progress report time!

One of my favorite parts of sponsoring children through Holt (or any other organization for that matter) is getting the progress reports about each child. I love reading about how they've been doing and what they've been up to. Currently, we're sponsoring these two lovely kids, Zu Fen (Xu, left) and Yuan Fei (Luo, right):

Zu Fen is 7 now and Yuan Fei is 13.

Anyway, yesterday we received the progress report for Yuan Fei, and I wanted to share parts of it.

"Yuan Fei studies hard. He likes thinking independently. He is good at math. Last month, his school held the math contest. He won the first prize and won the honor for his class... He often discusses the methods of study with his classmates to make a greater progress in his studies. He is also willing to help the classmates who have difficulties in study. One day, one of his classmates asked him a math problem. He explained the problem to him patiently. Half an hour later, the student understood how to resolve the problem... He also likes playing badminton and ping-pong. In the school sports meeting, he won the second prize in ping-pong match."

Math and ping-ping... It just made me smile.

On a kind of related note, reading the progress reports with their not-always-idiomatic English (I have no clue if idiomatic is the proper word in this context... but I figure there's a 23% chance that it's correct) never fails to remind me of all of my engineering courses at ORU. I'll read the progress report and hear Dr. Liu, Dr. Zhang or Dr. Ma in my head.

...and every time I read or hear or think about toes, I immediately hear Dr. Ma saying, "Foot fingers, not many have 11 or 12." Ah, so many non-engineering lessons learned from my asian professors. They still make me laugh.

Alright, that's all I wanted to mention. Jason has been meaning to blog but has not yet gotten around to it this week. Oh, he's started playing his guitar again, which is happy for me. My first distinct memory I have of Jason (the Honors forums aside) is of him and George playing guitar together in the fish bowl (which I just mis-typed as 'bowel,' which would not be accurate since neither Jason or George was/is Jonah...). It was a neat night. Guitar and Jason just go together, so I'm glad he's finding some time to fit it back in to everyday life.

Last bit: I've decided to take my transcription final Monday and Tuesday. Fingers crossed.

This is a completely unrelated picture. I just find him adorable. Oh, and I would love to own that swing.