I got a few shots of my charges in between the crowd, which I guess could be useful, and then followed them to their classroom like a ninja in the dark, though a quite visible, camera toting one at that.
In the classroom, i noticed we had one more student, and a new teacher, which was good, but for some reason, maybe time constraints, Sarah decided not to play an icebreaker game. Gasp, HOW COULD YOU?
Instead we just played 自我介绍. That means, "introduce yourself" in Chinese. Like you didn't already know that. So we did this thing that I used to do a lot in my youth group. Everyone gave their name, age, and their favorite movie. It wasn't so bad, and I think everyone was quite surprised when the first girl, the new girl, and the youngest girl (All the same girl if you didn't catch that), said "Chuckie". Olivia confirms this several times with her, "Like chuckie, the killer doll movie? That chuckie? Like chuckie the horror movie? That chuckie? Like Chuckie, the evil chuckie, that chuckie?" Nod, nod, nod. "Ok...Next"
Again we were surprised when Bryan, the only boy in the class, said Bambi, and not batman as everyone somehow misheard, except me of course.
After our wonderful introductions, we moved on to the word of the day, and the first thing I caught on tape was Sarah flipping through the dictionary to find it. The word of the day. Naughty, naughty. She told me to stop filming but I obstinately told her with great obstinacy that I would remain obstinate and continue filming. I wonder what the word of the day was.
I continued to film, this time getting a lot of better footage and better angles, since the group had split up into four mini groups, 1 teacher and 1 student. It was overall not so interesting for me, since I was the odd one out and i was basically just trying to get the same shots, but in different frames and at different angles. It worked out pretty well, and I was happy to put the camera down to participate in the Haiku writing.
So after Sarah gave a brief explanation about haiku's and how they are 7-5-7... ahem sorry 5-7-5, where the numbers represent the syllables in each of the 3 lines. After the whole class had squeezed out a haiku about the cold sidewalk and a pretty lady walking on it (The cold sidewalk was my idea), everyone was sent off to write our own.
After looking over my finished work in pride, Sarah and I shared our haiku with each other, on the side, not to anyone else. Hers went like this:
Ok I can't remember, I'll ask her tomorrow (that's not a haiku if you were wondering). I remember the second line though:
My head is melancholy
...Anyways, mine went like this:
Caleb is awesome
something something something some
Let's see some bowing
(I forgot the 2nd line).
Anyways after we argued over who's was better, which was obviously mine, a third contender joined in and like.... blew our socks off. So Bryan asks me if his second line has seven syllables, and it actually has 8, so I quickly changed "will strike" to "strikes" and voila, he had a masterpiece. It sounded just like the cryptic, symbolic, and meaningful lines you'd hear from a Chinese sage:
Life is like a snake
You don't know when it will strike
or when it will yield
Now you can totally understand why I forgot mine and Sarah's.
So yes, after everyone shared, Paulina and Bryan decided to also share some stuff they had wrote. Paulina read one of her short stories, though I must confess that I couldn't hear a word she was saying from the other side of the table. It must have been pretty good though by the way people reacted. So then Bryan shared two other poems he had wrote, which I won't write here for fear of copyright infringement. But they were good, and they drew reactions like "Who helped you write those again?" and "Where'd you get that poem?" They were that good. Hey Paulina's short story was good too. I just didn't hear it, though I will have to do so before Illuminate is over.
So after the poem, or haiku writing, came bible story time, and Sarah went off to do her math. I picked up my camera once more and started filming the kids, and the teachers, until snack time when I quickly rushed of to grab my share, sneaking an extra nutri-grain bar in. During/after snack time, the kids colored and decorated their notebooks, and I went out into the hallway to get some shots of Sarah doing her math. Luckily, she let me film her, and I think Calvin will find use of that shot.
After the bible story, Sarah returned to help the group with their new Haiku chant, and then we were off to perform it. The assembly was the normal, and first everyone did the Illuminate cheer, then their individual one. After hearing all the great cheers, and getting the creative writing cheer on tape, I packed up my camera and headed up to grab my food. Maceo decided he wouldn't be having any, but then regretted it when I opened the food box in the car to discover
...a chocolate chip cookie!
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