Bikes, Trikes, and a clever little joke that I'm sure you haven't heard before (is this title too long?)

It has been a while since the last post. Let me get you caught up to speed: Jenny and I have both been doing some college courses. Jenny has been doing Biology I, I have been doing College Writing I, and we have both been doing Psychology and Intro to Algebra (a.k.a. high school math) together. Three classes for the both of us.

Jenny has been working about twenty hours per week, watching the kids, and doing these classes all summer. Needless to say, she has been a busy little bee.

I have been doing those three classes and working my fitness consulting business full-time from home, which is going well. I'm waiting to hear back from the Minnetonka School District to see if I can get some more work there this coming school year. I'm also planning on getting a job for the weekends to get us back in the swing of things financially speaking.

The boys have been growing up quickly. Their favorite thing to do is ride their bikes/trikes outside. My favorite thing for them to do is play catch with me in the backyard, but they are not the biggest fans. (Why not?!)

Liam got a new tricycle today and he's been learning how to pedal (not peddle, which is to sell something that was stolen).

Yes, that is duct tape on his feet. He kept taking them off so I thought this was a clever way to help him figure it out. He did a pretty good job.

Allow me to share one of Liam's most recent jokes. I would categorize it as a classic "knock-knock" joke. If you choose not to allow me and are using a PC, feel free to hold ALT and press F4 or hold CTRL and press Q. If you are a Mac user, that's Command + W or Command + Q. For those of you who still have their internet open: Ahem... check check one two one two. Okay, here goes:

Liam: "Knock, knock"

Me: (or you, if that helps) "Who's there?"

Liam: "Levi"

Me/You: "Levi who?"

Liam: "Levi who?" (At this point Levi and Liam laugh uproariously.)

Feel free to share that one with as many people as you want as long as you give credit to my two year old.

Until next time!

Jeremy, Jenny, Levi, & Liam

Summer Courses & Chimpanzees

When I came back from work, Jenny had the whole upstairs all cleaned up and tidy for me. She's an amazing wife. :)

We immediately went to our college to buy some of the textbooks we'll be needing for our classes. This coming summer, Jenny and I are taking classes at North Hennepin Community College. Jenny and I have two classes in common: Introduction to Algebra (we've forgotten it since high school, which is crazy because I use Algebra ALL the time. sarcasm) and Psychology. I have a class on my own which is the Freshman Writing class and Jenny will be taking a Biology class. We're very excited to learn and get one step closer to getting the degrees we need to pursue the jobs we are passionate about.

When we got home, our family pretended to be chimpanzees, fighting and climbing on each other. Then Levi started making zebra noises which was out of place, but funny.

We had some pizza for dinner and ended the night with a solid workout.

11/25/2011

It is great to have Friday off. I feel that I don't get much time with the boys so a morning with them outside the usual is fun. We played with some cars before breakfast.

When we finished eating, I went upstairs. Just me and the boys. All alone, I thought it'd be a great time to re-decorate the apartment. Thus:

Now, I can hear all the gasps yet, faintly, I can also hear the sound of applause. See the chair below? Useless! Goodbye sitting! You've been overtaken by your counterpart, standing! See how the height is just perfect for me? I know my wife is going to hate LOVE this. But, in my defense, SHE'S the one who left me alone without supervision.

Now I have to figure out what to do with a few lamps and picture frames which were once lonely atop a couple of end tables...

The boys watched a bit of Cars 2. I finished reading The Great Gatsby as a part of my attempt at reading 100 Must-Read books for men.

The boys and I played a type of monster game (I was the monster, who ate small nearby children. I just put a blanket over my head, which transforms me into a monster, for those of you who didn't know.) After that, we wrestled and threw pillows at each other. Then we ate.

Jenny got home from work at 1:00pm. Liam was napping and Levi was getting ready to go outside to play some baseball with his grandma. I cracked into Emotional Intelligence a bit, and found this interesting information from the subtitled section, "The Anatomy of Rage": When you get cut off by someone while driving down the road, do you jump to anger (or conclusions, rather) or do you try to assume the best in the situation i.e. "Perhaps he has an emergency?" If you allow yourself that initial bit of anger in the first place, it can get out of hand much quicker, but if you prevent and guard your mind from those initial angry thoughts, you can move on from the potential day-ruiner. The book quoted Benjamin Franklin as saying "Anger is never without a reason, but seldom a good one." Well said. They also mention in the book how perhaps the best way to stopping anger from rising is by stopping the negative thought process (or as they put it, "Undermine the convictions that are fueling anger in the first place). Tim Sanders seemed to echo this in his book I just finished reading.

