Time flies when you are having fun, and even when you're not

Another week has flown by. I can't believe how fast it is going. It has gotten alot cooler again (50's) and started raining, but after that hot spell I am welcoming it. I am really worried about when it is going to get hot, I hate hot. We are learning about the origin of Chinese names and the naming system in one of my classes and I was talking to Huangjie about it and her family still goes by the ancient system that not alot of people use anymore. It is where your middle name is your "generation name" or bei, so everyone that is in the same generation will have the same name. In order to tell when you meet someone if they are in a higher bei than you (and thus you need to show them due respect) the bei's follow a poem or story that is different for each family. Huangjie's dad wrote the family history down in a book a few years ago (all by hand with a brush, old style) to revive it because people stopped keeping records during the Cultural Revolution in case you had bad blood in your family. Huangjie gave me the book her dad wrote to look at and she told me that he would also write me a character of my choosing if I want (as a sort of wall hanging). I thought about it for awhile and when I went out to hot pot again with Huangjie and two other students we swim with on Wednesday I told her that I had chosen 力量 li liang, which means strength. Huangjie thought this was a good choice. Her dad will even teach me how to write calligraphy if we can find time.
I played rugby again on Tuesday and Thursday. On the Thursday the pitch was slippery because of the rain and I got a big, ugly Astroturf burn. And this Astroturf is the dirtiest yucky Astroturf you could ever imagine, so even though I tried to clean it out as best I could and have been trying to take care of it, it is still really yucky.
Today, Friday, I also went out to teach again. I thought I was having 1st graders because that is what they told me last time, but I got there and it turns out I had 5th and 6th graders again (all new classes though). But I adapted and it was a lot of fun. I decided to do an Easter class so we reviewed animals and colors that have to do with spring time and then we played "springtime Bingo." I had made all the Bingo cards by hand with the help of my wonderful roommate Laura (who is a saint for helping me and I need to buy her a present). I took us all the way through "2001: A Space Odyssey" and "The Brain that Wouldn't Die" (a horribly funny sci-fi flick) to finish them. But it was worth it. The game worked really well and it was alot of fun.