Training! Getting Excited!!

So the last two days were our all day training sessions for our trip to China. I had such an amazing time and I'm even more pumped to leave in 13 short days! Yesterday we learned about the teaching method we'll be using and how to apply it to kindergarten aged kids. It's a really cool method that involves using playing and interacting with the children in an immersive setting to help them learn the same way they learned their first language. We did a couplepractice rounds with our little groups and while I felt kind of ridiculous at moments I knew that the kids would love it :)
I was also privileged to meet four out of the other 16 teachers that will be going with Kareena and i to Changzhou. Katelyn and Zack are a brother and sister from St Louis,Nick is their best friend from Sandy and then Alysha was another one drug in by her close friend. I was so happy to find out that they were all crazy fun and energetic just like me! I could tell from the start that we were all going to get along amazingly! I just hope the rest of our group clicks as well as the six of us did.

Today we started off learning about the basic reading program that we'll be doing to help some of the older kids. It involves A LOT of singing haha. After that we went over safety stuff. They talked to us about culture chock and being careful when we travel and about asking when we need help with anything etc etc. They also warned us going to China that we should get used to eating rice three times a day haha. My first thought was that I got used to that a long time ago in my family!
After safety was the best part: Culture workshops! We had a girl come in and tell us all about culture in China, what to buy where, good places to travel, customs and traditions. We got to hear a ton of awesome stories and ask lots of questions. After the meeting we all headed over to the ILP office where they had supplies we could grab from. A scout did his eagle project and gathered teaching supplies so we were all invited to come on a first come first serve basis to raid the boxes of supplies for stuff we would need. Our group were among some of the first people so we got TONS of good stuff. It was a great relief case I was worried about how we were going to get our hands on everything we needed!

Needless to say the last two days made me even more eager to get over there! It's going to be such an amazing experience and I can't wait for it to begin!!