Middle School Christmas Concert 2020 (Your connection has been restored)

After some technical delays, I would like share with you a couple of remarkable performances from Christmas morning 2020...at school.  To Soleil's chagrin, we did not get this day as a holiday, much less 2 weeks of vacation.  However, the whole school attended a morning show led by the school principal in a wizard's robes and his administration team dressed as Santas.  There were some public service announcements about recycling and health during the "winter" season, but largely it was a chance to share some of the student talents and celebrate the joy of Christmas.  It worked for me, I hope you feel it too, despite the fact that we're nearer to Easter by now. 

Donxing Middle School Orchestra!

Our principal and his bearded associates.

The crowd awaits the prize winning answer....

and the winner is.... Justin!

Congratulations!  Here's every 7th grade boy's dream --- an extra large bag of tissues!  '

(There was also a significant amount of candy shared generously throughout the day)

 And to close the show, the Dongxing Drumline.  Yes, these are middle schoolers as well.  Now listen.

Mid-Term Testing, Holidays, New Job and EARTHQUAKES!

A couple of weeks ago on Thursday and Friday we had our second round of mid-term testing. Last time, I had only been going to Dong Xing Jr. High for 3 weeks so I only took the english and math tests. The math one was difficult because I wasn't familiar with the vocabulary terms in Chinese yet. This time I'm giving myself a challenge and I have decided to take the science test as well as English and Math. I asked for extra time to complete the math and science tests because my main problem is that I read Chinese much slower, not that the content is too difficult. Therefore, I will be taking the science and math exams on Monday. I spent most of today and yesterday studying in the school library with the assistance of my parents and google translate. 😆 This time around I improved significantly on my math test and got a score above my initial goal in science. Yayyy! 🥳

This year for Thanksgiving our celebration consisted of a non-traditional semi-Chinese/Taiwanese meal including my mom's famous mashed potatoes! Mmmm. My dad made cranberry pumpkin cookies, and I made apple sauce. 

Speaking of holidays... I convinced my parents to get us a Christmas tree! We bought a plastic tree for the first time at Carrefour. It was NINETY-NINE DOLLARS!!! That's actually $3.50 USD. It's a little dinky tree that reminds me of the Charlie Brown Christmas tree. At church to get into the Christmas spirit, we decorated gingerbread cookies. Mine was very tasty. 😋

Several weeks ago I started a new job! My dad's colleague asked me to come to her house and play with her kids in once a week in english as a sort of tutor. She has two sweet boys who are about 3 and 5 years old. We play with play-dough, sing english songs, and I read english books to them. 

At our church my mom is teaching an english class to the kids and I am her TA. We sing songs and read books. Last week the theme was "Animals" so we read a popular book called "Click Clack Moo: Cows That Type". I loved this book as a kid, and I still do!

A few minutes ago we had an exciting event happen... AN EARTHQUAKE!! This is the second earthquake that has happened since we got here in September, but this one was much larger by comparison. It felt like a giant pulled the building out of the ground and shook it around. 

This picture has nothing to do with the rest of the blog. I just like it. It was taken in front of the Zhubei (竹北) public library.

Ok I have lots of homework to complete now. 👋

~Soleil Huang-Dale