Just Dance

As most of you know I was a dancer for most of my life.  Since college, I haven’t been able to dance as much as I would have liked to.  My students know I used to be a dancer and currently take a hip hop class here in China.  The school had a talent show/New Year's celebration on December 30 and 31. All of the classes from Grade 1 and 2 performed. They could perform by singing, acting, or dancing!  Two of my classes asked me to help them with their dances.  I choreographed both of them and taught it to my students over the past month.  It took up a lot of my spare time, but I loved it!  

I think HE knew that this time of year would be the toughest for me being away from home, so he loaded me down with plenty of fun activities to keep my mind off  things.  HE really has blessed me beyond belief over these past few weeks.  HE knows our hearts and our desires!  The students were so excited and appreciative that I just couldn't help but love them all.  I thought the dancing phase of my life was over, but apparently HE had other plans!  I love that HE is using something that has such a special place in my heart to help impact my relationships with my students here in China.  HE is so good!  

I will say as amazing as it was...there were some challenges such as RHYTHM!  Poor things just don't have it!  My Grade 2 class danced to the song Tik Tok by Keisha and wanted to do a hip hop dance. (Disclaimer:  I unfortunately did not have any say in the song choice)   When I first started teaching the dance, I was very nervous because they just weren't getting it. However, Chinese students are seriously hard working, no matter what the task.  They practiced so much and wanted to improve.  The dance ended up looking so much better and they loved it!

Tik Tok dancers

Two of the dancers from Tik Tok, Bunny and Chelsea.

Some of the other Tik Tok dancers:  Bunny, Spark, No Way, Chelsea and Vickers (in the back).

The other dance I helped out with is......wait for it...... a Chinese fan dance.  Yes, you read that correctly.  The American taught the Chinese students a Chinese fan dance.  Oh the irony!  There was a video of the dance they wanted to copy, so lucky for me I just had to watch the video and teach it to the students.  They were also extremely hard working and the dance looked great!  

Grade 1, Class 12 performing the fan dance at school on December 31.

Both of my classes did so well!  I was so proud of them.  I went in to total stage mom mode though reminding them to smile, not to be nervous, and whatever the outcome was I was proud of their hard work.  I also was in the back of the room nervously video taping both performances!  haha 

Drum roll please....

The Results:   

My fan dance got FIRST PLACE!!!!  Wahooo!  Now, first place is a little different here because there were three classes that got first, then three that got second, and so on.  Still, it was awesome!  I wish I could take more credit for it, but I did very little compared to the students.  It was still a very proud moment for the both of us.  Their head teacher even toasted me at lunch and told me thank you for helping his students.  

Tik Tok unfortunately did not do so well.  I expected it though because the judges were older and all of the dances that won were very traditional Chinese routines, not hip hop or more modern type dances.  Poor things were so upset.  It made me so sad because they really did practice so hard.  Overall, it was an amazing experience!  I was so proud of all of my students, not just the ones I helped, because I realized how much talent their is at our school outside of the classroom.  

Lesley and I waiting for the performances to start.  Lesley also helped two of her classes with their dances.  

Lesley's class danced to Umbrella by Rihanna.  One of the girls even sang the song!

One of my classes performed a skit.  I think it was about a princess, but I'm not sure.  Everyone else thought it was really funny!

Another class did a fan dance.

This is one of my students named Mibo.  I had no idea he could sing!  He was amazing!

My Grade 2 class performing a traditional Chinese dance.

This is our hip hop teacher, Wang Hao.  He came to the performance because he choreographed one of the dances.  Although he speaks no English and our Chinese is very poor, we still are able to communicate with hand motions and translators on our ipads!  We went to dinner with him and his girlfriend on New Year's Eve and had a great time!

On December 31 the winners from the night before performed for the entire school.  As Lesley and I looked across the sea of students, we realized how much we must stick out.  Lesley decided to document it.  Can you find me?

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Although the week leading up to Christmas was kind of a bummer (death disease), the actual Christmas weekend was really fun and memorable.  These are all of the pictures from our Christmas celebration here in China.  Enjoy!