After that, Jenny and I went on a date. We were going to go to see The Descendants but ended up seeing Hugo because the former movie was sold out when we got there. Hugo was pretty good! It was great to get some time with the wife.

Got home and played some video games with Aaron while Jenny slept. It was a good day!

Yes, I'd like to borrow 100 children's books, please.

After eating some Rhodes Caramel Rolls and watching some Word World, I hopped on Gmail Chat to talk to my brother (who is still in China). After that, we went to Plymouth Covenant Church to get our worship on.


The sermon was on King Uzziah and how his life was squandered by pride. Two phrases that may be a sign of pride are "I got this" and "I'm above the law". Pride can be so destructive; for the person and for those around him or her. 


After church we went home and watched some football while enjoying Solo's Pizza leftovers.


Jenny and Levi went to the library and got tons of books for the boys. Apparently you can rent 100 books at a time. Who has time for that, really? I also rented The Like Ability Factor by Tim Sanders, which I'm looking forward to. Tim Sanders is a really good author - I highly recommend his books to anyone out there reading this. My quote of the day from the book is:

"All in all, it became clear that unlikeable characteristics are a primary reason for failure, whereas improvements in likeability offer excellent explanations for breakthrough successes."

Also, did you know? (From the same book)

"A 2000 study by Yale University and the Center for Socialization and Development-Berlin concluded that 'people, unlike animals, gain success not by being aggressive but by being nice.'" 

Last, but not least... (From the same book)

"Easygoing, likeable people have one-half the divorce rate of the general population."

More football...


I played some Modern Warfare 3 with Aaron and his buddy, Josh.


After that, we had some dinner then the boys and I played some Super Mario Sluggers on the Wii. 


Levi cleaned up his room then the boys went to bed!


Jenny and I spent our time learning about Dumping Debt from Financial Peace University/Dave Ramsey. My truth from the day from Dave Ramsey is:

"When you use plastic instead of cash, you spend 12-18% more because spending cash hurts."

After that, Jenny and I watched a King of Queens marathon, which is a family favorite.


It was a good day. Tomorrow Jenny is working at 4am (at Caribou Coffee) and I'm heading to work at 6:30am.

1900

Just an update for those who are curious, I just hit my 1900 characters recognized mark. My goal is 2000 by the time we leave for the states. 100 to go! Here are my most current stats:

Characters Learned: 1901
Words Learned (These are combinations of the above 1900 characters): 3316

We’ll see how it goes!

Reminder: Tomorrow I leave for the orphanage. I’ll be back in three days.

Until next time,
Jeremy, Jenny, Levi, & Liam

March 16, 2011 Video Blog

Hello everyone! We have another video blog! Enjoy!

If for some reason you are seeing this message on Facebook or in your email and you can not see the video, you can see it on our blog by clicking here.
Until next time,
Jeremy, Jenny, Levi, & Liam

Homework

This is my homework for the weekend. Write up a paragraph with comparative grammar in it along with some of the new vocabulary from our newest lesson in my textbook.

In China, when a gift is given to someone, they don’t open it up until that person leaves. It’s cultural; they wait so that if they don’t like it, the gift-giver doesn’t feel bad. (In America, we typically rely on our acting skills to help the person not feel bad for a gift we already have or don’t like, right?) They feel that by doing it this way, they respect the person that gave the gift.

This short paragraph is about how I personally don’t like surprises. This probably has something to do with how I like to have everything planned out; I leave little room for unexpected scenarios. When it comes to opening gifts, I can get a bit nervous for that reason i.e. I don’t know what I’m about to get; the whole “surprise” factor. haha

Until next time,
Jeremy, Jenny, Levi, & Liam

March 9th 2011 Video Blog!

Enjoy!

Until next time,
Jeremy, Jenny, Levi, & Liam

Aaaaannnnd we’re back!

Hello everyone!

First off, we are glad to be back in Xi’an! Our time in Thailand was incredibly refreshing for us and we are so grateful that we were able to go. We would like to share all about it with you guys in person this fall when we come back for a bit!

One of the things we did in Thailand was switch our visas to allow me to return to school and pursue Chinese further. There is still much for me to learn, and I am very excited about it. This semester will start up in about a month. I’m also returning to my Chinese character studies; I will hope to progress much further than last year.

We’ll keep you all updated with everything in between!

Until next time,
Jeremy, Jenny, Levi, & Liam

How Some of Us Are Perceived

In the local kindergarten I teach at, I have some flashcards that go with the content I’m teaching so the students can get a visual idea of the content being taught. This week, I was teaching about different countries. Each flashcard had a country’s flag and a person from that country on the card. Here are the cards:

The disturbing part, I think, is that some people were probably asked, “Hey, who can draw up the American guy?” And some guy probably raised his hand and said something like, “I have tons of American friends; I know exactly what to do.”

