Joseph and Ruth in Class

As excited as I was to hang out with Joseph and Ruth in Beijing, Hangzhou, Shanghai and Suzhou the place I was most looking forward to them seeing was where I almost always am...SIAS. I was a little worried about the prospect of boring them to death by having them meet lots of people they don't know and more so by having them sit in several classes (in which I would teach the same lesson each time!). I addressed the latter concern by picking one class I wanted them to sit in on and then, except for one class that they came for the first few minutes of, they did their own thing while I was in class. Choosing which class I wanted them to come to was a very easy choice. Originally they planned on staying for the first hour, but being the warm and friendly group that they are, the class wooed them into staying the whole two hours :-) The majority of the class we played charades...with a twist.

First, I split the class into two teams. Each team then had to think of 15 adverbs and 15 action verbs for the other team to act out. The class really wanted Joseph and Ruth to join teams, so I assigned them a team to work with and they had a great time with their teammates. After the teams were finished one person from a team would come up and try to get his/her teammates to guess the adverb and action verb combo they were acting out. Joseph got a hard one when it was his turn to act: sadly smile! But he did a really good job of coming up with something. Ruth had to nonchalantly kick, which she also did with style :-)

After the lesson was over we had about 10 minutes to kill which the students really wanted to spent with singing. Joseph and I sang a couple verses of "Amazing Grace" together and then Ruth joined us for "Seek Ye First". Then the students returned the favor by singing a Chinese song. Hu Hua Teng capped off the class with a solo, which was great! We all really had a lot of fun, very special as you can imagine :-) Unfortunately at this point I don't have the pictures from this experience to share with you...I have to wait to get them from Ruth, who is currently en route home with Joseph. But when I do get them, I'll be sure to post them.