Tuesday- Beidajie elementary school! I managed to get up in time (despite being tossing and turning all night) and got into Xining in record time only to find no one there to meet me. I waited half an hour but still no Lisa! I text her and it turns out she completely forgot about me!! She told me she was sending the school bus to pick me up and 15 minutes later it arrived!
I got to the school and met Lisa, she took me to her office and I was told to 'rest' as my first lesson wasn't until 1030... So we got up early only to have to wait for 45 minutes! However I did get to witness the children's morning exercises! Now Beidajie is a small school with a mere 1,400 students...! Small?! Watching them all march in sync is quite a sight to see!
Anyway the time had come to face the music of my class of 60! Thankfully I had some familiar faces in my class! We played the snowball game where I get everyone to write 3 interesting facts about themselves on a bit of paper, screw it up and then we have a paper ball fight for a few minutes, then we each pick up one and take turns to work out which ball belongs to who. This idea sounds great on paper and I was excited but when the first ball was unfolded to contain the following three facts my heart sank.
I am from China.
I have black hair
I have no brothers or sisters
Apart from the awkward distinguishing between 10 of these sets of facts, the 45 minutes went really well! I said goodbye to the class only to have 60 confused faces turn in my direction, then one of my kids from my afternoon class told me that I still had 45 minutes left... Having been assured that I would only be teaching for 45 minutes, I was suddenly feeling grossly unprepared. However teaching in China seems to be a lot of improvisation and I got a game of bananas going. I elected a student and they could only answer questions posed by the rest of the class with 'bananas'. The kids loved it! I also dug out some photos and got them to ask questions. By the end of an hour and a half I barely had the attention of half the class, the rest were sleeping or talking to each other in Chinese, I can't say I blame them...
However it was soon lunchtime! NO CANTEEN FOOD! YAY!!!!!! One of my teachers was taking me out for Mian Pian (like a sheet of noodle cut into squares), a couple of my kids from my afternoon class came too! The food was delicious and the teacher paid which was even better! After food I asked my kids, Jenny and Vincent, to help me send some post cards in the post office. Needless to say this was ridiculously complex due to China being China but eventually I managed to send them! We then went to the supermarket as Mike wanted me to get him a few things, I also got some chocolate for Jenny and Vincent as a thank you for helping me in the post office.
We headed back to school and I began to set up my Harry Potter lesson!
Now I hate to blow my own trumpet but my lesson was AWESOME. I put all of the children in houses and we began the House Cup Competition! We had 'Alphabetical Order of the Phoenix' where they had to put some Potter themed words in alphabetical order. We described the Hungarian Horntail. We played a game called Voldemort, where those with wands had to catch others and make them do things using the 'Imperio' curse. Naturally Gryffindor won, closely followed by Ravenclaw, then Hufflepuff and Slytherin. The kids loved it, they got so competitive!
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| Jason being sorted by The Sorting Hat |
Now came the new evaluation stage of the lesson, for the last hour the kids had to write an evaluation in English. They varied in quality but all were very positive. Yay me!
Wednesday- Xiguanjie!! Made my way to town as normal and met my teacher, Erin. We walked back to school and she asked me if I wanted to join in with morning exercises. Why not? Now Xiguanje has over 2 thousand students so I guessed that I would just blend into the crowd. That was a stupid idea. Morning exercises quickly became lets watch the overweight, uncoordinated, white teacher try to copy us. I had fun though and wasn't perturbed by the 50 odd students videoing me on their phones, who knows I could very well go viral!
After the exercises and sweating profusely I made my way to class! Now the first lesson went well as it was only 35 minutes long. The second lesson seemed to go well up until the snowball game, when a friendly paper ball fight quickly transformed into lets throw things at the teacher... Pens, pencils, pencil cases, all were fair game apparently. Not cool Class 2 Grade 5.
Lunch was amazing, 6 of my students took me out! Sophia, Amy, Steven, Rita, Hillary and Alex took me for beef noodles. The food was nice and the company was incredible. I love these kids! They are just so funny, they kept talking about who each other fancied. It was hilarious! They paid for my noodles so I decided that I would buy them chocolate, they tried to pay again but I said that if they paid I would make them write a 3 page essay in English. That shut them up! Haha!
Harry Potter went down just as well, although we didn't get to go outside and play Voldemort. Gryffindor won once more (sickening isn't it?), Hufflepuff came second, Slytherin third and Ravenclaw came last.
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| The Houses, complete with mascots. |
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| Sophia being sorted! |
We then headed upstairs to the computer room to write our evaluations, I was all ready to help but I soon realised that they were writing in Chinese... They then used a translator to get the English, so in fact I was there to translate Chinglish to English! To say that it was challenging would be an understatement!
So my first two full days are under my belt and I am exhausted, I forgot how exhausting this teaching is! I better get used to it though! Oh and we got paid 4000RMB (£400) today for April! YAY! MONEY! Now I must go to bed!!!!
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