Banana Pancakes

It's been over a week since I've blogged...I'm lagging behind! This is not due to lack of busyness or lack of things to do, I guess I just haven't had any specific thing to write about so this blog will be a collection of random updates from the past week or so.

* Last week I began tutoring a 6 year-old Japanese girl, Kaho, and in April I will start to tutor a second 6 year-old Japanese girl, Asumi. I got connected with these families through a teacher at my school and so far it's been a blast! The girls are adorable and their English is really quite good! Their parents want me to tutor Kaho and Asumi because they will no longer be attending an international school in Tianjin, therefore they won't have the constant English exposure. The parents want Kaho and Asumi to keep the level of English that they have now and even work on improving it.
I met with Kaho last night, she is a very bright young girl! She's also a perfectionist and would correct her own writing or reading before I even had the chance to!

* I am still doing voice recording every other week or so for the company that is producing children's workbooks. Recently, I started recording a children's dictionary and after 3 hours I am only halfway through the letter "E!" I find it very interesting that the dictionary has words like bear, egg, and deliver but it also has words like bargain and communist. You can see that this will definitely be used with Chinese kids!

* The first signs of Spring are starting to arrive in Tianjin...hallelujah! Not only has the heat turned off but you can feel Spring in the atmosphere on campus. Today and yesterday were warm days and I noticed that the students are moving much slower than when it's cold outside. They walk like molasses and sometimes I have to do a double-take to see if they are actually moving forwards, rather than walking backwards! :) Americans would be in awe...I bet you've never seen anyone move so slow!!!

Everything else continues on as usual...grading, lesson planning, Chinese lessons and lots of time spent with friends and students! Hope you had a great St. Patty's Day!