Message from Mr. Rapice

Hello everyone from Bo-Ai !!!
You have all been so nice in writing to us and sharing things about your school and country. Thank you very much for sharing your Moon Festival pictures with us. It helped me teach my students more about your culture. In fact, I never heard of the Moon Festival until Nicole told me about it. So you taught me too !!! It sounds like a great holiday !!!!
I have sent some pictures of my classes. Let me explain to you a little about what we do.
Columbus School has a total of almost 700 students from pre-kindergarten to 8th grade. I teach a special program for our more advanced stuedents. They are in grades 3-8 and I have very small classes. I teach poetry, advanced math, government, environmental science and of course Chinese. I teach with other professors and students from the University of Bridgeport, which is right down the street from us.
My students usually work on special projects. We put on plays, hold poetry recitals, enter math competitions, work on the student council (student government) and do environmental projects. My students are usually the school leaders and all are good students. They are with me one day a week. 3rd grade Monday, 4th grade Tuesday and so on. The other 4 days they are with their regular class.
We want to start communicating with you more, now that our school year is settling down. My students are writing letters to you and you should receive them shortly. Our next holiday is Halloween. I won't tell you about it now, but my students will explain shortly. Hint...we celebrate it on Oct 31st.
Please tell your principal and all the teachers and parents we met on the webcam we said hello. Everyone seemed so nice and we really enjoyed it. I hope we can do it again.
That is all for now and I look forward to hearing from you soon.
One more thing...you are very lucky because Nicole was the BEST teacher we ever had here at Columbus. We miss her and hope she can come back and teach with us again.

Best wishes:

Long En

Columbus School Chinese Program

Hello Bo Ai, thank you for the wonderful pictures. They helped us learn about the Moon Festival. It looks like a lot of fun. We are Mr. Rapice 4th grade class.

Greetings! We are the 6th grade class in Mr. Rapice's program. We look forward to sending you information about Halloween which we celebrate on 31st, October.


Hello everyone, we are Mr. Rapice 5th grade class. We enjoy learning Chinese very much!


Good morning from Mr. Rapice 3rd grade class. Hope to hear from you soon.

Lulu's Moon Festival

We ate moon cakes and barbecued on Mid-Autumn Festival (Moon Festival ).

Willy's Moon Festival

This is me and my grandma . Today is Moon Festival , we are eating the moon cake.

Today we buy a lot of pomelos.We have a happy day.

2009/10/03 Our First Teleconference

YA! Our very first teleconference is successful. We are so glad to have a nice talk with Ron, Dr. Jassey, Dr. Cook, Mr. Rocha and a lot of lovely students at Columbus.

Our English teachers, principal and presidents of PTA were standing on the traditional bandwagon.

Dr. Jassey and Ron were so excited.

Our principal was talking to Mr. Rocha.

Students were talking to each other.

We used two smartboards as screens. One is for the people on the stage and the other is for the teachers and parents in the banquet.

sweet smiling

Video 1

Alex's Moon Festival

Today is Moon Festival, my mother and I go to Barbecue with friends. We eat a lot of food, and we are going to light many firecrackers.

Hello! I'm Tina ^ - ^

Hi! everyone...
I'm Tina Cheng. This is my second year in Bo-Ai elementary school. Last year I was a homeroom teacher, and luckily I can be an English teacher this year. I teach the third and forth graders. We are glad to be a sister school with Columbus School. ^ - ^

About Moon Festival...

Moon Festival is on the 15th of the 8th lunar month. On this specific day, people will get together eating moon cakes and pomelos outside under the moon and enjoying a BBQ dinner. At night, almost every family will have BBQ, and it is the nationwide activity in Taiwan.

A visual peak into the legend behind the Chinese Moon Festival. A film by Phil Gedarovich and Ben Young. Music composed by Pinar Aybar.

Kari's Moon Festival

It is a necessary fruit for the Moon Festival－pomelos.

These are different flavors moon cakes.

My relatives are barbecuing.

It is the most yummy sweet rice cake I ever eat.

Rice sausages, tenpura and hot dogs.

Happy Moon Festival!

Kari 98.10.03