Apparently most Americans wear sweatpants with collared shirts along with white shoes while donning a scraggly beard and a bandana. We’re a huge fan of gum as well, I guess (or maybe chewing tobacco).

Until next time,
Jeremy, Jenny, Levi, & Liam

You Can’t Leave

One thing I noticed while teaching kindergarteners here is that sometimes, when the children aren’t listening or participating, the teachers threaten them by saying, “If you don’t __________, you won’t be able to go home. You’ll have to sleep here at school and you won’t eat dinner.”

I’ve heard this many times from a few different teachers.

This is one example of how stressed out Chinese students can be, from 3 years old and on until they graduate. (The course we’re going to be teaching tackles this issue head on.)

Until next time,
Jeremy, Jenny, Levi, & Liam

To T.V. Repairmen Everywhere

Once we moved into our new place, the TV wasn’t working; Levi couldn’t watch his shows. He reminded us of this often.

The moment I got the TV working, Levi shouted, “Yay! The TV is working! Daddy, you’re such a good man!”

He’s a natural encourager.

Until next time,
Jeremy, Jenny, Levi, & Liam

A Whole Big Cake

Yesterday I was teaching 6 year olds how to say “I can _____.” I can speak English, I can dance, I can sing, etc.

I asked the question, “What can you do?” This one kid raises his hand and says, “I can a whole big cake.” I was super confused and I didn’t hear him very well and asked him to repeat it. He repeated the same sentence. “I can a whole big cake.” Clearly, he wasn’t grasping the concept of “can”.

Later, I was also teaching some vocabulary. Words like “ball”, “doll”, “bicycle”, etc. I showed a flashcard of a doll and asked what it was. The same kid raised his hand and said, “A whole big cake.”

I think that boy must have learned that new phrase and was just DYING to use it, so he did… As much as possible. It was pretty funny, but I had to go back and re-clarify a few things to make sure that mistake wasn’t made again.

Until next time,
Jeremy, Jenny, Levi, & Liam

See you later, Jessica!

So at a kindergarten I teach at, there is a Chinese teacher who teaches English there. She’s been there for a long time, and her name is Jessica.

Every time our classes end, they always say, “Goodbye, Jessica!” and no matter how many times I tell them, they never remember that my name is Jeremy.

Actually, they sing a song. It seems to be common at this kindergarten; they sing,

Goodbye (Jessica), goodbye (Jessica)
See you later, bye bye
Goodbye (Jessica), goodbye (Jessica)
See you later, bye bye

Until next time,
Jeremy, Jenny, Levi, & Liam

Certified!

Well we got some absolutely amazing news today: I’m an official certified teacher of the Life Education course with the Red Cross of China!

I’ll be teaching this course in universities and high schools in Xi’an, China. It’s volunteer work and each class happens once per week and lasts for a semester. Hopefully I can get the time and resources I need to teach this course at a few different universities each week.

The course covers many aspects of life. Each week is a different topic. The topics are: Foundations for Successful Living (Holistic Wellness), Responsibility, Time Management, Managing Stress, Me and My Money, Understanding Yourself, Am I Who Others Say I Am?, Character Building, Me and My Value System, Friends for Life, Resolving Conflicts, Relationship Workshop, Is it Love or Something Else?, Why True Love Waits, Preparing for Marriage.

I can’t wait to teach this to as many students as I can!

That’s all for now!

Feel free to write with any questions!

Until next time,
Jeremy, Jenny, Levi, & Liam

Happy Words, Sad Words

Teaching has been very good lately. This week the content I had to teach the five-year-olds included the words, “fat” and “ugly”. The included grammar was: “You are fat.” “He is ugly.”

Initially I’m dreading teaching these words and I was considering just not even teaching them because I knew as soon as I taught them, they’d go around calling everyone fat and ugly. In fact, here in China, it’s not unusual for someone to tell you that you are fat or that you are not attractive. The way I understand it, they are trying to encourage you and push you to do better (to lose weight, etc.) The problem though is that I feel that the more this is done, the more irreversible the damage is. The more you tell someone how fat they are, the less likely they are to do anything about it.

After considering a bunch of factors, I instead took some other content which included “happy”, “sad”, “pretty”, “handsome”, and “thin” and taught the children how certain words are “happy words” and certain words are “sad words”.

