing Ashlee teach the Small Stars (3-6 year olds) class that we will be sharing. Afterwards, I spent four hours co-teaching with Adam in his Small Stars and High Flyers (7-10 year olds) classes. I think I did really well with the Small Stars. They all participated in my activities and Adam seemed to think I did a pretty good job. High Flyers, though, was not so great. I taught the grammar portion of their class, and it was just bad. I don’t think it was all my fault, even Adam said that the entire lesson is one of his least favorites because it’s poorly designed. Still, I felt bad about how I taught.
The last class period I spent observing a Trail Blazers (11-14 year olds) class. The current teacher of the class is actually no longer at our center. She transferred centers a few weeks ago, but has been coming back to teach the class until someone could replace her. You’ll never guess who gets that honor. I’m a bit worried about it. At the younger ages you can just play games and do a little bit of bookwork. At Trail Blazer age, though, it’s much more about vocabulary and grammar. It’ll be very different.
After school, Brian and I went out for dinner and then headed home. I’m finally starting to feel like I can call my apartment home, and it feels really nice. I haven’t done much “moving in” because I need some other things (like hangers and those cloth drawers that go on shelves), which I plan to get on Tuesday. But I have finally taken my large toiletries out of my bag, so I’m no longer using travel bottles of soap. Also, I am currently doing a load of laundry. It took a little while, and a couple text conversations, to figure out exactly how to use it and I still struggled. I’m not used to having to turn on the water in order for the washing machine to work. And it’s kinda scaring me a little. It’s small, but makes a lot of noise and vibrates a ton.
There are a lot of differences between living at home or school and living here. First, I have to be very careful about the amount of electricity I’m using. I try to have as few lights on as possible and turn them off whenever I can. I don’t keep any cords plugged in, even if there’s nothing attached to the cords. I don’t have my heater running while I’m at work. I turn on the water heater before I shower and turn it off once I’m finished. And my showers are much shorter (except for today because I really needed a nice hot shower). But I guess that’s what being an adult is about, right? Keeping track of what you’re using and remembering to use it wisely.
Words to Remember: 1 Cor. 13:3-7
Challenge: Most of you have probably read or heard these verses before. Many of you, probably more than once. Your challenge is to look up these verses in a version of the Word that you don’t normally use. How does this version affect you? Do you understand things a bit differently? Now find two traits of love that you do really well at and two traits where you are struggling. Ask Abba to help you improve those traits and to better fit this definition of love.
Bless,
Kristen
