Title: Snow White and the 8 little men and a $5 massage.

We're well over half way now and are busy with our students. Our early morning class has grown from 3 kids to 8. We have 1 little fellow who didn't come with an English name so I put all our guy family member names on the board and let him choose. He is a rascal and so the name of Chris was fitting! (Just kidding Chris, you know we love you!)

He doesn't speak ANY English and I think he gets bored because he doesn't understand, so he gets a little wild. Mom runs around periodically and sprays their hands with hand sanitizer. Chris really likes that and he doesn't want to wait, so he thought the bottle that we spray the white board off with is the same stuff. I kept trying to explain that it wasn't. He has now used up the whole bottle on his hands, arms, face, ect. How were we to know that the white-board spray was like "gold" around here? Apparently there is not another drop of it anywhere in the building and we have no idea if we will get anymore. Our white-board will be pretty much useless now, but Chris is squeaky clean.

Our drama this week for the children is Snow White. I already mentioned that we have 8 kids. We had them make finger puppets and mom and I play the part of Snow White and the Wicked Stepmother. So naturally, we now have 8 dwarfs. Only I don't know how to say "dwarf" in Chinese so they are now "8 little men". I really don't know if they have a clue what we are saying but they sit around so nicely (except Chris) and hold up their little finger puppet men when we motion for them to do it. It's cute.

The older kids get into things when we play games, so that is now the strategy-games, games, games. We had them choose cards off the board and make sentences and we play bingo. I have to think of a game for today. We have 9 in that class now and unless we are gaming it-they are super quiet.

The twins have been up to the usual mischief. Their 3rd birthday is next month so we are teaching them "Happy Birthday". Other songs include "Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes" (that one gets used a lot here), "Two little Eyes", "A,B,C", "I like to Eat Apples and Bananas", and much to my dismay.....Mom keeps singing "Thank you very much, Thank you very much, that's the nicest thing that anyone's ever done for me" from Oliver Twist? Only that's all she knows so it gets sung over and over again. I love her.

So out of all of this singing, gaming, chasing, teaching, and translating, Mom and I agreed to go get a Chinese massage with our team. The other Omaha team had taken a group while they were here and had really enjoyed. They recommended it and we agreed when we found out it was about an hour long foot massage and it only cost $5. How could we pass that up? We walked in to the spa and were escorted up to the 6th floor by traditional Chinese costumed ladies. There were four of us and they took us to a room with 4 reclining chairs. It was calming and peaceful. Then the technicians ie..Chinese torture executioners came in. Well, I should clarify. Everyone else had nice soothing foot, back, and neck massages. For some reason, I was the lucky one who was assigned a guy who decided that contortion would benefit me. I'm not sure I can even describe what I went through. At one point my leg was being yanked around like a double-dutch jump rope and the next moment I have a knee in my back and I'm being bent backwards. Judging by the concerned looks on my fellow team members faces, I would say they were just hoping that they weren't the next victims. I soldiered through it and kept telling myself that "Hey, these people do this all the time-it's probably a technique that is centuries old and somehow good for me." But this morning, I am really sore and questioning the methods of Mister Woo.

Todays picture shows us BEFORE I had any clue of what was about to happen. Sorry-no AFTER picture. A DURING picture or video would have been entertaining-but I was focused on surviving, not snapping pictures.