Oops! And a Trip to the Zoo

I thought I'd already written about these things! I knew the zoo was missing, but I thought I'd at least gotten around to the Terracotta Warriors. I distinctly remember writing captions for the photos. Well, let's remedy this!

First, the trip to the zoo. On the 12th of October, our school planned a trip to the Xi'an zoo for all our students. None of the older senior-level kids came along, but there were still a good hundred or so students, with ten adults to manage them.

To begin with, we arrived at work far too early for a reasonable person, and then waited for the kids to arrive. After that we herded them back out again and into the buses - I forget if we all piled into two or three. They were big buses.

This brings us to the first photos! Namely, of kids on buses, and not being very badly behaved either. Good on them. This lot of kids is all of J4O that showed up, plus a random kid from J4C. They're good kids, actually, even for a class that only has boys in it. From left to right: Austin, Tony, Jake and Mark. I don't know who the kid in the background is; she's not in any of my classes.


These kids are from J2H, which I used to teach, once upon a time, before I was put in the awful S11D class because no-one else could teach it. From left to right: Helen, Shannon, Cici and Janet.


If you thought these kids looked younger than the others, you're right. They're from K2F, and are five years old, I think. They're adorable kids, although the one on the left is trouble. Mostly adorable trouble. The one on the right is a good kid; she likes to play and run around screaming outside of class like everyone else, but she knows how to listen when she's actually in the class. From left to right: Lily and Fancy. Yes, some parents here are working hard to make the namespace of English speakers larger and a little weirder.


These three are from J4C. The one in the middle is the most trouble, although that's not saying much; this is a very good class, I never have any problems with it. From left to right: Betty, Becky, and Emily.


After we finally made it to the zoo (the bus trip was over an hour), we stopped for more photos after herding the kids together, just before going in. I'm there! So is Ivy. This is two groups merged together; each group had one foreign teacher and one or two Chinese teachers.


One of the first stops we made was to a circus in the middle of the zoo. They had a man and a young girl doing acrobatics while being swung around the inside of the cage, suspended from a length of fabric. If you've ever seen anyone "climbing the silken ladder" then you know the deal - I don't know what the real name for this kind of acrobatics is. I also don't have any photos of that - I rather sensibly took movies instead, which I can't be bothered uploading. Sorry! I did take photos of what came before, since I was still wildly optimistic about my camera's ability to take photos in the dark interior at that point. So, before the acrobatics, we had:


Alright, so it's kinda hard to see what we had in this picture. We had boxing bears! Yes, those fuzzy brown things are bears, wearing boxing gloves. At first I was a little horrified, the bears go for each other very convincingly. I never really felt comfortable watching it, but eventually I saw the funny side, after realising that they can't have been hurting each other. The oversized boxing gloves saw to that, preventing their claws from causing what would be real damage. Also, they never bit each other, and they always backed off immediately at the end of each round. After the boxing, the gloves were taken off and the bears performed acrobatics tricks on parallel bars, among other things.

Then we had tigers! Yay, tigers! The big cats put on the kind of show you can expect, seeing the picture below. Standard circus stuff, including jumping through flaming hoops. The tigers were very uncooperative that day, and several times didn't do what they were told. At any rate, the tigers at Dreamworld are much better; this isn't the place to go for an impressive tiger show. However, they're still tigers, and tigers are still worth watching.


This picture doesn't really need much of a caption. It's two kids and an elephant. I took it mostly to tease the kid on the right, as we'd been making fun of each other. I don't know the names of either of these kids, though, as they're not in any of my classes.


This is me again, with some of the kids from my group, in the stuffed animal exhibit.


This is from another part of the same place. You can see Ariel amongst the kids there; she was the Chinese teacher in charge of our group. The kid in the front wasn't originally in frame; he ran in to steal the show just before taking the picture.


There were other things at the zoo - a seal show, for example, that was pretty good - but I forget most of it now, so I'll skip straight to the monkeys! The baby monkeys were dead cute:


Especially this one, who become enamoured of a plastic bottle that ended up inside the enclosure:


Eventually we'd all seen enough, and went to lunch. We swarmed a restaurant and took over all of the seats they had upstairs, and a table or two downstairs as well. Have you ever been to a child's birthday party at McDonalds? Imagine that, only with three or four times as many kids. On the plus side, we just had traditional Chinese food instead of McDonalds, so it was actually pretty good. The restaurant is run by what is, from the sounds of it, a farmers' collective. The restaurant is a very large place, with a lot of the eating areas outside; the complex doubles as the farmers' homes. Lunch was several dishes in the middle of each table, from which you helped yourself. The kids decided they were full long before any of the teachers did, so they ran around downstairs while we finished up.

After another long bus ride we got back, and got all the kids to the right parents. Nobody got left behind, so it was, overall, successful. Some parents took their time coming to pick up their kids; Fancy, who you should recall from an earlier picture, was the last kid to leave; she stayed at the school for a good half an hour after everyone else had gone. She didn't seem to mind it; she's not a kid that cries easily, and we (well, mostly I) entertained her by running through the hall and playing games.

