21 Days

I've been in China now for (obviously by the headline) for 21 days. I am officially a citizen of Fuzhou. I have settled in and have now been teaching for two weeks. I originally thought that I would be teaching after about 3 or so weeks... One we to the day of arriving in Fuzhou I was in front of the class. But, for those of you who have seen me teach, I was 100% at home. It felt like I was in one of my classes back in the states. This past week, my third week, I taught 8 lessons and have four classes of students. The kids come to school 2 days a week for 60 minutes or 90 minutes. My youngest student just turned 4 (western age 3) and my oldest is 17 (western age 16). In China they start counting how old you are from inside the womb. I am realizing that I found the age of students that I love teaching at a very young age!! Kindergarten and the primary years is where my heart lies.

I do not have any pictures of the school or students, but I will share some pictures of my apartment. I have been doing quite a bit of cleaning because only boys have lived in myapartment since the school has been renting it. Some of the other teachers and teaching assistants came over to make dumplings and they said they had never seen the apartment so clean.

The pictures are:

• Making dumplings, which were more like chinese tamales. They were in celebration of the dragon boat festival.
• My tiny kitchen
• The living room
• The view outside of my apartment