I have not written about work in a while. Well, I am now in my 10^th week of classes and just 12 more weeks to go until I get my winter break, which will be the month of February!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It has been pretty crazy and Peppermint Patty and Puddin’ Face are still the leading bad asses, but there are a few more trying to steal their thunder. What’s really strange is that outside of class Puddin’ Face jumped on me and hugged me when she saw me at the sports festival and Peppermint Patty asked me to watch her in her Kung Fu rehearsal for the 20^th Anniversary, but in class they still give me sullen looks and pay little heed to my directions. I’d say they were PMSing, but I think 4^th grade is a little early – but hey this is China so anything goes.

There is a tiny kid who constantly talks about poop in his pants and poopoo this and poopoo that. Not to mention there is a boy named Pooh and a girl named Kaka – these are their selected English names. There is also a boy named Book, a boy named Tidy (who is always dirty), and another named Cool. There are lots of girls named Angel, Apple, Coco, and Yoyo.

One thing that I have neglected to share. All the toilets in the elementary school are squat toilets. So I do not go to the bathroom at school because I do not always have a reliable nozzle and I do not want to spray my pants or shoes. I have thought of taking my pants off and tying them around my neck, but them what about my shoes or socks??? Some of the kids reek of old pee because I think their pants have been wet or perhaps they don’t use toilet paper. So I go from 7:45AM until 4:20PM without ever breaking the seal. Needless to say I am one sneeze away from a catastrophe. I limit the amount of water I drink to a few sips between classes. I am often tired and thirsty from running up and down 4 flights of steps 4-5 times a day

October was a crazy month. Classes were cancelled the third week for a sports festival. The students had three days of games. It was not a tournament where teams or players advanced to be crowned the King and Queen of the festival, but rather games of fun like three-legged races or bouncing on a hippity-hop to cross the finish line first. It was really strange.

Then, classes were cancelled on October 30^th to get ready for Halloween. In addition, I have been pulled out of class to have videos made or pictures taken of me in random classrooms teaching random subjects like drawing and science. These “propaganda” photo shoots as they are called are for the school’s 20^th Anniversary that takes place on November 8^th, which is a Saturday, so everyone must work that day, but we will have Monday off. We have been told that this celebration is the most important event and to be flexible if classes have to be cancelled or rehearsals go late into the night. People are flying in from all over the world to our gated village to see this spectacular spectacle. Sooooo I am sure many of you reading this are going to race to Expedia and book your ticket. I am not sure how they are going to fit 2000 people in our little gymnasium, but I guess the Chinese are very slim.

Oh, for Halloween, I wore my usual Frederick Douglas beard and mustache and painted my hair grey. Then I put on a black cape and fancied myself an aging Count Blackula. The kids loved it. One girl came up and said, “Miss Vicki, I thought you were a fat man, but then I realized you were Miss Vicki.” Then in the middle of the Halloween parade, Thriller was played and the kids then started calling me Michael Jackson. So I cracked them up by doing the Thriller dance. Of course, I am the fat Michael Jackson. It’s a good thing I have a sense of humor.

But I got them all back, by hiding around the school during the haunted ghost walk and jumping out and scaring the Chairman Mao out of them. I was armed with cans of silly string. As they ran up after getting their fright demanding candy, I sprayed them with silly string in the face. I had a blast scaring the kids. Later we were told that many of the younger kids had nightmares when they went to sleep that night in the dorms. Woooooohooooo!!!!!! Success!!!!!! There was on casualty – some small kid was so scared that when he ran he tripped and knocked a tooth loose. It was only one of his primary teeth so it’ll be replaced. Besides the kids here do not brush or floss and their teeth are brown and rotting – so it’s early dentures either way.

I am performing with 13 other teachers and about 40 kids in a 10-minute piece in the Anniversary show. It’s pretty rough because we kept getting our rehearsal times in the gymnasium bumped for other acts. Now it is 5 days from the actual anniversary show and we have never had a complete run through. Last Thursday, we finally got the portable stairs that the teachers are supposed to stand on. Well one of the sets of stairs completely collapsed when a teacher stood on it and his leg was crunched between the steps. He was OK, but the others were then afraid to stand on the remaining steps. It all worked out.

Last night I wrote a script for the Language Festival that takes place in December. The elementary coordinators wanted the other drama teacher and I to have the kids perform a play. So we met last night to talk about ideas and then I wrote a short one-act that night. The story is about a boy and a girl who hate to read so they run around the library tossing books. The librarian tells them to clean up. Instead they take a rest and fall asleep. The lights flicker and go out. When they come back on, the Cat in the Hat wakes them up and the two kids see all these characters running around confused and crying. The Cat tells the kids that the characters fell out of the books when they tossed them about and they cannot go home until the kids figure out which book they belong to. Then the show ends with a song that I found on YouTube that talks about reading books to the tune of I Gotta Feeling.

Well, that’s about it…Bye