by Amy
Wow, with home schooling everyday and studying this crazy language many afternoons, I don't have much time to blog! This past week was a little extra busy as the kids did not go to kindergarten in the afternoon. We are actually changing kindergartens as one is opening in our apartment complex. Talk about convenient! If we walked to their old school, it would usually take about 20-25 min. to get there, maybe 5 min. inside and about 15-20 min. to walk home. I could stay home for about 1 hour, then it was time to head out the door to go pick them up. So, Brad and I would often trade taking or picking up. And, if one of us had to do both ways, we'd usually just sit in a KFC about 5 min. from the kindergarten and study. So, having them just across the parking lot will be great! It also will be nice because we've asked one of the teachers, who speaks English, to work on teaching our kids the local language. We'll see how that goes, but that's the goal! Also, since it's in a 2 bedroom apartment, they'll have about 15 kids & 4 teachers, not 30-40/class. So, hopefully it will be a good fit for our family!
Tomorrow morning we're off to that big city north of us. We're going with some of our other American friends from our town and will hang out for a few days together, then, we're picking Sue, Brad's mom, up at the airport! She decided to come visit us before her 1 year visa expired at the end of September. We're all super excited to see her! We'll take some time to shop and play in the big city before bring her back to our home. I actually will not be returning home with my family....Since Sue will be here to help Brad with the kids, I'm flying to another city to take a 3 day intensive language class. I'm super excited about this class! I feel like it will really help me communicate on a deeper level! So, I will be away from home for almost 2 weeks. I'm sure the blog entries will be slow coming.... Sorry!
Sunday, August 31, 2008
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Better to Race and Lose or Not to Race?
From Brad.
The answer to that question might be different depending on where you are from. This is a big difference between the Eastern and Western mindset. To be more specific: Liu Xiang, the Chinese 110m hurdles gold medalist in the 2004 Athens Olympics withdrew from the Beijing Olympics due to 'unbearable' pain. My question is, 'Was he really hurt?' This might seem like a strange question (or even impolite), but consider this.
When Chinese athletes (or students, workers, etc.) fail, they are inundated with an obscene amount of shame. For example when Wang Hao lost the ping pong gold medal match to a non-Chinese in 2004 his coach scolded him, “You made a lot of Chinese have their dreams broken.” An apoplectic Chinese media ripped him to shreds, demanding answers for his wilting under the stress. “I was under enormous pressure,” he mumbled then, an answer not nearly satisfactory for Chinese fans.
Again, when 7 year olds come home from school with average or low grades, their parents say similar things. When 13 year old gymnasts (oops, I mean 16 years old) fall down, they get to hear such motivational speeches for 4 years to 'help them succeed next time'. The thought is if you heap enough shame on the individual, then their motivation will be that much greater to succeed. Of course this is why suicide tends to be much higher in Asian countries.
Back to national hero Liu Xiang. Was he really hurt? Well, he was hurt last year, but had recovered and run many races recently. His times were good, but not nearly fast enough to compete with the world's elite. It was almost certain that if he ran, he would not win the race. Factor all this into the following stat (found on Yahoo), "Liu's dramatic withdrawal from the Olympics has cast a big shadow over a golden Games for hosts China. In a survey of more than a million Chinese carried out at the end of last year, the top Olympic dream was to witness Liu winning gold at the "Bird's Nest" stadium."
The Western mindset typically cares about the individual and maybe a small number of important people who are his/her biggest supporters. When he doesn't win, he feels the weight of letting himself down (and maybe them). The Eastern mindset knows he represents his family or in more high profile cases, his country. I can't say Liu Xiang was perfectly healthy and able to run, but given the above information, it wouldn't surprise me at all if he chose not to race in order to avoid 'letting down' 1.4 billion people.
The answer to that question might be different depending on where you are from. This is a big difference between the Eastern and Western mindset. To be more specific: Liu Xiang, the Chinese 110m hurdles gold medalist in the 2004 Athens Olympics withdrew from the Beijing Olympics due to 'unbearable' pain. My question is, 'Was he really hurt?' This might seem like a strange question (or even impolite), but consider this.
