So, every time the last day of term rolls around I take my camera into class and take some photos of / with the kids. I like to have something to help me remember the good times we have. The Summer term of 2011 at Beitang was no different…

So, June 1st in China is children’s day. A holiday to celebrate…well, Children I guess. It seems pretty tough for the kids actually. They have to sing and dance and perform under pressure. But, they’re in the spotlight and they’ll often get some gifts from their school on the day – so, it’s all good I guess. Here are some pics from 2011’s Children’s day celebrations at Beitang. Many of these kids are my students past of present.

So, every summer Beitang holds a sports day. In 2011 there were two. They have the usual sports day for the school, then there is an inter-school sports day for all of the schools in Weinan. In 2011 it was Beitang’s turn to play host. None of the sports were particularly ‘serious’ sports, but some of the various school’s PE teachers were taking it quite seriously…

Ah, the wonders of being almost a year behind with my blog. Things I post about from last year are almost relevant again! Like today’s post; Easter! So, at Aston we like the kids to “celebrate” the western holidays to try and absorb some of our culture. We don’t go into the details…well, in fact, we don’t even tell them anything about the holiday’s religious roots. They just think it’s a holiday about eating chocolate and painting eggs. Well, not too far off…

  
So, those familiar with the blog will know about Beitang Primary School. It’s the primary school that I teach at when I’m not teaching at Aston. Chinese primary schools are very different to their western counter parts. Firstly as the left-most photo shows. There are a lot of students. A lot. Each grade has 7-8 classes. Each class has 60-70 students. And that’s “small” class-sizes. Beitang is one of the best primary schools, it’s “proud” of that class size. Anyway, there are 6 grades in primary school, so conservatively thats 6*7*60 … more than 2,500 students! My primary school (Hayes Meadow Primary School, represent!) The other two pictures also highlight differences, read on for more…

2012! Bang! That sounds like the future! “Twenty-twelve.” New years resolution? Get on with my blog. So, with no further wait: Every so often I use my photography / cinematography skills to help out the school. Last year this involved making some photos for use on a flier, and also making some testimonial videos that other potential teachers could check out. I’m quite happy with the results, it turns out my classrooms can be converted to makeshift studios quite easily…

I shot this video last week. I was mainly shooting photos at the Beitang sports day, but I thought the photos didn’t give justice to just how many kids were there dancing. While this isn’t a particularly quality video, I think it gets the idea across. 🙂 Enjoy! Photos (600 of em) from the event are in my very, very long que of photos to edit and blog.

It’s (or, it was) that time of year again. When we introduce our students to the strange and weird customs of Halloween. As always, the kids really embraced it. I guess it’s a pretty cool holiday – you get to dress up as whatever you want, and then people give you candy. What more could you want? As usual this proved a goldmine for photos, so… enjoy!

Wow, tomorrow would be the one-month anniversary of having no posts on the blog. Oops. So, why the long silence? Well, busy, busy, busy! I have 1800 photos worth of blog posts on their way, highlights include heading to B’s hometown again, my parents visiting, and, oh yeah — I got engaged! 🙂
However, let’s kick things off with something that happened months ago; the last day of Beitang! Beitang is the primary school where we teach for half the year, it was the last day of class so I took in my camera, and it was fun all round…

Needless to say, the next lesson I taught the meaning of irony.