Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Hello

We are now in our 3rd week of school. In the middle of our 1st week, after we had our curriculum set, the graduate school decided that we should be teaching some other classes.
They gave us 4 days to rework our curriculum and then we started our new classes. Once again we have some really most wonderful students. Dana has post graduated students in health and medicine, Jay has post graduates in engineers. Dana also was able to keep one of her freshmen classes. Together this semester we have a little over 600 students. Many of these students struggle with listening and oral English. The can really read English well, but understanding what we are saying and speaking it is very difficult for them.

We are excited to be back teaching. We have never had two months of vacation since we got married. Sometimes being together 24/7 was a little, I don't want to say hard, but it was interesting at times. We have enjoyed being together most of the time and have had some wonderful experience, but it sure is great to get up in the morning and have something to do.
One of the other BYU teachers said, "I know what hell will be like. It is having nothing to do, waiting for someone to tell you what you will be doing --- sometime soon." We both read a few good books and worked on a few projects, but we were ready to start back to teaching.

This semester we are doing a lot of Power Point presentation for our classes. We have gotten some wonderful music from Brother and Sister Bird at another University. They have put together some wonderful music presentation, and we are looking forward to using them. We show a Movie every Tuesday and Wednesday night. We have been able to find some really great movies for our students to watch. This week we showed "The Terminal" a great movie.

Now that school has started there is plenty to do. We are going to visit a few more places before we leave to come home. It looks like we will be able to leave around the 23 of June. We heard that spring is wonderful here, but summer is really hot and it comes in May.

We are still exploring and finding new things in this city. We have some really special Chinese friends that we have shared some special times with. We also have the other BYU teachers that are really amazing people. Getting together every Sunday for Sacrament Meeting is a wonderful experience. We are learning a many wonderful things here and are very grateful for the opportunity to come to China. Next blog will have pictures and we look forward to the last 31/2 months.

1 comment:

Tiffany said...

600 students!! wow that is a lot of papers to read and correct.
We cant wait to see you when you return. It has been so fun talking to you on Skype.