When Chinese athletes (or students, workers, etc.) fail, they are inundated with an obscene amount of shame. For example when Wang Hao lost the ping pong gold medal match to a non-Chinese in 2004 his coach scolded him, “You made a lot of Chinese have their dreams broken.” An apoplectic Chinese media ripped him to shreds, demanding answers for his wilting under the stress. “I was under enormous pressure,” he mumbled then, an answer not nearly satisfactory for Chinese fans.
Again, when 7 year olds come home from school with average or low grades, their parents say similar things. When 13 year old gymnasts (oops, I mean 16 years old) fall down, they get to hear such motivational speeches for 4 years to 'help them succeed next time'. The thought is if you heap enough shame on the individual, then their motivation will be that much greater to succeed. Of course this is why suicide tends to be much higher in Asian countries.
Back to national hero Liu Xiang. Was he really hurt? Well, he was hurt last year, but had recovered and run many races recently. His times were good, but not nearly fast enough to compete with the world's elite. It was almost certain that if he ran, he would not win the race. Factor all this into the following stat (found on Yahoo), "Liu's dramatic withdrawal from the Olympics has cast a big shadow over a golden Games for hosts China. In a survey of more than a million Chinese carried out at the end of last year, the top Olympic dream was to witness Liu winning gold at the "Bird's Nest" stadium."
The Western mindset typically cares about the individual and maybe a small number of important people who are his/her biggest supporters. When he doesn't win, he feels the weight of letting himself down (and maybe them). The Eastern mindset knows he represents his family or in more high profile cases, his country. I can't say Liu Xiang was perfectly healthy and able to run, but given the above information, it wouldn't surprise me at all if he chose not to race in order to avoid 'letting down' 1.4 billion people.
Friday, August 22, 2008
Fun with Flags -- Answers
by Amy
I'm sure you could hardly sleep at night, waiting for these answers.... Here they are:
E. good 'ol USA, made with our new paper cutter and glitter by us all.
K. Columbia - All thee kids were responsible for crumpling and gluing their own color pieces in the right place. 
M. Switzerland - Savannah made this flag her self by gluing cotton balls in place.
I hope you enjoyed seeing all our fun work. I'll post a pic of our "Olympic Wall" in a few days. I hope to figure out how to make metals, but I'm not sure that's going to happen before the games are over!
I'm sure you could hardly sleep at night, waiting for these answers.... Here they are:
A. Italy, made by the boys with popscicle sticks.
B. Japan, made with pipe cleaners by Savannah.
B. Japan, made with pipe cleaners by Savannah.
C. China, a collage of torn red papers by all of us.
D. Thailand, made by gluing yarn to make stripes, by us all.
E. good 'ol USA, made with our new paper cutter and glitter by us all.
F. France made with magnetics by Alex and Savannah. It didn't stay on our wall very long!
G. Netherlands by Peter. He used a bead-board thing Savannah has.
H. Greece. Savannah and I made this one by putting white tape on blue paper.
I. Australia made by all three of us. Savannah cut most of the stars and helped me and the boys glue the sequins in place.
J. Germany - each of the kids painted half of their stripe and folded it over to spread the paint to the other half.
K. Columbia - All thee kids were responsible for crumpling and gluing their own color pieces in the right place. 
M. Switzerland - Savannah made this flag her self by gluing cotton balls in place.
I hope you enjoyed seeing all our fun work. I'll post a pic of our "Olympic Wall" in a few days. I hope to figure out how to make metals, but I'm not sure that's going to happen before the games are over!
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Fun with Flags
by Amy
As we've been watching and "studying" the Olympics, the kids and I have made flags from different countries around the world. I selected countries for several reasons....first of all, I selected countries that are familiar to my kids -- where we live, where we've been, where we have friends living, etc. Secondly, I selected flags that they were seeing a lot as we watched the games. Thirdly, I wanted at least one flag from every Continent (except Antarctica). Finally, I selected flags based on how easy they would be to reproduce! Another goal I had was to exhaust my creative abilities (which wasn't hard to do) and come up with different ways to make each flag. (Thankfully, my ever-resourceful-friend Rachel stepped in and offered a few suggestions!) One has glitter, one used popsicle sticks, another used pipe cleaners. All are different! It was tons of fun for us all! All three kids participated in most of the flags, but a few were individual projects.
So, here's the quiz! How many of these flags to you recognize? The answers will be posted in a day or two.
As we've been watching and "studying" the Olympics, the kids and I have made flags from different countries around the world. I selected countries for several reasons....first of all, I selected countries that are familiar to my kids -- where we live, where we've been, where we have friends living, etc. Secondly, I selected flags that they were seeing a lot as we watched the games. Thirdly, I wanted at least one flag from every Continent (except Antarctica). Finally, I selected flags based on how easy they would be to reproduce! Another goal I had was to exhaust my creative abilities (which wasn't hard to do) and come up with different ways to make each flag. (Thankfully, my ever-resourceful-friend Rachel stepped in and offered a few suggestions!) One has glitter, one used popsicle sticks, another used pipe cleaners. All are different! It was tons of fun for us all! All three kids participated in most of the flags, but a few were individual projects.
So, here's the quiz! How many of these flags to you recognize? The answers will be posted in a day or two.
A.
B.
C. 
D.
E.
F. (that would be blue, white and red -- it's not a great pic.)
G.
H.
I.
J.
K. L. M.Saturday, August 16, 2008
Olympics Fun -- Part 2
by Amy
This past week has been full of Olympic fun in our house! About 2 weeks ago we called our landlord and asked her to get cable hooked up to our TV so we could watch the games. (Since it's her home, it's not appropriate for us to do make that call ourselves.) I'm so glad that we did! Granted, we don't understand most of what the commentators say, and they are primarily focusing on this country's athletes (not US teams), it's still fun! We have had a blast cheering on Phelps, watching basketball with our friends (who ended up spending the night after a late game), and explaining baseball to locals who have never understood it!
Last Friday, the day of opening ceremonies, I let our kids wave flags as they walked to school. Needless to say, they caused quiet a few smiles!
Pedo chose to use black sprinkles to make his black ring in the middle.
This past week has been full of Olympic fun in our house! About 2 weeks ago we called our landlord and asked her to get cable hooked up to our TV so we could watch the games. (Since it's her home, it's not appropriate for us to do make that call ourselves.) I'm so glad that we did! Granted, we don't understand most of what the commentators say, and they are primarily focusing on this country's athletes (not US teams), it's still fun! We have had a blast cheering on Phelps, watching basketball with our friends (who ended up spending the night after a late game), and explaining baseball to locals who have never understood it!Last Friday, the day of opening ceremonies, I let our kids wave flags as they walked to school. Needless to say, they caused quiet a few smiles!
Then, as we waited for the opening ceremonies to begin, we iced Olympic ring cookies. They all had showers before dinner, and clearly needed them again after icing and eating. :)
And here's the final product:
Pedo chose to use black sprinkles to make his black ring in the middle.
Although we did not get the American commentators explaining a lot of what we saw, we loved the opening ceremonies! We let the boys stay up until after 9pm watching, and Savannah got to stay up until after 10:30 -- she wanted to see the USA team enter. Thankfully the ceremonies were replayed several times the next day, so my kids got to see the lighting of the torch -- that was cool!
These last two weeks we have used 10 different methods to make 10 different countries' flags, as well as a few other fun things. Keep watching for a flag-trivia to be posted in the next few days! We still have 2 more flags to make.
And now for your viewing enjoyment, here's on last pic Brad snapped last night of our cute girl...
Friday, August 8, 2008
Olympics Fun -- Part 1
By Amy
I've always thought one of the biggest perks to home-schooling was having freedom -- freedom to school when you want to; freedom to school where you want to; and freedom to teach what you want! This week we have loved that freedom as we've had a "prepare for the Olympics" week -- next week will probably be "enjoy the Olympics" week.