THE SEASON OF GIVING

Apparently, I temporarily lost my mind and decided it would be a great idea to bake sugar cookies for my students.  This would be something I would usually do as a teacher in the states where I have 30 or so students.  I have over 500 students here!!!!  Yes, I'm crazy and yes I did bake 500 sugar cookies for my students even with the death disease.  

Some of the sugar cookies.  (This picture was taken prior to said death disease)

SKIP THROUGH THE NEXT 5 DAYS 

(No pictures available due to the death disease)

**I promise it's the last time I'll mention it.

GINGERBREAD HOUSES

On Thursday night, Les and I were feeling better so we invited all the girls to come over and make gingerbread houses!  (Thanks mom for sending me the kit)  It was so fun to listen to Christmas music, drink hot chocolate, and make cute gingerbread houses!

The kit with hot chocolate and candy cane hershey kisses!

My Gingerbread Outhouse

 (We all decided that my house looked like an outhouse, so I affectionately named it the W.C.)

Some got messier than others

Dawn with her gingerbread house

Chelsie with her peppermint house

Erin's church

Lesley's house

Our Gingerbread Village

CHINESE CHRISTMAS CARDS

Dawn, our best Chinese friend, is amazing!  I know I have said this before, but we really wouldn't survive without her.  She stayed after making gingerbread houses to help us write Christmas cards in Chinese.  We baked cookies to deliver to people in our lives here in China that mean so much to us, even if they don't know it and wanted to give them a Christmas card that they could read.  Two of them are our regular street vendors, jaozi (dumplings) lady and sweet potato man.  We also brought them to our guards at the school, who are so sweet and our always looking out for us.  Lastly, to our hip hop teacher whose class we take twice a week and love!  All of them were so surprised and appreciative of the cookies and card, especially since it was written in Chinese!

Dawn writing the Christmas cards in Chinese!

CHRISTMAS EVE

Christmas Eve started out very different than all my other ones, including some last minute shopping, checking the school for our missing packages from home, a trip to the grocery store, KFC for lunch, hip hop class, and finishing up our desserts for dinner that night.  Christmas Eve night we headed over to the Randall's home, where we celebrated with a delicious dinner and a service to remember the true meaning of this holiday.  We also had some special guests, University students from the U.S., here for their month off of school who joined in on the festivities.

The desserts we made for the night

Our feast

Dawn at the dessert table with the panda cake she made

The Randall's Christmas tree

Chelsie lead us in Christmas carols!

Just us girls

After dinner, the seven of us from the Zhong team headed over to Paul and Erin's to have a Christmas slumber party, so we could all wake up on Christmas morning together, exchange gifts, and eat breakfast!  

Paul and Erin's apartment was truly a winter wonderland!

Erin's very Chinese pjs!

CHRISTMAS MORNING

Erin and I were so excited about Christmas morning!  I never get a good night's sleep on Christmas Eve, I guess it is just the anticipation of it all.  I woke up early and thought I was the only one awake, but then I saw that Erin and Paul were up as well, so we played a board game on Paul's ipad while we anxiously waited for the others to get up!  Once everyone was up, we drank some much needed coffee and began to open presents! We did Secret Santa, so we were all excited to see who had who!

Aaron, Les, and Chelsie excited to open gifts, while Kevin is still bundled up on the couch.

Les about to open her present!

Aaron was Les's secret santa and gave her a heater!  Awesome gift since we are always cold in our apartment.

Erin had Aaron and she gave him a very nice journal.

High School Musical 1, 2, and 3 

Lesley was Kevin's santa!

Erin got an adorable hat and sweater from Chelsea.

My turn!  I must say I was very spoiled!  Paul is an amazing gift giver and got me so many fun things.  These are leggings that are very popular here in China.  I have already worn them and they are so cute and incredibly warm because they are fur lined!

I also got gloves and a scarf, hair bows, and purple and gold yarn (Erin is going to teach me how to knit)!

Paul=best Secret Santa ever!!!!  Thanks P!

Kevin had Paul and got him a lamp.

I had Chelsie!!!!  She loves owls, so I found a very Chinese scarf that had owls on it and was fur lined!  Also, some finger less mittens and matching earrings.

