Restlessness

Well, it's a short post this time. I'm tired, and I can't fall asleep at night, which only makes it worse. In brief, I had a very nice birthday - 4 days of celebrating (whoa...too much). Thanks for the many Facebook messages, emails, etc. I will get around to most of those, but it will take me a while. I've had all of about 30 minutes of free time since last Monday. I forgot how busy these first couple of weeks are. But this weekend will begin the National Holiday, which means I'll have a week off. Rick and I will travel to Tianjin, so I once again won't have much time to catch up with folks, but I'll do my best to find some time in there. Just forgive me. More free time is coming - I promise :)

Main thought/request - I really am having trouble sleeping. presently, out of the last 7 nights, 5 of them have involved long, long periods of trying to fall asleep, followed by waking up time after time during the night. Today the sleep deprivation really hit me. Even as I'm typing, my eyes are glazing over and my head starts to nod. Please keep me in your prayers. I'm not sure if this is a physical thing only or if there is also a spiritual aspect to it, but it does make my work pretty difficult.

The only side benefit - I do get some pretty strange dreams. Last night in my dream, a friend and I were deciding what we would do in the future, and we decided that we would form a band called Melvin de Celica, and our first hit song would be the sequel to Baby Got Back - aptly named Baby Got Back (Again). However, before we could carry out this most noble of plans, we came across a group of animals we were not familiar with. They were a blend of chicken and flamingo, and they were infused with a touch of jive. They also could talk, and their leaders were named Lamont and Cointreau. They seemed to think my friend and I were a threat to them, so they all started yelling at L & C that something needed to be done. So some of them came over to us, knocked us down and started pecking at us. But before they could do much damage, they had to have a dance break. Some crazy funk/jive music started playing, and all their necks and knees started a-boogey-in'. It was really quite bizarre and entertaining. But I woke up again before I could see the outcome.

Now I have to get ready to teach. Hope you enjoyed the story. I'll be back soon, hopefully.

Year 2: Here We Go!

Well, Year 2 is officially underway. I've been back in China for 2 weeks now, and we've finished one week of classes. Everything seems to be running smoothly and it looks like we've got a good set of students again. See the pics:

Class A


Class B

I'm going to try to keep this blog a little better updated this year. Hopefully a post for each week. Don't hold me to that, though. Ha! You know I'm not good with keeping those kinds of deadlines. Oi.

Anyway, as I'm getting started with classes, I wanted to offer everyone a chance to help me out. I made new lesson plans this summer, and I can tell that they will be a great improvement this year over the last. However, the plans are largely contingent on the students being willing to discuss some topics in detail. And, I know that sometimes the students get a little tired. I mean, we have them in class for 3.5 hours each day, and they are constantly speaking in a foreign language...could you imagine signing up for a class like that? Yikes!

So, my request is this - do any of you have some creative ideas of classroom activities we could do for anywhere from 5-45 minutes? They might be things to spark creativity, or maybe to help them relax for a moment, or to help re-energize them after some discussions. If any of you have some ideas, please feel free to share. I want my class to stay fresh and intriguing each day, and that's difficult to do! So, any help you might offer would be great!

A final note: last year, when I was going downtown one day on the bus, a man started asking me some questions in English about who I was and what I was doing in China. I've had several experiences like this in the past, but this one seemed a little different than the others - something in my spirit said to take note of this. Well, I gave him my email address that day, and he contacted me later, but all last year we just couldn't get our schedules to work out for another chance to talk (maybe this sounds strange, but it's pretty common in a small city like ours).

Over the summer, I said that once I got back, my teaching partner (Rick) and I wanted to get together with him and his family. Today it finally worked out, and boy am I glad of it. Turns out he believes in some great Truth, although the rest of his family does not. And, you can probably imagine, this causes tension in his life. Honestly, I don't know where this friendship will go in the future, but I feel like things were definitely orchestrated for this cross-cultural connection to take place. Anyway, it might be something for a moment of praise or a moment of requesting if any of you think about it!

Now I have to scoot - time for dinner and then we're having students over! Keep in touch.