Life at Hogwarts

Seriously, I don't ever know how to creatively start a blog post. Sheesh!   Sometimes I just get bored with starting out the same way every time, but I don't know what else to do so here goes....

This week was sort of weird.  You know how the first few days after a break are always rough because your body is needing to get back into the routine of every day, but your mind is seriously rebelling?  That's how it was for us Tuesday and Wednesday.  However, we've been able to get back into real life and Jason's constant cold-like symptoms are making slight progress.

For those of you wondering, Gideon and my parents made it home safely with no oxygen issues! His color and breathing was great during all the flying and he seems to be handling the crazy home life pretty well. Thank you to everyone who prayed for him, Heavenly Father definitely heard. 

I realized something this week that I wish I had realized a while ago - I enjoy teaching!  I love these little Chinese kids.  For the first little while we both were so frustrated at the lack of respect from our students and the lack of help from the administration that we just didn't enjoy teaching at all.  Every day this week, though (except Tuesday, that was just a bad day) I ended up feeling like at least a couple of my classes were successful and I actually liked being there! I also realized that my least favorite classes at the beginning of the semester are becoming my favorites.  I don't know why, but my first graders are just getting cuter and cuter and I love how innocent they are.  When second graders are naughty they know it, but first graders don't quite have the presence of mind to realize what they're doing is bad so I usually find it much easier to correct and keep them quiet.  I even have one of my first grade classes trained to call me "Teacher Ressa" when the rest of my classes can only remember to call me "Teacher."  It's so cute! Sorry I never have pictures of the kids.  We're starting to understand what kinds of things will cause them to get out of hand and pulling out a camera would most definitely be in that category. One of these days I'll do it.

We did our routine visit to the big supermarket on Friday and found that they sell movies! Even better, we found that they sell Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, and all the Avengers movies! We brought some movies, but they're all Disney, chick flicks, or musicals and we've kind of wanted something a little more exciting lately.  My sister and her husband are letting us use their Netflix account which has been super nice, but we're almost done with the first season of  "Once Upon a Time" and don't know what to do when it's over! (For those of you out there who think all we must do is watch movies it's not true.  There's just not much to do around here once it gets dark so why not watch something, right?) Anyways, back to the point....we were especially excited, but now a little worried, when the price was only 12 yuan (about $2)  for the first six Harry Potters and all three Lord of the Rings. We figured that since it was in a large supermarket they were probably safer to buy than in a small, shady shop in the middle of a big city so we took our chance and bought it.  We also bought some rice and yummy deep fried bread that look and sort of tastes like unglazed twisted donuts for dinner (don't judge - almost everything here is super greasy anyways, so we figured we might as well get something that at least tasted good) and then headed home to test out our new movies. Guess what, Harry Potter works!  It's definitely pirated because it's really bad quality and it's been copied onto another DVD of some Chinese movie, but hey, we get to watch Harry Potter and possibly Lord of the Rings. Besides, it's only illegal if we take it back to the states and watch it, right?  If that's the case then it's not even a worry because it'll be worth it to buy a real copy when we get home just so that we can actually see the actor's faces without squinting while trying to ignore the huge Chinese subtitles at the bottom of the screen. After watching the movie we decided our school, once again, our school kind of looks like Hogwarts.  We only wish they would ban the fourth floor left corridor on punishment of a most painful death like Hogwarts bans their third floor...we're getting kind of tired of students trying to open our door after finding out it's where their English teachers  live :)

Speaking of doors, they fixed ours! Somebody definitely did a number on our door trying to get it open for us when our key broke, so we've been living in an non-locking apartment all week.  The maintenance man came on Saturday and spent about an hour grinding up our concrete wall to put a new handle on the door. He created A LOT of dust, but we now can lock our door. woohoo!  Now we need to figure out a way to get them to fix our extremely leaky sink...

The view out our window again. Look how happy and Springy it's been all week! You can't really see it, but the street is lined with pink blossoming trees.

Hope you all have a great week!  Oh, and do me a favor and go be nice to someone who doesn't speak English.  Trust me when  I say it will make their day.