emilyonearth

Hi hi! The last few days have been crazy, seriously. For an idea of my routine here, I get up at around 6:20 ish, and get ready for class. Around 7:30 a group of us go and get breakfast. So far for breakfast I have had pork dumplings, vege dumplings, vege “pot stickers”, and a breakfast pancake wrap that included duck(?) lettuce, noodles, egg.. maybe other things? I also tried a little of a friend’s red bean porridge, which was interesting… may something to look into at some stage. Then class starts at 8:30 so we walk down to Peking University, or BeiDa, as they call it. We all have different schedules to fit around our different teaching times, but I start with two hours of Chinese class, followed by an hour of TESOL theory. Then we have about an hour and a half for lunch, during which we buy food at a place that seems to go by the name of “food street” (original!). I’ve had a spicy duck, ham, egg, and lettuce sandwich, egg fried rice, cucumber noodles, and today I had a banana milk bubble tea sort of drink, an apple and a nectarine. Nom nom. After lunch I then have TESOL activity for an hour, lesson planning for another hour, and then at 3pm I teach my class. I’m teaching Junior 1-3, so my kids are between 12 and 14. Will talk more about that later. Then as a final period we have a group meeting where we talk about things like culture shock, changing money, health problems etc… all the practical things about life here, I guess. After that we meet in our teaching groups to decide on a theme for the next day and go home to write our lesson plans. We meet again at 7pm to make sure everything is all sorted, and then I meet up with a couple of people for dinner. Sometimes get a beer after / with dinner, and one night we went out to another part of Beijing to a bar, which was interesting, and so I normally get to bed between 10pm and Midnight, just to get up again early the next morning :D

Overall I’m really enjoying it, though it is super jam packed full of busy-ness. I feel like I hardly have time to breathe sometimes!

Teaching is going reasonably well too. We arrived on Friday, had our first day of TESOL training on Saturday, and starting teaching on Sunday, so it all went pretty quickly! Weekends have no meaning at all. We have Friday off, and have the option of visiting the Great Wall, but every other day we’re working, and so the kids are also in class, which is a bit sad for them. We are teaching a summer camp, so these are kids from all over who have come to Beijing Uni for the summer holidays to improve their English. I thought I would struggle with standing in front of a class of kids and teaching, but it isn’t nearly as terrifying and I had worried. There’s quite a range of language ability, so some kids are bored out of their mind because it is too easy for them, while others don’t have a clue what’s going on. I’m getting better at getting everyone to participate though, and pushing the more competent kids to take the activities a step further, while also making sure some of the less confident ones are aware of what’s going on. I do have 3 boys who sit at the back of class who act up a bit though. They’re actually hilarious, and I would love to be able to just laugh at them, but I can’t. Yesterday we were talking about what we would do if we won the lottery, and one of these kids said he would buy his friend beside him. Today they were talking about space exploration, and one of them named a planet he discovered after his friend. It was pretty amusing. They’ve also all chosen English names at some stage, and I have one girl in my class called Katniss, which made me smile too. I may have a few favourites haha, but they’re all good kids, really.

What else can I tell you? The campus is GORGEOUS. The traffic is insane. Traffic lights seem to be more suggestions than rules, so crossing the road is lots of fun. Oh! I got caught in the middle of a massive downpour on my way to class today! It’s about a 15 minute walk from the Lesson Planning classroom to the room I teach in, and it was absolutely pouring down. I showed up to class completely soaked through, wet underwear and everything haha, and had to teach literally leaving puddles wherever I walked. Ahh well. Will have to buy an umbrella at some stage. All the other people here are totally lovely too. It’s been really nice getting to know them. Luckily I haven’t been sick yet, though I feel a little tickle in my throat as I type this, so fingers crossed that doesn’t turn into anything. Anyways, this has turned into a long wee update, so I might end it there, maybe with a picture if I can get it to upload with this stolen internet? :P So yes, leave me a wee comment if you want to say hi, and I might even reply to you! Otherwise I get onto Facebook occasionally (when it works), so can read there too :)