Becoming Facilitators

Mia here. A bit of a delay in posting. Deep breath, here's a wordy-one on what we've been up to the last couple of weeks. I'll try to provide some entertainment along with the update.

A sweet moment by the river during our
scavenger hunt

We spent last week with our leaders and peers who trained us on various aspects of the total immersion program (T.I.P.) methodology, history, and schedule. I love that we also learned by doing. For example, one day was a game, activity and song exchange so we could learn fresh ideas from one another. Jojo and I got to share some of our youth group and camp games/songs. Thanks YMCA for the Milk song (this was pretty funny to make them do).

Jojo made a really cool, animated PowerPoint of Katy Perry's "Firework"; we both sang while Jojo played guitar. Turns out Ms. Perry's song very much reflects the spirit of our curriculum! T.I.P says: "Attack your limitations, build your confidence, commit yourself"...might as well say "Baby, you're a firework, come on show 'em what you're worth..." Who feels pumped up? I do!

We also very much enjoyed researching and giving presentations on various parts of Chinese culture. Jojo made another impressive PowerPoint about Feng Shui and I talked about cultural understandings of "face". My PPT was slightly less cool, but still pretty slick (if I do say so myself). We ended the first training week with "Survival Mandarin" and scavenger hunt in Beijing practicing what we absorbed. It also included some funny stuff like tasting stinky tofu and asking strangers if we could take pictures with them.

Jojo and I got the opportunity this week to work with Wouter, Director of Operations, to come up with social media strategy for recruiting summer volunteer facilitators. Summer is T.I.P's busiest season with up to 500 students per month. I really enjoyed this process; here's what Jojo and I worked on respectively: Instagram-jojo & Pinterest-mia. Special shout out to my social media-savvy friends, Dellany and Erika, who showed me the power of a good tweet...hopefully I'll be able to embody your special abilities when our new website launches and we're tweeting & hashtagging up a storm. Side note: I didn't realize I'd get to be a part of such a cool side project along with teaching!

It's Friday night and I'm sitting in our common room watching speed skating on using a projector feeling tired & sore, but satisfied. Our afternoon involved getting our class assignments and then cleaning/setting up our rooms. We will each have our own cohort of about 30 students (English teachers) from Shandong Province. While overwhelming at first, I got really excited, almost giddy about making posters with permanent markers and setting up my desk/shelves with supplies. Nerd alert! I felt more like I was a kid playing teacher. #itwasawesomsauce (I'm already practicing my hashtag abilities, aren't you proud?!) While we worked, we also got a free Mandarin lesson while hanging out with one of our Chinese admin staff. #bonus  

I'll leave you with a panoramic view of each of our classrooms:

Class D - Daring, Delightful, Dazzling (---> scroll to the right, there I am working in my pajamas)

Class A - Amazing, Adventurous, AwesomeSauce (---> scroll to the right to find Naomi - one of Jojo's newest fans)

Missing all your warm hugs. Sending you lots of love! 
M & J