Happy Teacher's Day!

Since my last entry unleashed my negative side, I’d like to follow it up on a more positive note.
September 10th in China is Teacher’s Day. Usually, there is some sort of teacher’s banquet involved, which most foreign teacher’s in our program dread because it is awkward sitting at a table with your fellow co-workers, whom you only met a few days earlier, while they repeatedly toast you shouting “ganbei” or “bottoms up” trying to get you drunk and getting drunk themselves (It’s the unofficial Chinese Olympic sport). My school, fortunately, held their banquet early, but from what I heard from my other foreign teacher friends, the banquets weren’t as bad as they expected (probably because they were drunk).
Banquets aside, I thoroughly enjoyed the other part of teacher’s day, which involved the students giving their teachers gifts. Although I have only been at my school for four days and have not begun to teach yet, I was still greeted at the gate by a line of adorable children with bouquets of flowers. As soon as I walked up, one of the little girls rushed up to me with her flowers and a huge grin on her face as she succeeded in giving the new foreign teacher her bouquet. All day students would burst into the teacher’s offices to hand them a variety of flowers from roses to little plastic and foam flowers. The brave ones would give me flowers too even though they did not know me yet. My favorite gift was a note attached to a little foam flower from a little girl whose English name is Susan.
The note read:

Happy Teacher’s Day Miss Lori!
My name is Susan.
I’m welcome to you come our school.
Our school student all happy
Because they listen to Lori is coming now!
I like you Lori!
Happy Teacher’s day!

Needless to say, my heart melted. In my last entry I complained about all the Chinese people staring at me all of the time, but I never get tired of the children staring at me. It just seems natural for children to stare. They are allowed to have an unguarded curiosity because they don’t judge people in the way that adults do. I love the various looks I have received from the children at my school—the opened-mouth stare, the shy giggle, the excited wave. My favorite was a little boy who kept peeking at me through my slightly opened office door, and then would run away giggling every time I looked up at him only to come back a minute later to do the same thing over and over.
Although I haven’t started teaching yet, I am so excited and thankful that I am teaching young children who are still excited to learn and who will love me just because I am their teacher.