Friday, June 20, 2008

Big Day at GaoXin No. 1 High School

Keith's panda was cute!

Here we are with our two Chinese teachers, Laoshi Zhou and Laoshi Shi


Many government education officials as well as numerous principals from other schools came to our campus today to obseve the school, make suggestions and give some sort of school score. It may be something like our accreditation though certainly not the same. Everyone has been working overtime all week. Today all the female teachers wore a green suit that is the official school uniform, the males wore a pastel colored shirt with a school belt buckle and all the students wore their uniforms - our students included. All staff was on duty to be sure that everything went smoothly.

Our schedule today was changed so that we had art this morning and Chinese in the afternoon rather than the usual culture class during our last period starting at 3:30. Today the students painted one of the panda's that is the symbol of the Beijing Olympics. They did a great job! Everyone was impressed! Then about 11:00 our doors were opened and the important people came in to watch our students. They thought their work was good as well. And the kids were on their best behavior - working seriously. The principal was there and she, too, was very happy with what she saw. I'll post at least one of the panda pictures, but they were all good. :) After lunch we had two Chinese classes and since both teachers were here at once we took this picture. We all really like our Chinese teachers. We are learning a great deal! Today the students even played some word games - in CHINESE!
It is Friday afternoon here, so all the students went home for a free weekend. All the host brothers and sisters will be studying for final exams all weekend, so we don't yet know what all the kids will do, but I'm sure the host families have something in mind. We will all meet on Monday at noon to go to the airport to fly to Guilin. We will return to Xi'an late Thursday (June 23rd) night and will have half a shortened day on Friday.
I want all the families to know that each of your children has been and continues to be a great asset to our exchange program! They are polite, considerate, hard-working and are turning into a great team. They always seem to have positive attitudes and do whatever I ask of them. They are good representatives of Saugus High School and of our city. You are all to be congratulated! And the best news of all is that our injured members (Aurelien managed to pull a muscle in his neck two days ago) seem much better today. Aurelien was able to hold his head up straight and the wound on his shoulder looks great, and Kimi is managing to write and paint with her write hand. Everyone else also seems fine - an auspicious start to our trip!

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