After everyone left, we had one last group picture, just the teachers. From left to right: me, Sally, Vivi, Ivy, Kiko, Melinda, and Apple.


Later today I will finish my backlog and post about the Hauqing hot spring and the Terracotta Warriors!

Outside Demo Class

On Sunday half the teachers from our school went out to one of the richer apartment building complexes, and we held a demo class outside. It all went nicely - Alex was the star of the show, he does very well in situations like that. Afterwards we gave out flyers for the school, and Alex gave his to every kid in sight. He even managed to give flyers to a couple of teenage girls, much too old for the school, and too young to have children of their own yet. I'm not so good in situations that require me to mix and mingle, but I did manage to give out some of my flyers.

There were photos taken, too. Here's one! In this one you can see me, Kiko, Ariel and Alex in front of the kids doing a pretty silly song and dance.

Children's Day

Yesterday was Children's Day, and instead of regular classes we held Children's Day events at the local park. There were three rounds; one in the morning, and two in the afternoon, so that we didn't have to deal with a huge number of kids all in one go. By the time we got to the last group we all knew the drill pretty well, but we were also all very tired.

We started each round off by gathering all the kids together at the park's gate, before herding them to a more central location. There, Keiko (one of the Chinese teachers, who also happens to be a great dancer) led them all in a group dance before we split them into groups to teach separately. We taught them the English names of the animals that the Beijing Olympic mascots represent, and the names of a few Olympic events, before finishing up with some games. A good time was had by all.

Afterwards, we all went to have dinner with Helen - she used to be the head teacher at our school, but tomorrow she leaves for her home province. I'm not sure why - she's sick of teaching little kids, or she has a better job waiting there, something like that. At any rate, dinner was fun! We had hot pot, which is a great way to serve a dozen-odd people with one meal.

That is all.

Pictures from last week

These are the pictures from teaching a class at a university last week. First, a picture of me! The students gave me the green ribbon at the start of the class. It's meant to be a symbol of new life; it's a show of support for the earthquake survivors. Everyone in the class was wearing one.



This is the regular teacher of the class; she is the one who brought me in to teach.



This guy was pretty cool. He asked a lot of questions; only a handful of students were responsible for most of the volunteering.



In this picture you can see that the topic for the class was "earthquake & religion". Really, they were more interested in free discussion, although several students had some very moving things to say about the earthquake (yes, in English). This guy was the first to speak up, he gave a very good speech about it.



Three girls in the class! What more can I say about this picture?



The end of the class was time to take photos with everyone. This is a smaller group than the next photo -



- which is all the girls in the class. They told the boys to piss off (politely), because they wanted a girls-only photo with me. As you'll see in the next photo, there weren't that many boys to begin with.



And finally, the whole class.

Mostly About a Puppy

Today I taught a few classes at the vocational school. It's been a few weeks since I've been there, and it was nice to be back. The students there are recent school leavers, so they are well in to their teens, unlike the kids where I normally work. It's a very different teaching environment, and I like it just for the contrast.

In the first class I was asked about my hobbies. I mentioned dancing, which led to a request for a demonstration. I showed a little samba, but the Chinese teacher in the room (who already knows me) suggested that what they really wanted to see was capoeira, so I put on a little show, which went down well. After that, the scene was set for the next two classes, so I was careful to mention dancing, which led to a capoeira demonstration.

I also ended up giving out my phone number to a whole class. The classes were generally just question and answer sessions; they'd ask me questions, or I'd ask them if they'd run out of things to ask in English. One of the girls asked if she could have my phone number, and so to avoid problems I decided to just write my number on the board for everyone. Yes, I could have just said no, but that wouldn't have been as interesting, would it?

For lunch, Ariel took me to have some local food - specific to this area, not China as a whole. I forget the name of it now, but it's delicious. Bread is crumbled into a bowl, then a beef or mutton broth is poured over, with slices of meat and clear noodles. It also eaten with pickled garlic, which is so much tastier than it sounds.

Finally, we get to the important stuff: today, one of the Chinese teachers, Melinda, brought her puppy in to work, and it's the most adorable little thing! So here's a picture of it. The woman holding the puppy isn't Melinda, by the way; she was taking photos of her puppy too!

A Lazy Day and a Short Entry

Phew. I'm glad the weekend is over. Saturday and Sunday both go like this: wake up, have breakfast, teach, have lunch, teach, go home, have dinner, sleep. Today the only thing of consequence I'm doing is my laundry.

