Something that was missing in my year of a personal "winter" last year was people and getting involved.
yeah.
You heard me.
People who know the State-side Abby probably aren't all that shocked.
People who know the Chine-side Abby are probably ready to debate it.
Let me explain. It's not that I've changed into a completely different person since being in China. Rather, I think its that living in China, even the daily work routine, is so much more taxing on my energy reserve than being in America, that when I'm done for the day at school I just want to hide myself in my home.
Despite being the strong introvert than I am, I have found, through the circumstances of last year, that I love people.
I pretty sure I take after my dad. I'm not usually the one to start a conversation, but once you get me started... it's hard to get me to stop. I'm pretty sure I repeat myself quite a bit too... (Dad: I mean that it all the best ways! Love you bunches!!! :) As mom often tells me, I am my father's daughter)
Anyway... to remedy this problem of not being with people, a couple of us have made an effort to get together at least once a month (so far) to have a Settlers of Catan game night. Holler if you LOVE settlers!!!
HOLLA!!! (I know, I don't ever say that... but I readily put my pride aside for settlers!)
*Side note: If you have not been introduced to the island of Catan nor had the chance to settle it... you are seriously missing out! Go find some semi-nerdy to nerdy college guys. They're probably your best bet of finding someone who knows what I'm talking about. ;)
Back to the main topic:
Besides participating in Settlers Game Nights, I've been volunteering at a local coffee shop, offering my English skills to better the English skills of Chinese people. Well, to be truthful, I usually have to "dumb"down their English a little bit because they're trying to use words that no one has used in 50 or so years.
Volunteering there is always comical. Two Wednesdays ago we got to talking about my home town and the smell of manure and what people do with cow patties. :) Last Wednesday my friend, James (a business person) kept pulling out all of these really big, you-only-see-in-books kind of words. I'm pretty sure his English vocabulary is more extensive than mine... which is pretty embarrassing.
I have one more thing I've recently gotten involved with.
NOW THIS IS SOMETHING I'M SUPER EXCITED ABOUT:
I can't tell you about it just yet, because I need to give you the back story that shows God's perfect timing.
My first summer here (2010), my friend Ashley and I did a cooking class for the moms of her students. We did this as our CR (community relations) project. I absolutely loved it, and I'm pretty sure the moms that came had a good time too!
During the school year of my second year here (2010-2011) Ash and I kept in touch with one of those mothers. The original plan was to do a language swap where one day a week Ash and I taught this mother English, and another day, she taught us Korean. Well it became obvious that us and learning Korean language weren't going to mix very well, so it ended up changing into a cooking swap while we still helped this mother improve her English.
Last school year (2011-2012), I wasn't ever involved with the Korean community, which made me feel like I was missing out on something. (That actually isn't a great way to explain my feeling, but that's all I got for now.) I would only see those mothers if they came to the school or if we had a school-related function.
I remember, it was near the end of the school year, when I told our previous ESOL teacher how much I missed being a part of the Korean community. It was that same week, on a Friday, when I was invited to a Korean BBQ with one of the families from our school. As it turned out, the parents in this family were looking for an American to teach an American cooking class.
I INSTANTLY knew that this opportunity was for me! (It was great timing because if they had asked me to do it during that school year, I would've had to turn it down)
We talked just a little bit about it over dinner, saying we'd wait until after the new school year started to start the class.
Well, the school year has started. We had a meeting about the class two Tuesdays ago, and today (Saturday 15) was our first meeting. We didn't cook anything today, it was just more of an "orientation" of sorts and figuring out how we would run the class and buy the ingredients.
We had no idea what to expect or who to expect or how many to expect. Besides me and the two other American teachers who are leading the class with me, there were 8 others and we're expecting a couple of other women to join next week. Two of the women who came to the cooking class in the summer of 2010 are joining in for this class as well. :)
Truth be told, I'm feeling a little out of my league. Most of these women are mothers who have been cooking for a lot longer than I have. I was feeling so intimidated this morning while I was getting ready (the Korean moms are always so "put together") that I actually ironed my clothes. I know that sounds silly to some, but not once have I ever pulled out the iron or ironing board to iron clothes over here... I usually just deal. :)
It's okay though, the two other teachers (Eileen and Kara), who are with me in this endeavor, reminded me today that this is just a group of women getting together to have fun and bond over cooking.
I think God was trying to remind me of that same thing this morning when I made a loaf of banana bread for them, just to have something to snack on.
I had printed out the recipe for them, so if they liked the banana bread, they could make it themselves. This is how my problems started...
First, I accidentally copied the wrong oven temperature. Luckily for me, I realized it was wrong so I changed my oven temperature appropriately as well as corrected the 30 printed recipes I had to give them.
My second and bigger problem was that I had copied down the wrong amount of flour to put in the bread. The real recipe said to put in 2 cups, I had wrote (and typed out for the women) 1 cup! OI!! Unfortunately for me, I didn't realize my mistake until I took the bread out of the oven and it looked super strange.
What a great way to start a cooking class... make a pretty big mistake on the first food item you make to share with the women! Despite it's sad-looking state of being, it still tasted pretty good. Kara and Eileen even said they liked it better this way, 'cuz it was squishy. (not really the texture you're going for when you're making bread but... ya know... whatever works!)
Well, to say the least, I've been humbled. Hopefully I won't make a complete idiot out of myself over the course of the 6 week class. However, if making a fool out of myself is my fate, at least it'll be while doing something I love!
In school news: So far so good. To be honest, math is probably the easiest of all subjects to create lesson plans for. It's nice that 3 of my classes are Math. However, science is a completely different realm, at least it is for me. I've just finished my first unit (Lab Safety, Nature of Science, and the Scientific Method) with my 7th graders (I'm still pulling my 6th graders along... slowly but surely we'll finish the unit [I kind of feel like the little engine that could]). Now I'm getting to content that hasn't been fully developed into a curriculum yet. I'm working on it, but the last time I taught Earth Science was my first year of teaching, 3 years ago. In many ways, it feels like I'm teaching it for the first time because that first year I had no clue what I was doing.
Anyway, after fellowship tomorrow, I will work on plans to hopefully get me through the next two weeks. If I can do that, I'll be golden because after the next two full weeks of school is one week of holiday (due to a Chinese national holiday)! I won't deny that teaching over here has many perks... mostly associated with the holidays we get! :)
Okay, I still have more to share with ya'll, but I'll leave it for another day and another post.
Until then... toodles.
(*"toodles" reminds me of noodles... of which I tried my hand at making chicken fried noodles today. Kind of similar to chicken fried rice, but with noodles and more veggies. It didn't turn out great, but it turned out pretty good. Hopefully I will hone my chicken fried noodle skills and will be able to make it when I come home next summer!)
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