Yeah, so, no pics from yesterday, but it was a very busy day. Work starts at 8am, so I was awake at 7am, then ready to leave by 7:30. Faff'd around the house a lil' and then walked over the road to school.
The basic structure of each lesson was to have a lesson for the majority, and then in the last 20minutes, the parents come in, and I tell them what I've been teaching their kids for the past 23 weeks. You can see the obvious problem here; I've only been in China 1 week. So, with some infamous Joe-blagging I got through all that stuff. Well, Joe-blagging and some very friendly Chinese Teachers who helped me out. After telling the parents what we've covered, they'd ask the CT's some questions, and then we'd hand out certificates to the kids.
The actual lessons were awesome. As A) it was their last lesson of the semester, and B) I'm their new teacher, it was a super-informal affair. Mainly I'd just introduce myself, and we'd all get to know each other through a series of questions or games. Some common observations:
- Most Chinese kids' favourite colour is red
- Everyone hates pigs
- Everyone loves Kobe Bryant
- Everyone loves computer games. After 90% of the class had told me they liked computer games, I'd explain that before coming to China, I used to make video games. They'd all look their silent and unimpressed, then the Chinese Teacher would translate, all the kids would just freak out, and start asking a bazillion questions.
- Everyone loves ping pong
- Every Chinese kid is cute!
- Chinese kids' English names can be very cute, and very entertaining. Take a girl called "Apple" with a little plastic apple on her headband for the former, and a little boy named "Tina" for the latter.
- Job satisfaction from teaching is awesome.
Valentines day is actually celebrated in China. It's not the huge commercial clusterfrak that it is in the UK and US, but people generally go out for meals (McDonalds is where you go on a date here...no... seriously.) and the guys buy the dudes flowers. So, not wanting to be in Aya and Tim's hair, Rob invited me out. Rob's sister, Jenny, is in town so in the end there was Myself, Jenny, Rob, Cheer and Cheer's mother and father. As an aside, Jenny is USAF and is training to be a C-130J pilot. Cue 30minutes of me just flipping out and asking a bunch of questions.
The restaurant we went to was awesome. We had a private room upstairs, with a hole in the wall for food to be passed through, and a some-what dedicated waitress in the room with us to refil our drinks, etc. The menu was an epic 40page art book, all of the food looked amazing. What followed was a thoroughly enjoyable evening of eating, drinking, talking and arm wrestling. I totally lost an arm wrestle to a chick, but hey - if I'm going to loose to a chick, a hard-as-nails USAF pilot is good enough for me. Feeling disheartened I arm wrestled Cheer... a 90lb Chinese girl with 'chopstick arms.' Self-pride was restored.
Can't think of a worst thing to happen teaching a bunch of kids and then getting a migraine. You'd just be like 'just f*ck off and leave me alone'.
China looks nice, this country is still unbelievably sh*t and going downhill.