Here’s an example:

Me: “Can we tell someone, ‘you are fat’ or ‘you are ugly’?”
Children: “Noooooo!”
Me: “That’s right; Those are ‘sad words’. Can we tell someone, ‘you are handsome’ or ‘you are pretty’?”
Children: “Yes!”
Me: “That’s right! Those are ‘happy words'!”

I then had the children go around and tell their neighbor to their left that they are handsome or pretty (based on that child’s gender) and then had them say the same to the child to their right. You should have seen their faces! It’s such an awesome sight to watch a kid tug on another kid’s shirt, tell them they are handsome, then watch that boy’s face smile. I’m very glad these kids get to know that they are pretty and handsome.

(On a side note: Unlike America, in China it’s not uncommon at all for a man to tell another man that he is handsome. It happens all the time. The awkward part is when there are two of you standing there, and they only tell one of you that you are handsome. Worse yet, sometimes they’ll just say, “He’s more handsome than you are.”) That’s the kind of thing I’m trying to combat with this teaching.

Over 40 five-year-olds heard this teaching, and I hope they’ll all remember it for the rest of their lives. Happy words, sad words, and an encouraging reminder that each and every one of them is handsome/pretty.

Until next time,
Jeremy, Jenny, Levi, & Liam

First day of school!

Today was Levi’s first day of school!

 

Jenny put up decorations and made him a cute crown and gave us all name plates at our spots for breakfast.

We had some pancakes, some eggs, and Levi got some pink milk (one of his favorites). After breakfast, we brought him outside for some pictures and then sent him off to school!

After two hours, Jenny picked him up and I stayed back with little Liam who was still sleeping.

 

Levi had such a blast! They taught him how to do arts and crafts, they read him a story, and Levi played a little soccer as well! He was super tuckered out and asked to go down for a nap after his lunch. The teacher said he did great (no tears, no problems) and that he learned fast. We are so grateful for this little school and we are very glad he’s such a good little guy.

 

Until next time,

Jeremy, Jenny, Levi, & Liam

Jenny’s 24th birthday

So because we were busy making Levi’s birthday video, we didn’t get a chance to talk about Jenny’s birthday! We’ll rewind a few days and tell you about it now.

 

We have a helper that comes and watches our kids and teaches them Chinese. We’ve had a helper that has come for almost half a year now, and we really trust her with our kids so we let her watch them while we went out to have a nice breakfast at Starbucks. Luckily for me, it’s next-door to a McDonald’s, so I snagged some breakfast there and we sat in Starbucks enjoying each other’s company.

 

We came home and spent time with our kids and then in when dinner time came around, we went on a double-date with our friends and got some nice Italian food. (Pizza)

 

Tomorrow is a big day for us because Levi is going to be starting his FIRST day of preschool! We can’t wait and we’ll tell you all how that went when we get a chance.

 

In other news, the school semester has started up once again! I started today off teaching 3rd grade students. I had only two classes. I will return there tomorrow and next week I start teaching at the kindergarten. Can’t wait! So many kids, so much craziness, so little time.

 

Until next time,

Jeremy, Jenny, Levi, & Liam

1.1k

I hit my 1100 characters learned mark! Here are my latest stats:

 

Totals as of Sunday, 29 August 2010:

Days Studied: 216

Time Spent: 105.0 hours

Retention: 88.1% (This stat shows that if I were to take a test on all the characters I’ve learned so far, I’d get an 88% on that test.)

Written Characters: 1100

 

Totals for August:

Hours Studied: 17

Minutes per day: 33

Characters (able to write): +128

Characters (able to define): +168

Words/Character Combinations (able to write): +200

Words/Character Combinations (able to define): +168

 

Until next time,

Jeremy, Jenny, Levi, & Liam

Nerf Guns

Levi and I took on the Failla Boys (father & son) on at some Nerf Gun wars.

It was awesome. Levi and I had a little fort on one side of the Failla’s apartment while the Failla boys took the other side and it was an all-out battle to the bitter end! Most of the time, Levi didn’t take cover, and took a lot of free shots from our enemies since he didn’t quite catch the concept of hiding and avoiding gunfire. He would just stand up (way out in the open) and load his gun, slowly but surely. As soon and he got them loaded up, he’d immediately fire one off in some random direction, then start the process over again. He would get nailed in the head and just keep loading as if he was all alone in this world; just him and his gun. Fun times!

 

Our summer is coming to a close soon. I will be starting up work again and once we figure out my work schedule, Jenny is really hoping to volunteer her time on a weekly basis at a nearby center for foster children. While there, she will be around to hold the little babies and play with them and help in any other way she can.

 

Until next time!

Jeremy, Jenny, Levi, & Liam