Erin is an amazing girl!  She knitted all of us stockings, so we would each have one for Christmas.  Both her and Paul even stuffed our stockings for Christmas morning.  They are such a sweet and giving couple.

Kevin and Aaron with their stockings.

Paul and Erin with their stockings.  She didn't have enough time to knit ones for her and Paul, so they had these instead.

I love these girls!

Thanks for making this unusual Christmas so memorable!  Y'all are the best!

Breakfast time!

We had blueberry muffins, hash browns, eggs, fruit, toast, and yogurt!

CHRISTMAS NIGHT

After breakfast, we hung out for awhile and then headed our own separate ways to Skype with our families.  Later that night Dawn came over so we could give her a Christmas gift!

She is traveling for the next 2 months, so we got her a panda eye mask for all of the train rides.

We then had dinner together.  Yes, our Christmas dinner was baked eggplant and Chinese noodles made by Dawn.  Oh Christmas in China!

Roomies!

Dawn and Les by our Christmas tree.

Last picture from Christmas!

You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch

Usually, I am very positive and uplifting on this blog...today there may be some not so great parts to this post as well.  (Just an FYI!)


Let me set the scene for you:


It's a week before Christmas,  we are at fellowship having a time of community, wo r ship, and pryer then my dear roommate starts feeling ill.  She decides to head home after fellowship, instead of eating lunch with the team. After I grab a quick lunch with everyone, I head home to check on her and she looks awful (no offense Les)!!!  This is the beginning of what will now be referred to as the "death disease".  After a rough evening, we assume she has gotten food poison and will hopefully be better in the morning.  Boy were we wrong!


Monday morning rolls around, I'm feeling a little off, but no big deal.  We head to school to help some students and then it hits me..."Oh no!  I've caught the death disease too!!!!".  Yes, folks you heard me correctly the entire week before Christmas Lesley and I were sick with the worst stomach virus I have ever had!  Unfortunately, all of the fun activities and plans we had for the week of Christmas were ruined and instead we spent most of our time either teaching or in our beds watching Christmas movies trying to stay in the spirit of it all.


I wish I could say the bad news ends there, but it doesn't.  All week we were waiting on packages from home.  Both of our moms sent them with more than two weeks to spare (which is usually how long it takes a package to get here).  We got nothing.  We checked with the post office, who claims they dropped the packages off around Wednesday of last week at our school.  Our school has never seen the packages. Blah!!!!  It was just kind of disheartening because there were so many fun things they sent us to make it feel more like the holidays. The main disappointment was there were gifts for some of my team members and our waibans.  We still have hope that we will get them some time this week and there was just some mix up.


All of this to say the last few weeks have been rough with the kitchen fiasco (check my last post), death disease, no packages, and nothing going as planned for Christmas.  I know, I know, I live in China things never go as planned!  As much as I know this to be true, sometimes you just hope that things will work out the way you want them to.  Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't.


Okay enough negativity, just needed to get it out of my system!


My main pryer for Christmas was that I would be feeling better and it was answered!  That was probably the best gift I could have received.  I was able to eat a real meal for the first time on Christmas Eve night!  What a bl e ss ing to be able to enjoy the wonderful food prepared by my family here in China.  I even got to try some of the desserts, which were amazing!


The week did consist of many positives and fun times, including making gingerbread houses, delivering gifts, a Christmas lunch with our principals, baking, Christmas Eve dinner and service, and slumber party/Christmas morning at the Korsons!  Homesickness definitely set in when I skyped with my family their Christmas morning and later Christmas night.  I expected though, so I gave myself some grace and shed a few tears.


This week has truly humbled me and made me realize how Christmas isn't just about one day, but can be an attitude of thankfulness, gratefulness, generosity, etc. that is extended throughout the whole year if we allow it be.  It's not about the gifts that are in my missing package, but about the one and only GIFT that really matters.  Did my ideal Christmas occur? No, it didn't, but such is life (especially in China).  I am counting my ble ss ings and trying to be thankful for everything else that has occurred while being here.


Next up...Pictures from Christmas Eve and Christmas Day!  


I'll leave you with a little tease...

MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM CHINA!

(matching shirts provided by Lesley's mom)