Today we finished our third camp, but our first camp as a team. This camp had a bad start, but God in his mercy allowed us to finish the race with success. I had the class that had the lowest level in English. About seventy five percent of my students could not remember their English names or did not have on. After working with the students for about forty minutes half of them remembered their English names. I did get to name three or four students so that was very fun and by the end of this week they were use to their English name. The hard thing about picking names for the Chinese children is they need a name that came be pronounced easily. Then we run into the problem of eight Tinas and five Bills in a group of sixty kids. I did managed to think of not so common names to give to the children.
I spent a lot of time teaching the children in my class how to say "Hi," "How are you doing," "I am fine thank you," and "My name is ________." I spent about half my time teaching the children those very simple words. I also spent sometime covering family: boy, girl, son, daughter, dad, mom, etc. I also taught some very simple commands, but even that was over their head. Thankfully by the end of the camp they knew that when I said sit down they were suppose to sit down. They also knew when I said line up . With children so low in English there is a great language barrier, so when we manage to communicate with hand actions, English and Chinese we get very happy. I have really enjoyed working to communicate with the children it helps their English and I am learning just after words in Chinese.
We have been living at the school we are having the camp at. Living here has been a real adventure. There is no AC so we have become very grateful for the many fans they have in each room. We are sleeping on the floor which is not alot different from the little flat mattresses they give us every where else. King Car( the company that paid for us to come here) gave us three sleeping bags each so we have slept very well. Except for the fact that we keep waking up because some lovely dog is invading the school and the guard keeps chasing it out. We also had to wash all our laundry by hand up until about an hour ago. I didn't mind washing my cloths by had except for the fact that I just did not feel like they were getting clean enough. Morgan Sun(works for King car) just came by and bought us a washing machine so for the next week we will get to enjoy clean cloths. I am really praising the Lord. After teaching children all day I just don't feel like spending an hour washing five pieces of clothing.
You might as well guess what else Morgan Sun brought us. American food, or more correctly McDonald's. Even though we had spend alot of money just yesterday to travel to another city twenty minutes away to get McDonald's we welcomed the food with open arms.After eating rice all week it was great to have something else.
If I were to sum up how I am feeling in one sentence I would say, I am truly grateful God has put me out in the middle of Taiwan to learn to lean fully on Him.
Josephine Papp
