Lost Boys

This blog definitely has its name for a reason. Lately i feel like my life is becoming a complete disaster, due to school and work. I am currently working 2 jobs. Ok will the second one is just a little one. I am teaching Cantonese to the little mishes at the MTC 5 days a week. And I now teach at a Mandarin preschool every Monday and Wednesday from 10:30 to 12. So not even a big deal. But its my first job at a real legit SCHOOL!! I can't tell you how grown up that makes me feel!!! I am also taking a mandarin class in the mornings, and a Mandarin Teaching class in the afternoons. So much Chinese in my life right now!!! And sometimes its hard to switch between the two languages. Today I got a new batch of missionaries and we have this new thing where we ONLY speak to them in the language for the first few days. Its really hard but really fun! I carry a white board around with me and write the romanization/english meanings on it while I speak to them. Today we had them introduce themselves and tell about their family, where they are from, and their hobbies. They learned how to say all of that in less than 2 hours!!! It was really amazing and let me say that I feel privileged to work there. Those missionaries are so precious and work so hard. It makes me love being a teacher, seeing how they push themselves. And today we got 12 new ones!!! It was crazy but I loved the energy that was in the classroom and all of their testimonies were things like "I know I want to be here and I can't wait to go and do the Lord's work". Man missionaries like this make me just love my job. Here is a little picture that my last missionaries drew me when they left. I'm the one on the far right! Its hard to let go of your students after 3 months. They promised me they would return with honor :)

Well today at the Mandarin preschool we had a grand ole time playing red light green light outside! The weather was great and it was fun to watch those little guys run around and just be innocent fun loving kids. They sometimes even hold my hand while we are playing! PRESH! But once we got back to the classroom I noticed that 3 of my favorite little boys were missing......and I asked the other teacher and she was like "they were here today!?" Ummm yeah.

So off I went on my hunt to look for the lost boys. I checked the bathrooms. I checked the halls. I went outside and saw nothing but a huge school like field with playground and moms off in the distance playing with their kids. I wondered if maybe their moms had picked them up early? But then that didn't seem like a very feasable option either. You can probably imagine the panic that was starting to go through my mind at this point. I started hunting around the grounds when finally I heard some squeaky little voices up in a big elm tree and there they were, hiding out thinking they were pretty clever. And in the preschool we only speak Mandarin to the kids but I went all MOM on their butts and just blurted out "YOU BOYS GET DOWN HERE NOW! YOU ARE IN BIG TROUBLE!!" Obviously I was not this upset about it.....I mean boys will be boys :) But still, I wanted them to understand that they can't just run away like that! I mean what if I had never found them? what would the parents say? Well they followed me all the way around to the front of the school where I made them point out which cars belonged to their mothers, and I went up and talked to each one of them. And when I came back to the curb where the boys were sitting, i found them all bawling their eyes out! too afraid to aproach their mothers. OMG can you say ADORABLE?? I felt so guilty for being so hard on them though and hope they don't hate me next wednesday because I really love those little guys! I have to say, little kids are def growing on me.