James-si

This is our friend James. He pronounces his name James-si, I guess because the ending is more difficult to say. He's become a part of our family. Although he's on his way to Shanghai at the moment, for the last 2 months either Dave or myself have helped him with his English every day. While Dave is taking Greek, I've worked with James. He lives on the floor above us and responded to a flyer Dave put up in our building saying we could help teach English. At that point, he only been in Canada 2 weeks and really didn't know any English at all. I think he's come a long way! And, I must admit, I've been brushing up on my Chinese quite a bit as well.

Probably one of the most helpful skills we have living in Vancouver is the ability to speak and understand Mandarin. It seems that about 70% of our condo building are people who've moved here from China. And Vancouver itself has a huge Asian population. Makes us feel right at home:) It's like living in Tianjin only with fresh air, no traffic problems, extremely clean streets, snow capped mountains and ocean in view and trendy neighborhoods everywhere. Ok, so not really like living in China, but it's great to be here and feel like we can be part of a Chinese community in our own building.

James LOVES Josie. I try to time naps and English class at the same time but sometimes that doesn't happen. When Jojo is awake, James is thrilled. She babbles away to him and chases him crawling around the apartment. I make him practice his English with her which generally consists of "come here Jucie" (he knows the word for juice and thinks that's what her name is). It's cute. He often brings gifts too. We've gotten all kinds of fresh fruit, as well as baby clothes and even clothes for Dave and me from the factory that James' family owns in China each day when James appears for class. Some of the stuff... well, lets just say Josie's clothes are adorable. Dave and mine... matching t-shirts with sequined robots on them are quite interesting:)

We will miss our daily routine with James the next couple of weeks while he's gone. I've actually really enjoyed coming up with lesson plans and ideas for class. Funny thing. I've never actually taught ESL before. I've taught plenty of English in the context of the art room or on trips with my students, but not for its own sake. It's been a learning curve for me too. But with a 10 year old boy, drills aren't the best strategy. We learn words and often play charades or "Katie says" to get the point across. Can you guess what James is doing here?

Hopefully by the time he starts 5th grade in the fall he'll have some idea of what is going on around him. Hopefully.