Milk tea is very common over here - tea made with milk instead of (not in addition to) hot water. You can buy it pre-made, just like iced tea. I haven't tried that yet, but I have tried making my funky herbal tea with soy milk instead of water, and it's delicious. Ah, I haven't shown you my funky herbal tea, yet, have I? It comes in little plastic bags full of leaves and fungus and flowers and dried fruit. Here it is, before I started making it with milk:

Venturing Forth

Tomorrow I'm going to catch the bus to a place whose name I don't remember, and hope I don't get lost. I'll have the whole day to get back if I do, and one of the foreign teachers lent me a phone card so I can call if I really get stuck. It's a famous place in Xi'an, a square or plaza of some kind with a tower in it. Hopefully I'll be able to find a park or two along the way, too. I was talking with Leo, another foreign teacher, and he said that there are no academies to learn Chinese martial arts around here, but people practise in the parks early in the mornings. Naturally, there are no parks near where I live. I'll take my camera, so you can expect photos tomorrow!

Leo is leaving. He needs to go out of China in order to renew his visa, and I'm not sure if he's coming back to this school when he returns - he is coming back in to China, but maybe to teach at a different school. At any rate, I'm taking over his classes, so as of tomorrow I have a real schedule, not just random classes every now and then.

Ariel continues to be awesome. She helped me go shopping after work, and introduced me to all sorts of interesting Chinese foods. There is sachima, which is a strange pastry thing, that I had already been eating and quite liked: until today I didn't know what they were called in English, though. The packet I bought just happened to have English writing on it, though, so now I know! Also, all the varieties of instant noodles, an important staple for budget living, and the pre-prepared cold vegetable dishes of different sorts. Then there are the stuffed pastries, which are deilicious (I'm eating one right now), but the best discovery of the night was fruit and walnuts on a skewer, covered in hard toffee - exactly like candy apples, except without the apple. What makes it so incredibly tasty is that the fruit, whatever it was, was sour, and combined with the walnut and sweet covering it was more delicious even than human brain-meats.

Hi! I'm an introvert!

Tonight I had just one long class instead of two different ones. Normally the teachers swap around, so one teacher takes the first half, and another takes the second, but I took both halves this this time. For the second half, Tracy, who's one of the Chinese teachers, sat in on the lesson, and afterwards she said I was a good teacher! This makes me happy.

She went on to say that she didn't think I would be a good teacher, because I always have a serious expression and I don't talk much, but she said I did a good job; and that when she told the other (Chinese) teachers they were all surprised. She was also surprised when she asked how long I'd been teaching, and I told her this job was my first teaching job. So, all in all, tonight went well.

Enough about teaching! Here are some photos. The first is my apartment at night: I took the photo just because I thought it looked neat, so it doesn't show much of the apartment. The open door that close leads to the kitchen; the open door in the distance leads to my bedroom. The closed door leads to Alex's bedroom, but he only stay here on the weekends.


The second is a photo of the city at night, as seen from my bedroom window. In case you're wondering, yes, that is a GIANT DAMN LASER BEAM being shot DIRECTLY OVERHEAD.

...Maybe I'm being a little dramatic. The laser is on every night, it makes a sweep around the sky overhead.

You Say Tomayto, I Say Tomahto

First of all, I am getting your comments, but I can't stay online long enough for Blogger to let me respond to them. Rest assured that I do read and enjoy them!

I haven't talked about what I'm doing here yet, and this is a good time to do so. I just observed classes on Friday and most of Saturday, and I taught my first class on Saturday; however, on Sunday I taught five classes, and tonight I taught two.

The school I work at is a private English school. The classes are during the evenings and on weekends, so this is in addition to regular school classes for the children going there. There are three main groups of children: kinder, for the little ones, about 4-6 years; junior, for the ones that have progressed further, is from 6-9 years; and senior, which is from 9-12 years.

Juniors are probably the easiest to deal with overall. The children in the kinder classes can't do much damage, but they have no attention span either; turn your back and they're out of their seats. The children in senior classes can be absolutely wonderful - a senior class was my best yet - but when they're bad, they're impossible to deal with, and it only takes a couple of bad ones to make the whole class very taxing. Juniors can understand you better than the kinders, they can focus long enough to be able to teach, and even if you get bad ones they're not that hard to deal with.

Tonight didn't go so well - two kinder classes, the first time I've taught that age group. It didn't help that my mind went completely blank, and the Chinese teachers ended up having to take over and do most of the work for my classes. Those were also the only classes I've had the Chinese teachers stay in the room; it was a little disconcerting. Now I know how they must feel when I was observing classes.

I think, though, that with practise, I'll be okay at this. I'm still getting the hang of it, but I'll get there.

Now, about that American English! Not surprisingly, it's American English they teach here. I first realised it when reading the phonetic rendering of a word and at first thinking it was wrong; then realising it was right for American accents. The real surprise, though, was when I held up a flashcard in front of a junior class, and said "tomato" in my New Zealand accent. All the children looked at me like I was crazy! They then started shouting out "to-may-to" to me, and I realised they'd been taught American pronunciations. I corrected myself, but I'm sure it will come up again. I can't remember all the different American pronunciations.

This weird plum liquorice stuff is awesome.

Finally: they have very small oranges over here! Back in Australia, they'd be called mandarins, but that is a language here, not a fruit. Here is a photo of one next to my thumb: