The Dreaded Day Has Arrived

Since the beginning of the semester we have known that there would be one of the three bosses of ILP come to visit us here in China. We always dreaded the day.  We didn't want to be evaluated, after all, we are only volunteers with not much training. We comforted one another with the fact that we are volunteers and they aren't going to just send us home because we aren't good enough.  Our head teacher told us that the "boss" who would be coming is Jared.  Jared is 6' 8" and good at what he does.  This made us a little more nervous.  The other two bosses for ILP aren't quite as serious and definitely aren't quite as tall.

A few days before Jared came we received a letter from the ILP office in Utah.  They knew we would be nervous and tried to comfort all our fears. They told us not to worry. They weren't coming to evaluate us, they were coming to check up on nus and make sure everything was going well.

Jared arrived at our school on Thursday.  Me and my roommates were eating lunch, nervously awaiting his arrival.  A few minutes later he walked in the door. (well, he ducked under the door)  Every eye was on him, including us Americans.  He is so tall!

He got some rice and sat down by us.  He said a prayer on his food then began by asking casual questions. Him and our head teacher, Britta, had to talk alone for a while so they went to the supply room while we went to our apartment.  A few minutes later they joined us and we had one on one interviews with Jared.  It was surprisingly so fun! I missed talking to someone new, having a grown up conversation, with someone who speaks English well. It was great.  He pretty much just made sure I was doing good mentally, physically, and spiritually. He was very nice.

Well, two days before Jared came my roommate Cynthia got sick and had to go to the hospital at 5:00 AM.  She didn't teach the day before Jared came and she didn't teach the day he came either. It was also her birthday. bummer. Since she didn't teach we each took some of her students (2 or 3) and brought them to our class.  You wouldn't think that 2 more kids would make much of a difference, but it kind of does.  Especially because our teaching areas are so small.

After our one on one interviews we began teaching. Jared watched us in opening which went very well.  The kids were very well behaved... it was weird, but amazing! We then split to our classes. Jared was just this figure walking around, towering over everything.  He would come to classes but wouldn't stay too long.

He came to my classroom….okay, hall way, and while he was there I was giving each kid a small piece of paper.  One kid was really sad about the color of paper he got.  I wasn’t planning on letting him have the color he wanted because it would be a hassle.  Jared walked over to him and said “say teacher can I have the blue paper?”  The kid, Hayden, did as he was directed so I switched him papers.  After that, as I suspected, all the kids where saying “teacha, I want yellow, I want blue, I want purple.”  I looked over at Jared and I jokingly said, “See what you started.” He just kind of laughed. After that I gave them all the same color of paper in my other classes.

Classes went well. Of course I was rusty at first like always, but by the last rotation I had my lesson mastered. After classes Jared came to our apartment to have a group meeting.  At this meeting he pretty much just asked if we had questions.  I asked him what we need to work on and he said what he saw was pretty dang good but we may want to hand out a few more tokens. The meeting was only about 20 minutes because he had to take a taxi.

The dreaded day wasn't so dreaded after all.

After Jared left we went to Daufien, the big market here. We also stopped at  Star Bucks because Cynthia loves it and it was her birthday.

 

That night we got into our comfy clothes and did face masks! They were a little creepy.