A lot to tell you, please read this this morning.
After getting up at 4:45 this morning we got to the train and made it early. The train ride went smooth and made it to our school about 3:00pm. It’s really nice campus and our apartments are awesome. I’ll post pictures and tell you more about it later. Our two team leaders (guys team and girls team) had a meeting with the administration today about our classes and all. We went to eat at 5:00pm and found out this news.
We’re teaching tomorrow. We have only seen our dorms and the dining halls. We saw the stadium and a local campus store where we were able to get laundry detergent and breakfast food. So… the freshman have 3 weeks of military training on campus so they’re academic classes don’t start for 3 weeks. Everyone else starts tomorrow. Jessie, Tom, Kelsey, Tannah, and our team leaders (Dave & Monica) are teaching sophomores and they start tomorrow. Since Ashley, Jordan, and I are teaching freshman and they’re classes don’t start yet, they asked us to cover some of the junior level classes this week until the other teachers get here. So, we’re all teaching tomorrow. Classes start at 8. We’re headed over to the different departments to get our class schedule (a.k.a. when we teach and who we teach and where) and our books and curriculum tomorrow at 7:30 am. Classes start half an hour later. The good news is for those of us teaching junior level classes, we know when we’ll be teaching. My first and only class for tomorrow is at 8:00a.m.
Our wonderful team leaders scrambled to help put together lesson plans and first day activities (we had wrote general lesson plans for freshman/sophomores but hadn’t had time to go over them and adapt/fix them yet, and they wouldn’t be suitable for juniors. So they have just put together some things, and we’re about to all go over there and brainstorm and find out what an idea is for tomorrow. I ask that you lift us up because we’re teaching at a university in China in the morning… we haven’t seen the classroom buildings, or our text books, or our class schedules, and have only been on campus 5 hours. It’s going to be awesome! I’m counting on Him showing up because I know He will. I just had to laugh because earlier this afternoon it was somehow mentioned about the possibility of teaching tomorrow, and I knew we were going to. He’s got it under control. I need to go prepare for the lesson for tomorrow, but I ask for control, confidence, joy, and for Him to show up and Shine through.
Thank you so much. I can’t wait to tell you about how He shows up and everything else He’s provided. As you wind down toward bed time, we’ll be starting the beginning of something beautiful. Thank you so much!
My life in China: Teaching. Learning. Pursuing. Surrendering. Being Loved. Loving.
I am glad to hear you rode the train. Slow, medium or fast train? Hard, semi soft or soft seat? Looks as though you have hit the pavement running. When we were there it was always "hurry up and wait" but in you case, looks like you should have been there yesterday before. LOL I am so glad you know where your help will come from. You will be fine and you will do well. Thinking of all of you. Keep us posted.
ReplyDeleteMingtianjian
Thanks Martha! We took the bullet train, the "D" train so it was only about 6 hours. Since we got up at 4:45, 3 hours after going to bed, it was a quick train ride that was slept away.
ReplyDeleteYou're right, it would have been nice to have that extra day in here, but I had to be thankful for the feeling of inadequacy - it was a forced reminder of who was doing the work.
I broke out a "xie xie" to a gentleman who came in and fixed my clock at the break and the students were in awe. Pretty funny.