This week has been a whirlwind to say the least. It’s had its highs and its had its lows, but put them together and it has made this one of the most memorable weeks so far.
It started on Sunday when my aunt came to visit. She had been in Hong Kong for the past 10 weeks on a business trip and wanted to come to Zhuhai to see me. She unfortunately only had a few hours here since she had to be back to pack for an early flight the next day. Although it was a short visit, it was great to see her since I hadn’t for 6 months! It was like having a little slice of home with me, but that made me miss home even more than I already did. This week in particular I was pretty homesick. My brother graduated from eighth grade on Wednesday, and I wanted nothing more than to be there to celebrate with him and my family. I FaceTimed in for a little bit and was filled with all kinds of emotions seeing everyone there looking so proud. It didn’t help that it was raining extremely hard that day also because the rest of the day I was in this sad funk which really brought me down. I felt out of it the rest of the day, but thankfully my friends and students took my mind off of it very quickly. Even with Hsiao-mei gone because she had injured her foot, I still felt the familial love from everyone on the team! I’m so grateful for the incredible people surrounding me who make me feel like family isn’t too far after all.
My English classes this week were so fun to teach. I teach with Karen, and we had some really great moments. We were talking about transportation, and some of the things the kids came up with were so funny. In our game where they had to list as many methods of transportation as they could in complete sentences, one student decided they would ride a horse to America, another student invented a “fourcycle,” his friend proceeded to tell him that that would just be a car, and yet another student said they would take a broomstick to outer space. They knew these sentences didn’t make sense, but they just wanted to list everything and anything they could think of so that they could win the game for their team. I feel like this week brought me so much closer with the kids and that they are really starting to feel comfortable and confident around me. Unfortunately, this was our last time with our Thursday and Friday classes, so it was sad that we had to say goodbye so soon. These weeks have flown by, and I wish I had more time with these kids. I feel like I am just starting to form relationships with them and now the classes are coming to an end. I have to make the most of my time here these next few days, as it’s just going to go by faster and faster!
Back to the whole adaptability theme, we faced a few challenges with our extracurricular classes this week. First, we found out that what we had originally planned out for our show was not what the school wanted at all. We had to change our final products and cut a lot out. Bryant and I ended up having to combine our dances together in order to have spots for all of the classes in our show. After shaving off a minute of our dances, they then told us that we would have to have both of our classes on stage at the same time doing the same choreography. With only a few classes left, this seemed nearly impossible, but we would have to adapt and make it work. That much we could figure out.
Next, a few of the teachers came around to our classes to watch our performances and decide whether or not they were good enough. If they thought they weren’t, then they were going to cut the kids who could not keep up from class. This made us all extremely anxious and pretty angry, since we had all worked so hard and didn’t want to see our kids’ feelings hurt. We could not believe that they would be willing to do such a thing since, after all, this was for the kids and not about making the performance Broadway quality. It seemed completely unfair and made us all have a really negative attitude.
Then to top all that, on Thursday we were informed that one of the students in Class 1 had come down with a case of chickenpox and that all of the other students in that class were not allowed to participate in extracurriculars anymore in order to prevent the chickenpox from spreading. This meant that five of my students were no longer in my class, and I’d need to make a lot of last minute changes. The worst part about it all, though, was that my host sister Sandy was one of the students in this class. It was absolutely heartbreaking to see how devastated she was that she couldn’t go to singing class anymore, especially since she had been given a solo and was so excited to sing for everyone. She was nearly in tears at the dinner table telling her parents of the situation, and I thought it was not fair that just because one student was sick that the rest of the class also had to suffer.
I was so frustrated and could not see the positive side of the situation, but there was nothing we could do. We began to falsely blame the people in charge, which I now realize was us just jumping to conclusions too quickly. We did not know enough about the situation and were being extremely negative. Instead of just taking what we were told and making the best out of it, we decided instead to harp on it and complain 24/7. This was by no means the solution, and only made matters worse. It’s like chickenpox in a sense. When the spots start to multiply you want to itch them; its incredibly hard to resist not to. But itching only makes everything worse. Similarly, our instinct was to complain, but that created a negative environment that benefited no one. No one was at fault here, but rather we were just not on the same page. There were misunderstandings that could’ve been cleared up had we just had a simple conversation about our concerns instead of making everything more complicated just by talking amongst ourselves. Again, this is me needing to recognize my lack of adaptability and working on being more flexible and open! I will use this situation going forward to work towards making my performance even better! I want to encourage and inspire my kids to also want our dance to be great! I also need to work on seeing the bright side of things first, and maybe that will help me to live in the moment more. With this attitude, our final performance will most definitely be amazing!!!
