Today was &#33521;&#35821;&#22823;&#19990;&#30028; or Big English World day here at CRIS Elementary.  The students spent the last couple of months memorizing dozens of conversational lines for the six different stores that were up and running for the two hours between 9:00am and 11:00am.  Over the past week, each class went to the fourth grade bank on a specified day at playtime to change their &#20154;&#27665;&#24065; (renminbi) into "CRIS dollars".  The first graders (woo!) were just their cute selves, customers at all of the stores and belting out their lines to buy all kinds of goodies.  The second graders, lead by Shirley and Roger, ran the CRIS #1 Hospital (<em>Is it serious, doctor?</em>).  The kids were so cute in their doctor and nurse uniforms; Shirley made sure that girls and boys were equally represented in all facets of the staff, if you know what I mean.  Patrick and Austin were in charge of security, holding hands and letting people in one-by-one by passing under their London Bridge.  Austin loved belting out "stand in line!" and Patrick was so proud of himself for being in charge.  The third graders ran the toy and book store, which sold out incredibly fast and turned to selling drinks.  Shirley's fifth graders ran a fruit and vegetable store with Kathy as &#32769;&#26495; (boss), while my fifth graders sold popcorn, Japanese nuts, &#26524;&#20923; (jellies) and candy at the Snack King.  The most popular shop by far was Cris's fast food restaurant, put on by Julie and her sixth graders.  They quickly ran out of french fries and nuggets, but sold hamburgers and ice cream until I left at 11am.

At 11am I went with Lawrence and a few other staff members to a high school in the TEDA Economic Development Area, where we were part of a recruiting fair for schools in that area.  It was interesting to see the young parents looking for a school, and I learned some new words.  We took a drive through the construction site of the new school too.  I really wish I could be around to see it completed; they plan to move in October or November of this year.  I hope they can put some pictures up on the web.

Oh, and I had some inspiration for stuff to do on this site:  it's turning into a full Movable Type in my mind.  I'll probably move the posts into a directory, and write several scripts to generate the index page, an archive page, generic pages, and a script to enable perma-links.

My internet usage this month will soon reach 300 RMB.  Yikes.