Weekend

Wandered into town to do some shopping yesterday and went past our previous furthest limit and carried on walking out of town as far as we could be bothered to go, the weather was lovely, slightly hot in a jumper, would be fine walking in a Tshirt, obviously all the Chinese are still in coats and jackets....

We found the bus station and a few more interesting shops, but Chris started to feel really bad so we started for home, I diverted en route to pick up a few things and as I got to my door I found two grade 3 students standing outside, apparently they texted asking to come over and when I didn't reply they came anyway! I let them in as Chris was fast asleep and then chatted for 40 minutes or so before another knock, 5 of my grade one students had turned up, apparently I have agreed to meet them too under similar circumstances! I let them in and the grade 3s got a bit childish saying they were more important and talking over the grade ones, but i like my grade ones as they are my students so I stood up for them!

Then another knock on the door and Zack (another grade 3) arrived a day early to use our computers, i let him in too.

A little while later yet another knock and Bella had turned up another grade one student! 

A few of the grade ones actually started doing homework at the back of my room before some wandered off, then the grade threes left, leaving bella and her friends!

I woke Chris up with the thought of food and Chris and I and 4 of the grade ones went out to find some food, before we really knew what was going on Bella had grabbed a taxi and bundled us all inside and we went off across town to peoples park.

Outside the park were a few hundred people dancing but bella led us straight through the middle (and got us a few hundred stares in the process).

We saw the park and had a quick look around before going to a restaurant where you choose all the foods you want, they cook them and bring them to the table, and you eat them off skewers, uncooked kebab buffet maybe? haha.

After we had all eaten we went to the nearby bookshop and spent a while looking at all the books, found some really cool old books and even a few english ones, I bought Animal Farm in English and a chinese world map, and also found a map of the local area! Excellent! 

Bought a few more things in a local shop before leaving the other students who live in town behind and bella helping us get a taxi back to the school.

This morning I woke to knocking on the door, Zack from yesterday was back for more downloading and talking, he had read my fromers guide to china and pointed all the incorrect dates in the history of china from memory, amazing! and discussed a few points that were simplifications that he was a little upset about, but he is a nice kid.

The amount they study is crazy, 7-22:00 every weekday, then a test every saturday morning, they get the afternoon off then sunday morning off then a class on sunday afternoon before back into it on monday. I have no idea how they keep this up! And in Grade 3 they work even harder doing extra study until midnight most nights then still up at 6 for class!

Today is lovely and warm, opened all the windows and cleaned a bit, Chris has decided to do his English corner but I am going abstain and keep trying to design tomorrows class, but I just don't know which was to go, It will take some time to get used to making my mind up and just dragging the students along with me without worrying if they are actually interested. Chris doesn't have that problem....

Last HK

HK6

HK6

HK5

shanghai park

HK3

more HK

Chris and Terresa,

crazy fog!,

famous star ferry company

Hong Kong Photos!

my room in HK,

The view from my window,

first view of HK harbour

End of the first week!

Phew! That was the most work I have ever done for £100! It was fun and not too bad, but that was only the introduction lesson, I need to come up with a plan for next week now, I'm thinking a map of the UK and I can talk about the UK as opposed to England etc, talk a little about the Monarchy and the royal wedding coming up, and maybe talk about animals and find some crazy new animals for them that they don't know, and then next week play a game using the animals that they learnt this week? Thats the vague plan at the moment anyway!

Yesterday Chris was feeling a little under the weather with a sore throat from talking too much, my last class on friday has loads of students from the winter camp in and so I asked Bella to come with us to translate! Took Chris to the onsite doctor and he got seen immediately with absolutely no privacy at all, haha, but for a sore throat thats ok, he was checked over and given 5 different kind of pills, pushed out of their wrappers and wrapped up in origami daily doses and all this cost an extortionate 15RMB, £1.50. No point putting that to insurance!

Will try and upload a few HK photos now too, I know Chris has done some already too! 

pricey haircut!

Still slogging through the lessons, just 5 more to go for this week! Then Chris was asked by his students to run an english corner this weekend, on sunday! I dodged doing any of the tutoring classes we are going to do and moved them to a weeknight (extra cash for us!) and chris manages to loose a day off again! But only he said yes, so I can just hide. The problem is that it is just a chance to chat in English, but my classes are like that, the students can ask me anything! ah well, we will see.

Had some more students asking for every form of contact details I have again today, crazy kids! two even asked for a hug as I left! madness! 

After our classes Chris asked Eamon to take us for a long overdue haircut. We went around the corner and Eamon translated, Chris got something kind of similar to his usual, I dont really have a usual but got something vaguely passable, it looked quite good until the hairdressed started using a hairdryer to puff it up in the latest chinese fashion. I got home and washed it again and all that came out and it looks mostly normal again now.

When we came to pay it was 20RMB. For both of us. This works out at less than £2! and that was a wash, head massage, rinse, cut and rinse for us both! And a good half hour each of their time. A bargain!

Working hard or...no just working hard!

Got back from shenzhen ok in the end, A long day of traveling. The bus to the airport left at 8, then the flight, then the bus to hangzhou, then we tried to buy the train tickets but the agency met us at the station and threw us into a massive queue for a taxi to the south bus station to get the bus to lingxi, then in lingxi I watched as we drove in and worked out which way to walk to get home, luckily! It still means we had to travel from 8am until 10pm!

Spent sunday relaxing and getting over the long day before and then monday straight into the fire of teaching! We have our full schedule now and have the full 22 lessons each, more than 1000 students each that we see once a week! 

Had the third day of teaching today and it is very hard work, but when it goes well is rewarding too, the kids so far have all been really nice, I just hope I can think of enough lessons for them all! We finally got given a rough outline of their listening exam topics so we can try to cover them all in a bit of detail hopefully, but I will leave planning that until the weekend I think! The other teachers all seem shocked by the number of our lessons, which is kind of funny.
Also on Monday they had a welcome back lecture with 1000 students outside our window lined up in the square, then yesterday another when they all brought seats, and today they all started running around our building for some reason, crazy!

So far the strange questions have been:

How old am I? guesses from 18 to 45!!

Do you have a girlfriend, from every class!

'Do you have baby?' wtf!?!!?

Do you own more than one coat? (no i do not)

Can you use chopsticks. (yes I can) 

Today I also got surrounded by around 20 students in the corridor all asking for my MSN/qq/phone number/email address!  

Have loads of photos from HK but I think Chris threw some up as well, I will take a look and then post some! 

Hello to anyone still reading this! 

FW: Pictures from Hong Kong

We had to go to Hong Kong to sort out our Visas, but due to a mess up by our agency
we had to spend an extra day there. Not bad getting to see the city again after such a long
time. Also this time it was no where near as hot and although there was fog, it was still very
enjoyable!