Kindergarten...

This week we were asked by some local friends to come and visit the kindergarten where they work. They told us that we'd spend about 30 minutes playing with about 40 kids around the age of 5 & 6. Sounded like fun...and we didn't have anything else to do this Saturday morning, so we agreed.

Since we're 10 months into our time here, you'd think we would have figured out by now that things don't always go quite as they say it will.

On the hottest day so far this summer we woke up bright and early to meet our teammate and her 5 year old boy for a McDonald's breakfast and then we were off to the kindergarten. When we pulled up to the place we were a little shocked to see a huge crowd of about 200 people gathered around a "staged" area watching the children perform dances & plays. Imagine a big Parent's Night or whatever at a kindergarten school and you've got approximately the event that we attended this morning.

This girl (I think she was a teacher) was performing when we arrived...and we felt so bad because not a soul was watching her when we showed up. This kindergarten is on the outskirts of our city and I'd be willing to bet that not a person there has ever seen a foreigner in person. But she did good performing her traditional Chinese dance...

The children were so cute and extremely excited about their performances and the activities for the day. During some of the performances I got a chance to step inside one of the classrooms to take a peek at the kids preparing for the next event...

And then the ladies who were escorting us informed us that it was our turn to speak. A little shocked and nervous as to what we were supposed to say in front of this big crowd, I asked her what we were supposed to talk about. She said (the chinese equivalent of) "Just whatever!" So we got up there, introduced the four of us, and then she asked us to teach the children something. Our wonderful teammate quickly came up with the great idea of teaching the kids Duck, Duck, Goose. So...we taught Duck, Duck, Goose and they loved it! And all the parents laughed and took pictures of their children playing Duck, Duck, Goose with the adult foreigners.
The teachers insisted that the kids say Duck & Goose in English but somewhere along the way it actually became Goat instead of Goose, which you can hear in the video...but oh well! We were just glad that they caught on to the point of the game! This is us, changing the world one Duck, Duck, Goose game at a time:

We were pouring sweat after the game and a little ready to leave since the expected 30 minutes had turned into 2 hours but they insisted that we stay for one last performance that the "children put together for their foreign friends." So we stayed a little longer and got to watch these girls perform a traditional Chinese dance.

(notice the people up on the roof behind the school watching as well!)

They actually did some gymnastics too and it was pretty impressive to see them memorize all of that!

At the same time though, it reminded us of those little girls that perform cheerleading routines during the half-time of High School basketball games and they make you think..."hmmmm, why on earth would anyone let their little girl come out in little provocative outfits and perform suggestive dances?" This is why we cut the video when the "shaking" started going on. haha... just one of those culture things that apparently is prevalent in every society.

But they sure were cute in their pink outfits and gold spikey fingers .

By the end of the morning we were exhausted from all that Duck, Duck, Goose action, dripping in sweat, & ready to find some air conditioning...as were all of the children!