So for us it's finals week here in China, and finals week looks about the same everywhere in the world. However, here in China it's a bit more complex for the following reasons:
1. I get a class list of Chinese characters only to submit my official grades. It's up to me to figure out how to make those Chinese characters correspond with the students in my class so that everyone gets the correct grade! This took me a long time yesterday, but I did it! Of course, this would not be so difficult if I could read Chinese, but I'm not that far along yet!
2. Plans cannot keep pace with changes. Apparently the government is requiring the students to take some big spoken Chinese test the next two days. Unfortunately, these are also the days of my exams, which I now have to reschedule (or make my class monitor reschedule) but get them in before my plans to leave next Thursday come into play.
3. Parties and Christmas! Because the semester starts later, it runs smack into Christmas, so in the same week I'm giving exams, I'm also preparing to go to various Christmas parties (in China remember party means MC'd performance). Even in China, I'm striving not to lose my focus on the Reason for this season.
However, I just looked back at my blog posts from my first finals week at Ben Davis, and remembered how stressful THAT week was. This week doesn't have anything on that week, and I don't even have to worry about breaking up fights!!
It has been wonderful this week to share the Christmas story with my students and have a chance to talk about the hope it brings with them.
