Thanksgiving Thoughts

Here are some Thanksgiving text messages I received from students last Thursday:

THANKS GIVING DAY _TAYLOR

Happy Thanks Giving Day! Give my best wishes to you ，my American teacher! Happy to know you! Charles

你好，我是肃肃。Hello,l am Samuel.May you have a happy day,and l thank you heartfully.

Ann,Thanks giving day Frank

Thank you,my dear teacher.thank you for teaching us last year;thank you taught us the truth in life;thank you because you are envoys of friendship between china and united stated.happy thanksgiving day !

Hello!Miss Ann,thanks for your teach!My spoken English have improved a lot because of you,and I will memorie the thing happened yesterday.It's the first time I talk to foreign people.Just cool!I'll remember it forever!Thank you again.Happy Thanksgiving Day!"^_^" ~Duke, Marine Engineering, Class 1004

Hi,Ann!Today is Thanksgiving Day.Thank you for your excellent teaching to us,hope you are happy everyday~Eric

Hello teacher Ann! happy thanksgiving day ! i hope you are happy in china ! daniel

Hey,Dear Ann,happy Thanksgiving Day.Hope you a nice day! (don't be homesick ^_-)

And I did have a real turkey dinner. Mmm mmm good!

Softball club is underway

We even have some girls on the softball club. This helps in our recruiting efforts.

This was club recruiting day on campus. We were one of many clubs recruiting new students to sign-up with us.

Our first club practice.

Two of the club leaders, Gabriel (L) and Devin (R).

This fall when I came back to China, I brought a suitcase full of softball equipment. I think I had 15 gloves, about 12 softballs, and 1 bat. Thanks to the many generous donations from many friends and family back home. Some of you gave up your favorite glove that you've had for years (thanks Bob Miller) :) I can't tell you what a blessing it was to be able to give an abundance of equipment to the students here.

The first club practice was about 4 weeks ago. We had 23 students show up! Guess how many gloves we had? 23! Isn't that awesome. We've been meeting each Saturday afternoon and we run through some drills and then play a scrimmage. Two weeks ago we had our first catch of a fly ball in the outfield. I think the outfielder just closed his eyes and stuck up his glove, but he caught it! Everyone was so amazed and excited. I'm looking for another team that we can have a real game against, but I haven't found one yet. That's ok, because we really need a lot more practice before we are ready to challenge anyone.

The fall has been unusually beautiful - warm and sunny, I've actually seen some blue sky. Today the weather turned colder and fell to about 55 F for a high.

This semester I have about 300 new students - freshmen boys! That means I have about 800 students on this campus all-together including the previous two years. When I meet them on campus, I have difficulty knowing if they are from this year, or last year, or two years ago. Both they and I are surprised when I can recall their names - which is about 10% of the time.

This week my students will be giving speeches about a hobby that they are unfamiliar with. It should be interesting!

Hey, where has Annie been?

My dear friends,
I know some of you may have been asking that question? I can't believe I haven't written for so long. I have other friends serving abroad and they write pretty regularly - about every month or so, and then I feel so guilty because I haven't written to you all. I'm leaving China tomorrow and I decided that I better at least let you know that I'm coming home! I am finishing my fifth year here.
Wow, it's been a whirlwind semester. One of the highlights was teaching softball to my 250 boys. We didn't all play at once, of course, but within one week I took every class out to play ball and that equals 250 in a week - and we only had 3 gloves and one "made in china" bat that dented if we used a real softball. I think it was a success because as a result a small group of students started an official softball club on campus. It is a little slow getting started, but they are enthusiastic. I'll be soliciting for some used equipment when I get home this summer to donate to the softball club.

One of my lessons this semester was about restaurant English - what does the waiter say, what do you say to order your food, etc. I set up 8 mock restaurants in the classroom with 8 waiters and the rest of the students were customers. In this way they could practice their English dialogues. I had white "waiter" hats for those playing waiters. One boy refused to wear the white waiter hat. I tried to coax him to wear it but he still refused. Finally he confessed that wearing a white paper hat meant that someone in your family had died. Oh dear, I felt like I had broken some social traditional code asking them to wear these hats. Needless to say, I didn't force that boy to wear the hat. However, everyone else wore them without hesitation and they all wanted their picture taken with the hats on.

I leave for the airport tomorrow (Thursday) morning at 7:00 so I better get to bed. I will be traveling for a little more than 24 hours. I would greatly appreciate your prayers for safe travel. I'm looking forward to being home and having a krispy kreme donut and real pizza :) Seriously, it has been a great year. I thank God for allowing me this privilege of teaching these students. I thank Him for another year completed.

Blessings, annie