Back in the swing of things...

We are all three back to school and enjoying being back into the swing of things. Our sweet little students remember us and our teacher friends both American and Chinese were excited for our return. Feels great to be so loved by the people we work with. We are very excited for this new semester. Grace is right back where she left off six weeks ago and absolutely loves her kindergarten teachers Nina, Joyce and Lisa. (two of them are in the pic at the top of the blog) She has the same teachers as she had last year because she is in a special class that has more instruction in English. The parents of the students pay more for that class because they want their child to be exposed to more English.... And with grace in the class it really encourages the children to use their English. With all of that being said the kids and their parents love having grace in the class and I think they feel like its money well spent since their kid is buddies with the American child at the school lol! Grace is understanding more and more mandarin and is learning so much! Her teachers can speak some English but 99 percent of the time they talk to grace in mandarin so that she can learn their language. She comes home and says things that we don't understand, pretty nuts! I never realized what an awesome opportunity this would be for Grace. We are so blessed to not only work at this wonderful school but that she can get a head start on her education at the same time. In other news we are now approved to start volunteering with the Baoan orphanage with their weekend outing program. Most of the children have never been on a trip outside of the orphanage. This program is designed to get them out into the "real world" and let them experience things that they wouldn't get to do otherwise. We will be aloud to take the child to the park, movies, shopping etc. Unfortunately we won't be able to post pictures of the child but we can write about them our blog. One more thing.... I have a bunch of new students this semester that dont have English names yet so I got to name them today LOL!!! So I named them after all of my girlfriends .... They are precious! They will actually keep these names (unless of course they hate their name) ... I will post pictures soon! Peace signs included ;) Not much else to report .... Thanks for all of your prayers. We pray for our family and friends daily and miss you all! Love, Jess