I'll save the pics for later, but I'll share a few of the things we've done so far.... We put up a map of the world and have been making flags for a few different countries and learning where they are. Yesterday, I was asking Savannah why I had chosen these countries for us to make flags... China- that's where the Olympics are; Greece -- that's where the Olympics began; Thailand -- "Because we love Thailand." That's right, kiddo! (And it's a familiar place for my kids.) My goal is to come up with different ways to make each flag, instead of just having the kids color each one. So, our Chinese flag is made of a collage of a variety of red papers torn from a magazine and a few other things. We made the Thai flag by gluing yarn to a white piece of paper. (All three kids helped cut the yarn to the right length, but Savannah and I glued it down.)
Another fun things we did was talk about the mascots of the Beijing Olympics. They are 5 cartoon-type children that each represent different aspects of the games. The sentence, "Welcome to Beijing" is represented by 5 Chinese characters, so these 5 kids are each named one of those 5 characters. You can go to this website to learn more about them http://en.beijing2008.cn/spirit/beijing2008/graphic/n214068254.shtml
I think it's really interesting. We actually made up a song to help us remember them!
Today we discussed the Olympic rings, so we learned how they represent the 5 major continents and found/labeled them on our map. Then, we cut out 5 big rings and put them above our map. After that, we made some sugar cookies and cut them with biscuit cutters to make rings. Tonight, after dinner we'll decorate them and have them ready to eat at our "Olympic Party!" All week we've been talking about the opening ceremonies -- that start on August 8, 2008, at 8:00 --8/8/08 -- 8 is a 'lucky' number in China. So, we're going to let the kids stay up late to watch! I'm pretty excited!
Next week, I still have several flags that I want us to make, as well as Olympic torches, and maybe even the green olive branch crowns...we'll see. I also will have Savannah keep a tally of medals won by a few specific countries. I got most of my ideas from my friend Rachel and this website: http://www.activityvillage.co.uk. It has been tons of fun for us all!
Let the games begin!
I've always thought one of the biggest perks to home-schooling was having freedom -- freedom to school when you want to; freedom to school where you want to; and freedom to teach what you want! This week we have loved that freedom as we've had a "prepare for the Olympics" week -- next week will probably be "enjoy the Olympics" week.
I'll save the pics for later, but I'll share a few of the things we've done so far.... We put up a map of the world and have been making flags for a few different countries and learning where they are. Yesterday, I was asking Savannah why I had chosen these countries for us to make flags... China- that's where the Olympics are; Greece -- that's where the Olympics began; Thailand -- "Because we love Thailand." That's right, kiddo! (And it's a familiar place for my kids.) My goal is to come up with different ways to make each flag, instead of just having the kids color each one. So, our Chinese flag is made of a collage of a variety of red papers torn from a magazine and a few other things. We made the Thai flag by gluing yarn to a white piece of paper. (All three kids helped cut the yarn to the right length, but Savannah and I glued it down.)
Another fun things we did was talk about the mascots of the Beijing Olympics. They are 5 cartoon-type children that each represent different aspects of the games. The sentence, "Welcome to Beijing" is represented by 5 Chinese characters, so these 5 kids are each named one of those 5 characters. You can go to this website to learn more about them http://en.beijing2008.cn/spirit/beijing2008/graphic/n214068254.shtml
I think it's really interesting. We actually made up a song to help us remember them!
Today we discussed the Olympic rings, so we learned how they represent the 5 major continents and found/labeled them on our map. Then, we cut out 5 big rings and put them above our map. After that, we made some sugar cookies and cut them with biscuit cutters to make rings. Tonight, after dinner we'll decorate them and have them ready to eat at our "Olympic Party!" All week we've been talking about the opening ceremonies -- that start on August 8, 2008, at 8:00 --8/8/08 -- 8 is a 'lucky' number in China. So, we're going to let the kids stay up late to watch! I'm pretty excited!
Next week, I still have several flags that I want us to make, as well as Olympic torches, and maybe even the green olive branch crowns...we'll see. I also will have Savannah keep a tally of medals won by a few specific countries. I got most of my ideas from my friend Rachel and this website: http://www.activityvillage.co.uk. It has been tons of fun for us all!
