Birthdaydinnerparty

I have the feeling that days are so short here. I don't have enough time to do all the things I want to do in a day.

This morning I started the day with the sweet Chinese children in class. I really like it that we can play one-on-one with them. Making a connection and trying to do my best. Some of the children already come to me for stuff and I learned the Chinese word for 'hug' today :) Today I did this for a short period of time, because after that I got to help with the gymnastics class. I don't really know if I should call it that, but it is a class in which children do exercises with their parents. They practice jumping, bouncing a ball and do a few balance activities. It is always fun to watch. Today I was able to interact more. Standing in the class I am supposed to help parents as they try to teach their kid. I find this very difficult, because I can not really communicate with parents. In today's class I tried a little bit more and got involved with the parents as well as the children. I think it went quite ok. I just thought it was very difficult when a mother started to ask me a few questions and try to tell me something, because I didn't understand what she was saying. I tried to tell her, in my best Chinese, that I don't really speak that much Chinese. I notice I get lost for words every time I need to speak Chinese. I have like a few phrases that I have learned, but when I can use them.. I forget. It is so annoying. So lesson learned today is that I really need to practice more Chinese, speaking.

After lunch I went to the other building of Xinxinyulu with teacher Lee (the one we live with). I could watch her give classes. She was teaching five parents how to teach their kid some language skills. All parents sitting in other rooms, and they were all doing something differently. It was nice to watch this. I had some difficulty understanding what teacher Lee was telling the parents, but I could totally understand what the children were learning. That was actually my level of Chinese. So I understood what the classes where about and how parents learn at the Autism Center. It was very fascinating.

After individual training the children had game class. In this they did a game in which the children have to bring fruits to the other site of the room, stepping over things and crawling through a little tunnel. They also learn here how to work together with other children, which is so good for Autism children. When this was also over the children went home and we cleaned up.

When we got back from work, Kaho and I went straight to the supermarket to get a panda-box giftset for Luca. We met her last Sunday and today we were invited for her birthdayparty. We were having Beijing Duck in a really nice restaurant. Only problem was that it was on the other site of Beijing and it took us one and a half hour to get there. But when we got there, there was still a lot of food on the table and they hadn't touched desert yet.
I met yet more people that I didn't know before and we had the bestest of times. We joked around about my clumsiness of that evening (the bottle of coke fell down near my plate when someone spun the table) and about a lot of other things. They were very interested in my culture as well. So we talked a lot about typical Dutch things. They thought I was a shame for my home country, because I don't own wooden clogs. We talked about cheese, tulips (a lot), windmills and spacecake. At one point in the evening I was laughing so much that my stomach was hurting from it. It was a pity we had to go home on time as well, because of the amount of time it takes us to get home.

But it was such a wonderful night and Luca: I hope you had a wonderful birthday! And as she said we should keep this up.