On Wednesday the whole school had outdoor activities. The fourth, fifth, and sixth graders went hiking and the first, second, and third graders (about six hundred students!) went for a picnic. I was told I could choose whichever activity, and although I was tempted to go for the hike, I decided to go with my own students. And I'm glad I did.
Apparently in past years students have made their own food at the picnic site, but this year--since the school has doubled in size--there just wasn't a good place to do this. The challenge, it was explained to me, was finding a place with clean water. The only places large enough and with clean enough water are too far away for the younger students to walk to.
Although the hiking took all day, our picnic was just in the afternoon. Which meant that I had two classes to teach in the morning. They were slightly painful because the students were so excited about the picnic that they weren't very good about listening to class. Outside of class their excitement was even more palpable as they prepared, filling their bags with all sorts of snacks (a whole pile of which I ended up with by the end of they day: at least twenty oranges, several apples, lollipops, a packaged sausage, a puffed rice treat, and other assorted candies).
I figured this would be a great opportunity to take pictures of my students. I hadn't yet had my camera out around them, anticipating the chaos that would ensue from two hundred students wanting their pictures taken. Said chaos did, in fact, ensue. But at least the students were spread out around the park a little bit so I was usually only mobbed by about twenty of them at a time. Here are some of the group pictures.
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| In front of the school, waiting in lines for instructions and the order to go! |
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| Seemingly endless line of students. |
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| Lined up at the entrance to the park. Each class had its own flag...not unlike a Chinese tourist group on the Princeton campus! |
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| "Move back, move back, move back!" |
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| Even some of the more mischievous boys asked me to take their pictures! |
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| Food! |
Wow the weather there looks so nice compared to here! Just based on the sunlight and the clothes it looks much warmer
ReplyDeleteIt's cold in the mornings and evenings--in the thirties or forties--but if the sun's out it warms up a lot midday, often into the sixties!
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