Jump Ropes and Kung Fu Panda

Jump roping is a big deal for our students here. During every free moment the kids have, they are out in the quad, jumping rope. And it's not your typical "one child with a jump rope" or even "two children swinging a jump rope and one child jumping in the middle." Oh no. In China, the kids do "figure eight" jump rope, in which they all line up as two people turn the jump rope and then run into the swinging rope, jump and than run out, around the turner and then run back in and do the same thing. (It makes a giant figure eight shape). And they go FAST. It's very impressive.

Today, we had a school wide jump-rope competition, in which the best class of students competed against the Chinese teachers and of course, the Americans. All 20 of us went down an hour before to practice and try to figure out how it worked. I was a rope turner and after a couple of runs, it became clear that I needed to tell certain people when to run and when to jump. Most of the team got the method down by the time the competition started. ALL of the students and staff piled out into the quad and lined up around the three groups of teams, the whistle blew and we were off. Who ever had the most jumps in five minutes would win. We had 213. Not too bad, right? Well, in comparison, the Chinese teachers has 378 and the team of students had over 500.

Jump rope.  It's the cat's pajamas.

And on another note, I finally got a VPN for the internet and can upload videos on youtube. So, please enjoy the absolute utter cuteness of my first period kids as we sing and dance to their favorite song.