A bad break...

I just called my dad this morning to find out that he recently broke his foot in three places! As he was working in the crawl space underneath our cabin, his foot slipped into a 3 ft hole (all the pressure on his one foot!). Please lift him up as he will have to undergo surgery some time this week to get pins put in. For being such an active guy with work and racquetball, this is going to be tough.

We're lifting you up dad <3

A note in Chinese characters!

It is so nice when all of the hard work of studying and learning Chinese characters actually comes in handy. We just realized that we had no oil, and really needed some by tomorrow. Remembering that our Ayi (helper) comes on Mondays, I just whipped out a pen and paper and wrote her a note.....in characters! I didn't even have to think twice about it! Thank you Linda (my Chinese teacher) for challenging me....it is well worth it :)

Can you guess what it says? "Qing mai zhei ge. Xia Xia!" (Please buy this. Thank you)

Oh how I love Sundays...

The one thing I love the most about Sunday, is that it is just so wonderfully routine. Keeping things so predictable helps me to actually get work done while relaxing at the same time - what a nice balance for a weekend! Since Dave and I wake up at the normal time even on the weekend, that leaves about 4 hours for us to spend just relaxing and chillin before we actually have to be anywhere. 4 hours......there is so much to do with that much time!

The events once fellowship begins go a little like this (every Sunday): order Chinese and eat lunch together as a big group, pack up the school work and bike/walk down to the local coffee shop to sip steamed milk while being productive at the same time. After staying for a few hours, coming home to relax some more....what a beautiful day.

Dave practicing his guitar before playing at Fellowship

Look at all the food! With all of the people that stay and eat, most of it is completely devoured by the time we are done :)

It is always a fun time with all of the babies on the team now. Last year it was a room full of pregnant bellies, and now we have both Enoch and Maddy (and Jachin too) to play with!


A quick $2.00 fix up on Liz's bike....she can finally ride again! FREEDOM!

Sipping at the infamous "IS cafe" right down the street. This is my good friend Hannah sitting across from me as we are trying to be productive ;)

Now that I actually wrote about my "being productive" on Sundays, I better get to work.

1 1/2 massage for $10...can't beat that

For the past couple of weekends, we have been trying to hit up one of our favorite massage places. Apparently during the winter months, getting massages is the thing to do since there were no rooms available for hours! 6:00, 7:00, 8:00, still no rooms! This weekend we decided to be "strategic" about it and go at an hour less busy....3:00. It felt weird to go practically in the middle of the day, but it was WELL worth it. We both got an hour and a half full body massage in a room to ourselves with drinks and fruit, all for around $10. Incredible! I remember this past summer when my parents came to visit, they loved it so much that they went three times and they were only here for 10 days! Every once in a while, it feels nice to be waited on hand and foot....even when taking your shoes on and off. Here is Dave enjoying every moment of his pampering session:

After the massage, all rested up. Thinking to myself "How am I going to walk home feeling this lethargic?"

Oh what a beautiful feeling to know that I could wake up tomorrow, walk down the street (literally) and do it all over again. How tempting!

Let us rejoice and be glad in it!

As you can see, I am in the mood to post little tidbits of what has been happening. Sometimes it is better that way instead of jumping from topic to topic all in one blogpost. Just about the cutest thing happened in class today, and I thought I would share:


Every morning we have a morning message of some kind. It could be a letter, a shared poem, a verse or message to edit, you get the idea. This little 5-10 minute activity helps me to squeeze in a quick phonics, grammar, or reading review right on the spot! Anyway, for the past several months, I have been known to randomly insert "This is the day that the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it" into the day somewhere (usually in the morning). Yesterday for morning message, I had the students try to figure out the "secret message". As some worked on their mini whiteboards and some on the easel, they figured it out! (You can see the picture above) Now the story gets even better.

Today we had a rainy day at school. When we heard the heartbreaking news that there would be indoor recess, I moaned an audible "Awwww, man! Sorry guys!" After a short pause, I heard these adorable (and convicting) words "But Mrs. Evans.....this is the day that the Lord has made!" Wow. I had one of those moments where the world just stopped. That one little light bulb that turned on in his head was good enough to last me the whole day. May we be continually reminded that the words we pour into our students do not always go unoticed and forgotten.

The first snow!

It is finally here! The first snow of the winter. It is officially time to gear up with the long-johns, extra layers and leg warmers. While I know how long of a winter we have ahead of us, I still feel an inward excitement towards hot cocoa, bundling up and changing into sweats immediately after entering the house. If only the rain didn't have to come along with the snow, then it would have been simply perfect. We'll take what we can get.

You can tell I am enjoying this a little bit TOO much ;)

6 traits of writing with playdough...who would have thought?

When I was at the Beijing teacher's conference I went to a workshop that focused alot on the writing process and the six traits of writing. The speaker had SO many practical ideas that I was able to put into action right when I returned to school that following week. In one writing workshop mini-lesson, I was able to teach my kids the concept of brainstorming, creating, fixing, adding, changing, and even commenting. Guess what we used......playdough! When we transfered the activity into showing that they do all of these things as writers, I could see the light bulbs turn on in their heads...there were a lot of "hey...wait a minute" comments going on around the room :)

First I gave each of them a ball of playdough and a paper plate. I said "create something...anything." After a while, I said "now add something to your creation." After they added their creative touches, I said "now change or remove something" (you could hear the sad sighs). After a few more steps and touches, I had them write a title to their creation on the top. When everyone was satisfied with what they had made, we cycled the paper plates through the classroom for the students to write comments to their playdough masterpieces. It was so adorable how they really got into this part! They had so many questions, and wondering comments to write down that the plate filled up rather quickly (aside from the simple fact that 1st grade students write very big). After looking at their recieved comments, they went back and made some changes so that their "lookers" (future readers) would not be confused. Here's how our published playdough masterpieces turned out:

Dumplings

"Who will eat that?"

"Where is the spoon?"

Spot Muddy

"Why is the mud pink?"

"Oh no! You wrote on the playdough!"

Play ball Monster

"Where is the face?"

"What is his favorite ball?"

"Is it a scary monster?"

The Gingerbread Man

"Why is he brown?"

"Why does he not have ears?"

Here is a picture of our writing process pencil. This (hopefully) helps to keep their writing all flowing together in one general direction.