English Center Activity

March 19, 2009

Hi!

I wrote recently, but I just had to share our great afternoon experience with you!

As we have mentioned before, we are helping our students improve the pre-existing English Center at our school, using the positive experience we had in the Book Nook from Chengxian, our previous school. The school's English Center is a pre-existing room, but when we got here it was a little dirty, the books were all in a mess and many were just much too difficult, and very few students came to the room.

Now the students are very excited because there is now an "English Only" rule, a wall has been painted purple and there are new curtains (thanks to the school), we have organized the books and gotten many new ones that are a great level (thanks to our hometown churches, including Concordia in Fertile and Svenska kyrkan in Dala-Järna), and now we have started with magazines.

Students LOVE magazines especially, all kinds, so today Tomas and I went to the market and bought a small bookshelf for the English Center, and we brought up a lot of magazines. We had advertised that today we would be in the English Center to help students with reading questions, and we were very excited when over 70 students came! The students are bursting with excitement over the books, more comfortable atmosphere, and especially, the magazines. Our students are just so happy to spend any time with us, and they are very sweet.

I just wanted to share this happy experience with you, to thank you for all of your previous support, and to say that if you want to support the English Center, it is easy: even just sending some magazines in an envelope is GREATLY appreciated by the students! (they love all kinds, such as sports, fashion, home, etc). Books are great of course too, especially young adult books. (even used books are okay!) Shipping is expensive, but if you send just a few things in an envelope, the cost is low, but several shipments add up quickly!

Our address label, if you want to send anything, can be found on our web page: http://china.e455.se (on "Contact us" and then "Address labels.")

Thanks, and please keep in touch!
love
Rachel