Much has changed since the last update! 🙂 

If you remember from my last update, I said I would be teaching at the Forestry University and the Mining University.  Well, only part of that is true.  The hours at the Mining University were mostly during the wrong times.  So the Mining University is out.  During my first day at the Forestry University (which includes an 8:00 – 9:50 class and a 3:40 – 5:30 class) I was taken out to lunch by Ms. Fan from Tsinghua University. (remember her? she was my Tsinghua boss last year.)  While this lunch date was being planned, I jokingly said to another teacher, ‘she’s going to offer me a job without Mr. Wang being involved.’ 🙂  Well, she did offer me a job for much more pay because we don’t have to go through the middle man (AKA Wang).  I was definitely skeptical at first.  Remember when I told you that Mr. Wang wanted me to teach 2nd grade?!  This new job is at that school but it is with 3rd – 6th grade.  In order for me to get this job I had to do a demonstration lesson….with 2nd grade! Yikes.  I guess you could say that I’m a bit afraid of 2nd graders.  They scare me.  Really.  Someone told me, ‘just sing songs with them.’  That’s great advice.  Do you know any songs that are easy and are about food/weather/appearance/etc.?   It was definitely a moment that does not need to be repeated and also affirmed my fear of teaching anything lower than 6th grade.  So, why the job?  Well, my schedule is very open now because I teach less for the same amount of money.  This gives me more time to spend in the WORD and with friends.  I’m also going to spend more time on my Chinese study.

As I write, I’m in the middle of my day at the Foresty University and I really like these students.  I’m trying to learn a little about them as people and not just have shallow conversations revolving around comparative/superlative/count nouns/non-count nouns/etc.  Since this is only their second week back in school, I decided to ask them about their class load.  They have almost no freedom when choosing their classes and they are stuck with the same group of people the entire day.  Sounds like grade school, eh? The only two classes that have different people are Chinese History and Basic Principles of Marxism. (both required classes)  They did say that a perk to those classes is that there are 180 students in the class so it is very easy to take a nap and not be noticed! 🙂 Ha!  I’m happy I have only 30 at a time.  I think a speaking class would be difficult with much more than that. 

Last week, I taught my first primary class in China.  I began my teaching at Tsinghua Primary School.  I don’t love it but I think the benefits from teaching there far outweigh the negatives.  The only difficult thing about teaching 6 identical classes during the day is remembering what you’ve taught them.  ‘Did we go over that already? No. Ok, must have been last class.’  Many of these students have pretty decent English.  Some of them have lived abroad which makes it easy to recruit for the FOC school!  At the primary school I’ll teach 4th grade, 3rd grade, and 5th grade one week, and 6th grade, 3rd grade, and 5th grade another week.  Their are 6 classes of 3rd graders at the school and I only get one class of them per week.  So, math people…that means that I get each 3rd grade class every 6 weeks! 🙂  I don’t want to think about how much the aren’t going to remember.  The day that I did my demo lesson was military training day for the 3rd-6th graders which is why I had to do a demonstration with 2nd grade.  The craziness of China continues. 🙂

B Studies have been going well so far.  It will be fun to teach with new people this year!  Making friends to bring to studies will be a little more difficult for me than last year because my students are not adults with free schedules.  I might have to become creative. 

Sorry for the quick, choppy, picture-less update.  I have to go back to school.  Someday I’ll get some pictures up! 🙂

GB!