Phil and Red's Excellent Adventure

When there is no more room in Hell, the Dead will walk the Earth.

Classes today were interesting. I will give you the skinnies, the facts, the low down, the down low....no doubt. I had three classes this morning. I had Coco's 4th Grade class and it went really well. Kids were well behaved and everything. Then I had Lucy's 3rd Grade and she was absent from class due to her sitting in on Ivy's open lesson. The kids were terrible. They were just not paying attention. I did the whole lesson, but I think maybe 30% of the class was following along and actually participating. My throat was sore by the end of the class. I then had another one of Coco's 4th grade classes after that. This went surprisingly well. Coco was going to be absent from class due to the Open Class by Ivy and she accompanied me to the beginning of class to warn the kids. The kid that I literally dragged to the Headmaster's Office last week was in this class and she wanted to warn him to be on his best behavior. I told her to tell him, "If you get out of your seat once, Phil will take you to the headmaster." I added, "Don't make me destroy you." It worked. The kid payed attention throughout class and was very well behaved. Awesome. Those 3rd graders were the worst of today. Punks.
During lunch period i took care of some things like laundry. I needed to do laundry!
During the afternoon classes, I just had two more 3rd grade classes and these went pretty well. The teacher, Mavis, who was out for a couple months because she gave birth is back and the first 3rd grade class is hers, so she accompanied me this time instead of Anna. I thought that meant Mavis would attend the second 3rd grade class. So, I asked Anna if she will miss me. It took me about 6 minutes to explain what I was asking her. She finally understood and laughed a little. Nothing kills a joke quicker than Chinese people. She then told me that its just the first class that Mavis will go to. Anna has the other one. Oh, ok. So you won't miss me.
As I said, these two classes went well. Mavis had never seen me teach, and the students in her class today were the best I have had in weeks. I was very surprised. They did everything I told them and got them today. In the 3rd grades I have been going over Jacket, Pants, Socks, and Skirt along with In, Out, Under, Between. So I have been doing little presentations with the kids. I have the kids stand on the table and I point to the article of clothing. Most of the time, none of the kids are wearing skirts, so I take a boy and grab a jacket and tie it around to make a skirt. The kids go nuts over this and they laugh so hard. It really gets them involved and interested. The second class I had with Anna, went pretty good as well. I got a boy up there with a skirt and then gave him one of those chinese fans. It was so hilarious.
Afterwards I headed out to the house to take care of some laundry before kindergarten. Its been really sunny and warm all day. Very gorgeous. I then got to Kindergarten and it was pretty nice. The 12 kids were loud as usual. I got them saying, "Where are you from? - I'm from China." "Where do you live? - I live in Xiaolan". Its kool. Then I also went over the seasons again. To help them remember i made hand motions for each season and played a contest. Its working.
After that I headed home. I canceled my chinese lesson cause it was a beautiful day and I really didn't feel like going to the lesson. So I stayed at home doing some things. I then went to practice.
Practice tonite was awesome! There was a larger group of people there practicing. Before practicing form work after my warmups, I fooled around with one kid trying to do handstands. So we were using the Pedestal ground pads to do running flips and handsprings. it ruled!
Then i worked on some Hong Quan with Old Sifu. After that, the kid I was doing flips and hand springs with grabbed a couple staffs and Old Sifu started showing us one of the staff forms he knows. It was great. I worked hard and learned alot. This is what I want everyday at practice, but I rarely ever get it. It took me about 10 minutes to get the name of the form out of them and it required about 5 people too. Basically the chinese name is "lop deem boon goon"/"liu dian ban gwen" which exactly translates to "6 Hour Half Staff. 6:30 Staff. ..................... Let me get this correct. The name for the form is 6:30 Staff?? what the hell is that? 6:30 staff? 6 hour 1/2 staff? Maybe Hexagonal Staff?
"No, 6:30 Staff"
.......whatever.
I totally rocked the form. Sifu kept shouting at me from across the studio to look forward at the target. I was all like, "I obviously can't do that if I have to watch to see what Old Sifu is doing next. Duh!"
I rode home very happy and very satisfied. Got to practice tomorrow.