Wai Mai and the Umbrella Paradox

I taught class 2 today and for the last few weeks they have been saying wai mai a lot, they finally explained that it means a person who delivers takeaway food but they think it sounds very similar to wai jiao which means foreign teacher. So before my class I went to a local takeaway and picked up a couple of hot dogs to take away and at the end of my lesson walked up to the two who invented it, handed them each a hot dog and asked for a tip before walking out. Gales of laughter accompanying my exit. Teaching in China is exactly like putting on a pantomime.

Fun though.

 

I have also noticed that China revolves around passing around umbrellas, we own 1 but currently have 4, not including the one we bought. Every afternoon it will rain and at other random times it rains with little notice and so all the students keep an umbrella or two around in the classrooms just in case.
If we are walking back from a class and it is raining often a student will hand us an umbrella to use and then walk off, sometimes from a different year or a student whose class we cannot even remember!

Occasionally we will be walking along and a student will give us their umbrella before sprinting off in the rain without one themselves! much to our embaressment. Chris even had a teacher almost requisition an umbrella from an innocent student for him just because he was a teacher, certainly different from the attitude to teachers in the U.K!