Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego?

Actually, no one cares where Caremen is these days. The real question that people care about is where in the world is Amy and Hua? (I did always think that it was cool how Ms. Sadiego went on cool adventures into different countries doing her elusive thieving work until those gumshoes got her)

So as many of you know, Amy and I will be going to the other side of the world to China! We both are going through a program where we teach English at a school in China for 3 weeks. The school is called Minkai. It is located in the rural city in the Henan province. We will be teaching at a boarding school that is the middle of no where, well its somewhere...just there is nothing around it except some fields.

Amy and I will be running the English summer program at this school. Many of these students at MinKai have been "taught" English but their English is still very poor. The reason is that these students are taught English orally by Chinese teachers who were taught English by other Chinese teacher who learned their English by Chinese teachers who were taught by guess who-yep your right, other Chinese teachers. And all these Chinese teachers have horrible English. Have you talked to a Chinese person with a very heavy accent...well now imagine him teaching English to people and those people teaching other people English. Its bad news. A sentence such as "Where the bathroom?" suddenly becomes "the dog took a bath and I need a room." The The English language is butchered up horribly. So these student's English are product of butchered up English. We are going to be teaching these students correct English and stimulating conversations in English.

During our time teaching will be doing many activities with the student such as basic ESL instruction, vocabulary and rhyming games, many ice breakers, drama skits, communicative games, cultural learning, story telling, singing etc. As of now we are in the planning stages and have many ideas!

besides teaching there will be 2 days out of the week where we will be be participating in a program called cultural exchange where the Chinese students will show us an interesting aspect of their culture to Amy and I. We will then share something from our culture with them.

We both are excited for this adventure and want to not only to teach English but more importantly share God's love with these students. We want to develop good relationships with the students and have an impact on their lives. We are praying that God may just use us in great ways while we are in China and gives us many opportunities to share the Love of Christ with others.