Let the games begin!
Saturday, August 2, 2008
Morning Baskets
by Amy
My dad is an early riser...no I mean early riser! And, since he lives in a pretty big house with my sound-sleeping-mama, so he's not the quietest early riser you've ever met....
Well, ever since my parents left, LAST MARCH, my kids have been waking up early! (Thanks, Dad!) It all began when they heard Papa grinding coffee beans at 5:30am, and stumbling around in the kitchen, bathroom, and living room. When you know such a fun Papa's awake just on the other side of the door, it's hard to go back to sleep. So a new habit was formed! (I remember living in Louisville and all of my kids would sleep until 8 or 8:30am! -- Those were the days...) Since March, my kids -- especially my boys -- have been waking up about 6am! YIKES!! That's what time Brad gets up .... (He makes the coffee and brings me a fresh, hot cup to wake me! -- What a man!!) It was not uncommon for him to stumble out of bed and find a kid or two sitting on the couch, in the dark, waiting for him. ~ Craziness!
And since the kids are up early, it's hard for me and Brad to read and do the other things we like to do in the morning before the kids wake up. So, we came up with morning baskets. All three of my kids each have their own basket with a Kid's Bible and some quite activities that I change out weekly. So, when my kids wake up, they get their morning basket and play quietly and contently while Brad and I read, drink our coffee, and get ready for the day. There are many mornings that I don't even know what time my kids wake up.
These are a few things they have had in their baskets: puzzles, connect-the-dots coloring books (for Savannah), Color-wonder coloring books (for the boys), stickers and sticker books, Mr. Potato head farm, etc. And, the rule is, that when it's in the morning basket, they are not allowed to play with it during other parts of the day.
Now, that our kids are going to school every afternoon, nap time is from 12:30-2:00 in our house. Peter is rarely tired by 12:30 so doesn't usually sleep. (Alex loves to sleep and often asks to take a nap before lunch!) So, that has lead to them sleeping a little later in the mornings -- maybe 7am, but the Morning Baskets are still loved and used!
My dad is an early riser...no I mean early riser! And, since he lives in a pretty big house with my sound-sleeping-mama, so he's not the quietest early riser you've ever met....
Well, ever since my parents left, LAST MARCH, my kids have been waking up early! (Thanks, Dad!) It all began when they heard Papa grinding coffee beans at 5:30am, and stumbling around in the kitchen, bathroom, and living room. When you know such a fun Papa's awake just on the other side of the door, it's hard to go back to sleep. So a new habit was formed! (I remember living in Louisville and all of my kids would sleep until 8 or 8:30am! -- Those were the days...) Since March, my kids -- especially my boys -- have been waking up about 6am! YIKES!! That's what time Brad gets up .... (He makes the coffee and brings me a fresh, hot cup to wake me! -- What a man!!) It was not uncommon for him to stumble out of bed and find a kid or two sitting on the couch, in the dark, waiting for him. ~ Craziness!
And since the kids are up early, it's hard for me and Brad to read and do the other things we like to do in the morning before the kids wake up. So, we came up with morning baskets. All three of my kids each have their own basket with a Kid's Bible and some quite activities that I change out weekly. So, when my kids wake up, they get their morning basket and play quietly and contently while Brad and I read, drink our coffee, and get ready for the day. There are many mornings that I don't even know what time my kids wake up.
These are a few things they have had in their baskets: puzzles, connect-the-dots coloring books (for Savannah), Color-wonder coloring books (for the boys), stickers and sticker books, Mr. Potato head farm, etc. And, the rule is, that when it's in the morning basket, they are not allowed to play with it during other parts of the day.
Now, that our kids are going to school every afternoon, nap time is from 12:30-2:00 in our house. Peter is rarely tired by 12:30 so doesn't usually sleep. (Alex loves to sleep and often asks to take a nap before lunch!) So, that has lead to them sleeping a little later in the mornings -- maybe 7am, but the Morning Baskets are still loved and used!
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