Eat it!

Yesterday was an exciting day for a few reason. First and foremost- Learn English with Rompy debuted! Secondly- my appetite came back!

So- like I said- Learn English with Rompy stormed onto the kids scene yesterday. I had 6 students age 3-6 show up at 6:30PM for an hour and a half class. I was SO painfully nervous before. I am not an ESL teacher and was really questioning getting myself involved in this class. I sat with my own plans and read them over and over and over. I felt as if I was having a mental block and could not remember my own timing or order. But before I knew it, it was 6:30. Lights, Camera, ACTION!

The class went AMAZINGLY. My calms were very quickly calmed because the kids were SO in to it! Another thing was that at the beginning of class I prefaced it and REALLY encouraged parent participation- and they LISTENED! That has been a bit of a problem here in China- parents aren't naturally inclined to act utterly and completely goofy. But these parents sure did! With in no time I had the kids saying RUN, JUMP, SIT DOWN, STAND UP & FLY all in English! They could recognize what they were doing and saying it as they did it. Double high fives to all the kids- seriously! The coolest part was at the end we played a matching game where we had our RnR Flash Cards against a wall- and I had printed out pictures of other things (a frog, a plane, eating dinner) and the kids had to shout out which one it matched too. This was a part I was dreading- it was going to either be the BEST part proving that the kids could APPLY their knowledge to something outside of the RnR context. OR it was going to be a worst part proving that the kids were just parroting what I said/did without getting the concept. I held up the first picture- an airplane- and immediately a little girl yelled out 'FLY!' Phew! They got it! I went through a stack of about 20 pictures and they figured all of them out! And by the end they were so excited they had squished me into a corner so they could see the picture first! Hurrah!

The other thing I mentioned was my appetite came back. After my 'incident' at the hospital I really haven't been eating much. I would MENTALLY really want to eat a big lunch and it would get there, I would take one look at it and eat a little rice instead. I threw away so much good food. Also, my nose has been really off. Or really sensitive I should say. Everything smelled SO strongly to the point that most of it would make me sick. To make matters worse one of our sales girls came back from her home town- the fishing port capitol of china- with all these weird fish items on Friday. The items seemed to pretty much be Fish Jerky and Squid Jerky. People were eating it progressively through out the day and that strong fish jerky scent was making me want to yak. Ugh! But then yesterday we went out to lunch and tried this Italian place that did not look super promising. I hate to say it- but I wasn't sure that Chinese people could quite do Italian food justice. They brought out our meals- Jill and I both got Penne Alfredo- and we both WOLFED it down in 5 minutes. It would have been faster but it came straight out of the oven and I was not about to send myself back to the hospital with a burned mouth. It felt so good to eat an entire meal. After that my whole outlook on life pretty much changed.

Today is my last day of work for the week! We have a birthday bash demo for our members and I get to run it! So excited! I'm also teaching a Tumble Tunes class but other then that today is smooth sailing. If you are on Skype late this evening today would be a good day to catch me.

Quick Note- poor Nana got sick this week and even though Jill is hating to admit it- she has a cold. Send some good vibes their way- especially since they took such good care of me when I was down and out!

Jill and I don't quite know what to do yet this weekend. I think we are going to go to the Art Gallery as intended last Tuesday. We are also going to go to a store called Jenny Lous. According to the Alaskan Ex-Pat we bumped into Jenny Lous in the IMPORT grocery store for us. They've got all the good things- Cheese, Pasta, high quality produce, BAGELS. This may be a dangerous trip- in that I may spend entirely way too much. But who care's? Entirely WAY too much here is all together NOTHING back in the U.S.

Alright! Love! Love! LOVE!