sweet mercy me, I'll have a cup of tea

Today started with my first oral test. I tested these kids for like 1 minute each while they were taking a written test. I still only got half way through the students. Apparently it's normal to take up 2 classes to do it, and teachers normally show a cartoon to the students while they pull people out. It just so happens that the only DVD I brought with me to Macau was Beauty and the Beast...and I have 100+ boys. We'll see how this works out.

At English Lunch today, we had a new student show up. I say new because it was the first time she'd been to English lunch, but I know her from Debate. We were talking about how tall I was, and she said she wanted to bottle up my super gene and sell it to people so they could be fantastically tall too. haha. Great. She's not actually that short of a girl. Then she asked me if I played piano. I responded that I did and asked how she guessed. She said music is so inspirational and all and I seemed like someone that inspired people. I was like--come to English lunch more often, girl! I can use these compliments. ;)

I had made "My Itsy Bitsy Letter R Booklets' for my 1st grade class this afternoon. I find materials like this online, but often end up not using them because of words that the students won't understand. For example, one of the words in these mini books was radish. You know what a radish is, and it make sense because there are radishes where you are. Children here don't eat radishes, so understanding what is meant by a picture of a radish is difficult. A lot of English resources are made in parts of the world with different animals and plants than here, so I have to ask myself, 'does this make sense in this context?'

After work today, I was in the mood to bake. I love baking and love the look on people's faces when they get sweets. The girls have had a rough week with police, students, long hours and all, and I'm growing to love them more and more like sisters each day. So I thought I would treat them. A grocery excursion and hour later, here was the outcome:

From toaster oven and foil pan (limited resources)

Add a touch of sweetened condensed skim milk

And Voila! Chocolate cake with a sweet drizzle.

Funny story is Lauren had skipped dinner and had a DQ blizzard on the way home, and then I fed her cake. Haha. As her famous motto says, "I can resist anything but temptation."

And that concludes a rather marvelous and quick day.