I wish I could tell you all kinds of stories of victorious Good News sharing events, or about what a super-Chrstian I am. I am not going to make myself out to be something that I'm not. I'm just Leah. I have nothing to boast about, except the faithfulness and grace of the Father towards me, and of the love bestowed on me by him and my friends and family. I have no doubt in my mind that the Father has me here for a purpose. I might never know what that is. Cuz if it were up to me to grade my time here, I would be very hard on myself... I would probably give myself a failing grade. But I have faith that He knows what he's doing with this weak soul. PTL that He is the one who makes things happen, not me. PTL that He is strong even in my weakness. PTL that it's not about me. PTL that He's given me the will to go where he leads and a heart that longs after more of Him.
This week I'm giving kind of a bogus lesson. But hey, it's fun. I'm playing them a bunch of music of which they must figure out what genre it is. It never ceases to amaze me how different each class is. Some are so serious, some could care less that I'm in the room, some are so excited, some are bored, some are talkative, some are dead quiet. Each class is 40mn long. Depending on the class, the time goes by so fast and fun. But sometimes it drags on like I will never get out of there! The average class size is 56. Last week I asked each class how many there were. My smallest class is 48. I love that class. It's amazing how much difference it makes with 10 fewer students.
If I have two classes back to back, I have 10mn to hang out in the teachers' office. I even have my own desk! But I am there only a few times a week. I really enjoy the time that I'm there, though. The geography teacher (holy cow, I don't even know his name!) is really trying to improve his English. He never asks me to teach him, which I appreciate SO much, but rather talks to me about all kinds of things. I really enjoy the conversations, becuase they are about real things, not just the weather and chit chat. Just from talking to him like this, and introducing new words to him in conversation, and correcting some things he says, I can tell he has improved his spoken English since I've been here. I am pretty sure that he thinks of things he wants to talk about and learns the vocabulary about these things before we talk. It's an amazing way to learn, and I'm so impressed with his self-motivation. I wish I was as motivated to learn Chinese like this!
I've decided to take on a part time job next term. I have a lead at an academy where there are much smaller classes, and individuals actually pay for English lessons, which means they are motivated and I could actually do some real teaching. This excites me. I love my students, but I'm getting a little tired of feeling like I'm doing no good besides to entertain them with some foreign-ness. I'd really like to teach, and see how that goes. Brenda started there just tonight where she will teach only SIX adults every week. That sounds so rewarding. But I want to have all the new things come at once come next term. Things are going to change a lot. Martin will be leaving, Arthur's wife will be here, we might have a couple new teachers, someone might end up living next to me in N
igel's place, I will be teaching at the new campus which means I have to wake up an our earlier to take the school bus, my classes will get mixed around and split with Brenda, so I will have fewer classes, and.... hopefully my water will work.Yeah, the last couple days all I've had is a trickle from the tap. Makes for really long showers. Brenda let me use hers tonight, and just after my hair was all lathered up in soap, then hers went out too! I had to rinse all that shampoo out with our drinking water. I guess that sometimes the water doesn't always make it to the top floors.
I'm still trying to eat away these oranges that we got last weekend. I ended up with a small box, but that's still a lot for one ME to eat. I was finally able to get my pics on the computer so I will try to post them here for you to see. There is Brenda Picking some oranges, and me in the grove.
The weather has been "unusually warm" for this time of the year I'm told. After those frigid couple weeks, we got a nice wave of warm weather. So it's been long sleave weather instead of hats and scarf weather. The sun shines, the sky is blue, and there is a nice cool breeze. Still it manages to be humid somehow. In the morning, the tile in the school halls is really slippery.
We went bowling again on Monday. We had a free day, no school. Brenda and I got a really messed up lane that would subtract one point from every time I played! That really stunk when I got spares. That just ruined it for us, even after we moved to another lane, we played terribly! I've been invited to o bowling with the Chinese teachers on Saturday. Also on our free day Monday, I hung out with my student, Miffy. We took pictures in the little photo booths. We were there for two hours! But we got some super cute shots. It was fun.
I will leave you with verses that encouraged me this past week: 1 Corinthians 4:1, 20
I am a Steward of His mysteries!
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