Christmas is comming

In class today I did my last 4 lessons on “What is important?” This is a great lesson because all I have to do is the first 5 minutes of the lesson and then let the students fight it out. It’s great because I almost have to drag them off the stage at the end.

And it always goes into the break. One of the students said “very happy today” when she ran outside to do morning exercise. *smile*

I am in the middle of re-capturing all the video we have shot and I am finally going to cut it together. So soon you can see some of the things we have seen. It’s just going to take about 3 hours to capture again. I am going to enjoy the cutting. In fact, I have been too lazy and should have done it a long time ago.

This afternoon I got the students to choose a Christmas song to sing. From
“Rudolf the red-nosed reindeer”, “The 12 days of Christmas” and John Lennon’s “Happy Christmas” I am happy to say they chose the latter. I don’t dislike Christmas songs, but I think it’s probably this century’s best song, and a good song to show them the spirit of Christmas. It is also easy to sing, and they can understand the lyrics.

Nothing hard about them at all:
So this is Christmas, And what have you done, Another year over, And a new one just begun, And so this is Christmas, I hope you have fun, The near and the dear one, The old and the young A very merry Christmas, And a happy New Year, Let's hope it's a good one, Without any fear And so this is Christmas, For weak and for strong, For rich and the poor ones, The world is so wrong, And so happy Christmas, For black and for white, For yellow and red ones Let's stop all the fight, War is over over, If you want it, war is over, Now...

So it should go well this week. I also told them a few things about Christmas in Aus. Like my favourite thing was putting up the Christmas tree and how I would always insist on being the one to do it. And how much I loved it and asked every year in November but always had to wait until December.

I also told them the story of the Sega Master system. When we were kids we begged and begged but Mum said that she wouldn’t get one as it would rot our brains. We wanted one SOOOO much, but NO was the stern reply. After the morning’s ripping, where there was no game system to be uncovered, we came to the end, but we had missed one… box… wrapped not in paper, but in black plastic. It was “To John and Helen From Santa.” We knew without opening it. It was a great surprise! How wonderful. We had such a great time with it over the next few years. The greatest Christmas present, and also a really good surprise. And of course, it wasn’t Santa – but Mum being clever and sneaky.

I sometimes wonder how mum did all of the sneaking around. We were always with her when she went shopping (single parent who was a teacher at the same school as us) and we never suspected a thing. Mothers are great.

Brad’s sister is now in Canada. She’s seen the Niagara Falls in the winter time and the photos are SO cool. No snow here, but thank god because it’s cold enough for me.

Only 2 weeks of work to go! Then 2 weeks holiday, then 10 days of camp and then MOVING to Wenzhou. So excited.

You can see the Christmas tree isn't big, but I made some of the decorations myself (something I havn't had to do before) and I think it's got a cute Aussie feel to it. There are no Candy Canes to be found, but it still looks passable