emilyonearth

Hello! My internet has been out for about a week, so while I had planned to write you all over the weekend, it didn’t end up being possible :( So since the last update I’ve had lots of school, some great classes and some really terrible classes. The good classes make me so happy, and so glad I came here to do this, and then the bad classes are terrible haha. I’ve had kids fighting, throwing things, crying, I’ve had to separate kids, have them move their desks right to the front of the class, stand by my desk at the front, stand in the door frame… (wherever I get them to stand they still find things to play with or throw at the other kids), I’ve had a class sit in total silence for the remaining time left in class coz they were so out of control… I was talking to one of the school admin/grade one teachers the other day, and apparently it isn’t just us foreign teachers, even the Chinese teachers, who speak a language they understand, sometimes struggle to get them under control. The class size doesn’t help, my classes average about 50 students. As it’s oral English that I teach, I can’t even get them to do quiet activities like story writing, so I have to find things that will keep them interested in participating, but that doesn’t get too out of hand. So far, hangman has probably been the biggest hit with the young ones, who are just leaning to spell :D

Last Tuesday, China celebrated its 29th Teacher’s Day. This year the government issued a statement that teachers shouldn’t be given anything, as they traditionally have been, but still students gave us all gifts. I got some flowers (fake and real), a couple of cards, and some drawings. This seems to be standard for most teachers, but then some got crazy stuff like music boxes and electric fans! This week is the Mid-Autumn Festival, which means mooncake time! I was given two mooncakes, haven’t tried them yet though. One of the Canadian teachers at my school had a class that performed some traditional mooncake-sharing thing, where you have to eat a little piece of everyone elses mooncakes. With a class of 50 kids, that’s a lot of mooncake! She was saying that she couldn’t eat everything they were trying to give her, and some kids were literally shoving mooncake in her mouth as she was talking haha, and she ended up having to take all the remaining bits back to our office :D We also have Thursday and Friday off for the festival, but have to work Sunday to make up for it. This happens again in a couple of weeks when we have a holiday for the Chinese National Day… They take holidays, then work weekends to make up for the time off… it’s a little backwards, but hey!

What else have I been up to? Our CTLC Chinese classes have started, which I’m super happy about coz I really want to improve my Chinese. I’m doing a bit of study in my own time too, so hopefully before long I will be able to speak enough to get by and do the basic things at least. I still can’t even top up my cellphone! I will need to learn that one soon… Really looking forward to getting my passport back from having my residency processed too, so that I can start seeing a bit more of China! We have a week off for the National Holiday, and everything gets booked out super fast coz the whole billion of whatever people that this country has have the same one week off!! And we can’t book anything without our passports, so fingers crossed the permits come through soon!!

Hrmm, I’m out of news, I think. You may have noticed I wrote “Turtles” in the title… Have a look at the pics :P