Something I never got around to
explaining more of: Open Houses. You hear the words, I think of a
retailer showing a house to the public, getting to meet your new 5th grade
teacher, and now McDonald's. HESS is big about open houses because it's a
great way to recruit potential new students. Many branches hold the
events right at the school, it makes sense. My branch has a variety of
locations it chooses to put me on display. The primary one being
McDonald's. Yes, I must go to an extremely crowded, 3-story McDonald's,
and sing the rainbow song on Saturday afternoons. Not the highest point
in my life. And we wear these awesome hats!
This picture is from my first ever open house, almost a year ago.
Outside the MD's in YangMei.
Sometimes we sing a song about animals. I searched for
it on YouTube and found the exact HESS version that we have, and what do you
know... little Asian girls singing it! They probably came to my open
house, their dance moves are almost identical to the ones I do!
When we go to McDonald's I have a group
of 10-20 kids and teach them some vocabulary, a sentence pattern, song, play
games, and then I must "read" giant storyboards to them. I say
"read" because there are no words on the boards. There's an
outline of what the story is supposed to be that I can see before we get there,
but really I just memorize/make up a story to go along with all of the
pictures. One is about Lily Mouse and her battle to get dressed according
to the ever changing weather. The other is about Orville the sheep who wants
to build an airplane. Exciting stuff! I'm always the only
WHY-GORE-EN (foreigner) there, so even older people sometimes stop to watch,
and of course there's the tons of other people there just trying to eat in
peace.
The 2nd venue is the library in YangMei.
The best part about doing open houses here, is that they're on Sunday
morning. Yes, I am so lucky that sometimes I get to work every day of the
week! At least these ones are only once a month. I'm surprised they
still want me to do them, as the first one was after my friend, Dawn's,
birthday. I misplaced my phone, didn't wake up to an alarm... oh but good
thing the manager had Anthony's number as well so I could wake up to him
shaking me saying Grace was outside our building to pick me up! A lovely
experience that was. Now I know not to let things get too out of hand
when I need to go prance around in front of small children and their parents on
Sunday mornings. This location generally yields the largest amount of
kids, and their parents all sit in the room with us watching and encouraging
them not to be afraid of me.
And then of course very rarely do we
hold open house at the actual school. I think this is because my branch
is rather small, and it's more fun to put me on display publicly. These
open houses are on Wednesday nights, and the worst because the largest amount
of kids to ever show up was 4. The parents leave them there, so I must
entertain them for an hour, then once the parents return they talk to the
secretaries for awhile about prices and things. I run out of ideas, and
lately enthusiasm.
I had an open house yesterday, which
was Saturday, so that means McDonald's! While we were setting up one of
the secretaries that comes along to help asked me if I liked doing these
things. I said "not really, it makes me feel weird." She
thought that was pretty funny. I can only hope this may have been my last
one as my weeks of being Teacher Annika are coming to a close, and my mom will
arrive on Thursday and we'll be traveling on the weekends.
HESS is apparently a big advocate
tor McDonald's because not only do I perform open houses there, but this
past Wednesday I took my kindy kids on a field trip to a McDonald's. I'm
not even entirely sure why, the Theme is fun places to go, but they're learning
about the beach and post office, not fast food! The school ordered a
large batch of chicken nuggets and french fries and some tea so that each child
got to eat one nugget, about 5 fries, and a small dose of tea. Abe and I
both have small class, so we went together. While there he said to me,
"Well this is good, it's every kindergarten teacher's job to teach the
kids about the basic things in life, we're showing them great eating
habits!" It was an excellent time, I got paid to sit at McDonald's
for 2 hours and watch the kids eat.
Poor Jimmy was naughty and not allowed to eat any
McDonald's.. it made me so sad to see him sit there and watch the other kids :(
Hopefully he learned his lesson!
Yum, yum, they said.
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