I get a lot of stares
You know when you were growing up, your parents told you that it was rude to stare. I don't think that the Chinese were told that. Apparently since I am a foreigner and I'm black, I'm subject to many people staring at me.
Also if there is any instance where I have to write my name or anything for that matter, it's up for anyone to invade my personal space and stick their nose in to see what I'm writing. That's another thing, they have no clue on the concept of personal space. While waiting in lines, anywhere, you could turn around and see someone standing right there.
Anyway, today was my first day of school and it started off very painful. I'm teaching 3 grade one classes which are students that are about 6-7 years old and they have no attention span and no idea on what it means to be quiet. Teaching them english will prove to be very difficult as alot of them have no memory retention and can really only imitate.
After writing simple sentences on the baord I got them to repeat after me but if I don't say the sentence and only point at the words, they aren't able to say anything.
They all know the alphabet very well, which is a really good start but other than that they are very lost.
Now I do have a teacher's assistant that will explain my instructions in chinese but this does not make it any easier. Another thing is that all of the students have chinese names and it's up to me to give them english ones. So I'm standing in front of a room of 40 kids or so and I have to name them all. I should have brought a baby book. Some of the chinese names sound similar to english ones so I just give them that but alot of them are not even close. There are a few kids with english names which makes my life much easier but things are shaping up to be very interesting this semester.
Lucky for me all 3 classes of mine are grade one students so I only have to create one lesson plan and use it in all three classes but this still doesn't mean I can just slack off.
Anyway, my afternoon classes were a little bit better but I must admit I feel quite tired.
Tomorrow I have morning classes and then 2 activity classes. The activity classes are usually the classes when the kids would play a game or do something fun. I'm glad I brought my Simpsons DVD's cause atleast I can give them a treat (and myself) every once in a while.
Tomorrow I have to go to the hospital and get tests re-done. Which is really stupid because I just had all these tests done with my doctor less than a week ago but they insist that it is very important and I have to do it again.
Life at my apartment is really cool. The other people I stay with are a great bunch of guys and gals. It almost feels like living in a fraternity. We have a common room where the big tv is and couches etc. Then the kitchen where we all sit around and eat and talk and smoke. Then we each have our individual rooms with our own tv's, bathroom, bed, desk etc. I quite like it and we all get along. The thing I like the most is that the apartments are right on the campus of the school so it is never a far walk from the office to home.
Speaking of which, I share an office with 5 other teachers. We each have our own desks and locks for the desk and there is one other english teacher in that office, who happens to be my next door neighbour in the apartments.
My class schedule is pretty ok. Wednesday is a half day (which all of us seem to have) but Friday will be my busiest day as I pretty much have a class in every period. There are 7 periods in the day, luckily no one has a class in first period but we all have to be in the office from 9-4:30. Second period starts at 9:25. A good thing to note however is that the lunch break is 2 hours long and the school feeds us. So I could have lunch and take a little nap too.
Anyway that's about it for now. I have internet connection to my laptop but I have to get an adapter to be able to plug it in. The three pronged plug does not work here. There is one bit of a downside. I was told that there are some websites that cannot be accessed in China (I don't know why they call it the world wide web) but unfortunately my actual blog site cannot be accessed. I can update the blog without a problem but I can't view or check it. It is when I check the blog, that I see your lovely comments. I'm going to try to see if I can get around that and I will keep you posted but if you leave a comment and I don't reply, I'm not ignoring you, I just have no way of seeing it right now.
But irregardless........no no, regardless of whether or not I can see the blog and your comments, I will still faithfully update and keep you posted.
TTFN
Also if there is any instance where I have to write my name or anything for that matter, it's up for anyone to invade my personal space and stick their nose in to see what I'm writing. That's another thing, they have no clue on the concept of personal space. While waiting in lines, anywhere, you could turn around and see someone standing right there.
Anyway, today was my first day of school and it started off very painful. I'm teaching 3 grade one classes which are students that are about 6-7 years old and they have no attention span and no idea on what it means to be quiet. Teaching them english will prove to be very difficult as alot of them have no memory retention and can really only imitate.
After writing simple sentences on the baord I got them to repeat after me but if I don't say the sentence and only point at the words, they aren't able to say anything.
They all know the alphabet very well, which is a really good start but other than that they are very lost.
Now I do have a teacher's assistant that will explain my instructions in chinese but this does not make it any easier. Another thing is that all of the students have chinese names and it's up to me to give them english ones. So I'm standing in front of a room of 40 kids or so and I have to name them all. I should have brought a baby book. Some of the chinese names sound similar to english ones so I just give them that but alot of them are not even close. There are a few kids with english names which makes my life much easier but things are shaping up to be very interesting this semester.
Lucky for me all 3 classes of mine are grade one students so I only have to create one lesson plan and use it in all three classes but this still doesn't mean I can just slack off.
Anyway, my afternoon classes were a little bit better but I must admit I feel quite tired.
Tomorrow I have morning classes and then 2 activity classes. The activity classes are usually the classes when the kids would play a game or do something fun. I'm glad I brought my Simpsons DVD's cause atleast I can give them a treat (and myself) every once in a while.
Tomorrow I have to go to the hospital and get tests re-done. Which is really stupid because I just had all these tests done with my doctor less than a week ago but they insist that it is very important and I have to do it again.
Life at my apartment is really cool. The other people I stay with are a great bunch of guys and gals. It almost feels like living in a fraternity. We have a common room where the big tv is and couches etc. Then the kitchen where we all sit around and eat and talk and smoke. Then we each have our individual rooms with our own tv's, bathroom, bed, desk etc. I quite like it and we all get along. The thing I like the most is that the apartments are right on the campus of the school so it is never a far walk from the office to home.
Speaking of which, I share an office with 5 other teachers. We each have our own desks and locks for the desk and there is one other english teacher in that office, who happens to be my next door neighbour in the apartments.
My class schedule is pretty ok. Wednesday is a half day (which all of us seem to have) but Friday will be my busiest day as I pretty much have a class in every period. There are 7 periods in the day, luckily no one has a class in first period but we all have to be in the office from 9-4:30. Second period starts at 9:25. A good thing to note however is that the lunch break is 2 hours long and the school feeds us. So I could have lunch and take a little nap too.
Anyway that's about it for now. I have internet connection to my laptop but I have to get an adapter to be able to plug it in. The three pronged plug does not work here. There is one bit of a downside. I was told that there are some websites that cannot be accessed in China (I don't know why they call it the world wide web) but unfortunately my actual blog site cannot be accessed. I can update the blog without a problem but I can't view or check it. It is when I check the blog, that I see your lovely comments. I'm going to try to see if I can get around that and I will keep you posted but if you leave a comment and I don't reply, I'm not ignoring you, I just have no way of seeing it right now.
But irregardless........no no, regardless of whether or not I can see the blog and your comments, I will still faithfully update and keep you posted.
TTFN
posted by Tish at 8:38 p.m.
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