Item 1) Not to harp on the heat continually, but my host fam just told me that this summer has been the hottest in 30 years here... My poor little teacher bemoans daily at the beginning of chinese class that it is simply "too hot and humid, too hot and humid!" Chengdu has sold out of air-conditioners and a lot of the students here have been hospitalized for heat exhaustion. I hear there's a heatwave back home too? Well isn't it nice that 12 hours apart we can all still sweat together!

Item 2) On Sunday my host cousin and her sister took me to a town about 40min outside Chengdu by bus, called Luo Dai. They didn't have the english to tell me what we'd be doing, so it was a suprise when we ended up at the bottom of a mountain, staring up at a steep Great Wall-look alike stone staircase which led to a mountain top Buddhist temple. We hiked it for 4 hours, over 2 small mountains and back. I literally sweated through every stitch of clothing on me, including my bag. I have some good photos, and it was pretty beautiful. It was a little touristy, but everyone there was Chinese, no other white folk. The only other foreigner we met was a Korean student doing a semester here in Chengdu. Up at the top of the mountain, my lurking head cold exploded and by the time we got off the mountain, I had a big headache. Not the best way to then wander through Luo Dai itself, which is famous for it's fountains and water filled gutters where the whole town splashes and plays. They told me that to be splashed there is a happy thing and no one is allowed to get mad. okayyyyy. The town had several restored historical streets and lots of unique crafting going on. I don't know if I've ever been quite so exhausted, but it was great to get out and see some of the surrounding area... the countryside is beautiful around here!

Item 3) Monday, model school started! The first day went really well. I had so much fun, and my kids are great. The first day was all introduction type activities, while I was assessing their english level. There are 18 of them, and they are college freshman, so this is pretty much their first class here. They've all studied english for years, but are not english majors, so while I have a few students whose speaking and comprehension are both quite good, there are a broad number who are at a lower level and a few who have very few comprehension skills and cannot use their english spontaneously. All that makes it hard to teach a lesson which can challenge or even just reach everyone. Day two we talked about hometowns & history. Several had told me they wanted to learn a little about American history, so I modeled talking about hometowns with a brief lecture on Leesburg, D.C., and Charlottesville/Jefferson. Sort of got off on Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness and the concept of an academical village... ohhhh UVA, what you've done to me. My top students were totally with me for that material which was exciting, but then we definitely had to step back to pick up the rest of the class. That was a little frustrating, but I know that teaching such multi-level classes, particularly when my class sizes are much larger, will be a constant challege for the next 2 years.
Today the lesson was relationships: with parents, with friends, and then loooove/dating. I passed around lots of pictures, and had fun teaching them a Rascall Flatts song at the end of class, BUT I was struggling a little more because they are almost always unwilling to speak up in class, and no one will volunteer any info or ideas. When I assign them something to talk about, even spontaneously, they do much better, but I'm still concentrating on trying out different strategies to get them to speak up.
Tomorrow we'll be doing emotions/personality and I'm psyched about it. Then we're going to be using what we discuss related to those things, to work on some story-telling exercizes. They think it's hilarious when I tell them stories with voices, gestures, and big facial expressions, so I think it's time to turn the tables. After all, no language can be fun or interesting when it's spoken at the floor in a monotone!

Yesterday during class there was a torrential downpour (which temporarily flooded the back of my classroom in fact). Even with the doors and windows shut, it was a struggle to be heard over the rain for a few minutes, and the strain sent my scratchy throat into a coughing fit! I hd tears streaming down my face and couldn't stop coughing. One of my kids had to grab me some water while the class monitor ran a vocab drill for me while I got my breath back. So today when the class showed up, they brought me a bottle of water and a mango :) Awwww.