Hometowns & Visits

We recently found out that Shaling's 3rd grade teacher (her first ever teacher here in America), Mrs. Collins, is retiring at the end of this school year and moving to southern Illinois. She is returning to her hometown.
Last night, we were explaining this to Shaling, describing it as Mrs. Collins going to live where she lived as a little girl. As a testament to just how well she has adjusted to a new country, new language, new foods, new people, new family, and new culture in just over two years time, Shaling pointed at the ground and said in a sing-song voice, "I am going to stay right here. Right here in Springfield."
Brock and I both smiled and Brock gently said, "I remember a time when you were going to move to China."
She replied, "I'll visit China."
Brock informed her that she will needs lots of money. She told us that she has "fifty cents".
Of course, we giggled. But apparently she has a back-up plan. The next words that came out of her mouth were, "But if I have a rich boyfriend..."

Just Following Instructions...

Along with all of the other students, Shaling recently completed some standardized testing. The only difference is that she takes hers with the English Language Learner teacher instead of in the regular classroom, but it is the same test (and the instructions are in English).

On the math portion, there was a word problem that had to be solved, following which the students were to write a step-by-step paragraph explaining how they solved it. Shaling got done unusually quickly, so Mrs. Bivens gently asked her if she’d written down absolutely everything that she had done. So, Shaling sat back down. When all of the papers were eventually collected, Mrs. Bivens saw that Shaling had correctly solved the problem, but her paragraph was, “First, I solved the problem. Second, I circled the answer. Third, I waited ten minutes for everyone else. Fourth, I turned in my sheet.”

Haha…she cracks me up.

On an unrelated note, for those of you not on Facebook, we are so proud of Preston. He doesn’t get a lot of accolades at school, but apparently his teachers felt he demonstrated an exemplary amount of “Responsibility” in January, and responsibility was the January character trait at Rochester Junior High. Therefore, he and a handful of other students get to go out to lunch with the principal tomorrow. Way to go, Buddy!