Friday 20th Friday is my hardest day of teaching. Classes of 60 kids, etc (see last weeks rant/post.) Anyway, this week I was prepared for them, so it actually went alright. That was finished up around noon, I grabbed some KFC with Rob at lunch (I’ve been craving western food lately…) and then headed home […]

Wednesday 18th Again, no school – w00t! It was a really, really nice day, so met up with my new friend from the university and walked around town and generally lounged around in the sun. It was 27’c and awesomeness. In the afternoon I met up with Dwayne, who had just bumped into one of his […]

Sorry! For the lack of posts. Skating every night is leaving me exhausted, so perhaps I will have to start blogging in the morning? I don’t know, but i’ll figure something out. Saturday 14th Saturday was an 7:00am wake-up for an 8:00am start to the teaching day, with classes until 5:15pm. The day went quite […]

Oh my gawd. Fridays have just become the hardest day of the week. While everyone else in the world says “T.G.I.F”, I hold my head in sorrow. Classes of 60, 7 year old students. 2 hour class length. Learning material that they already know off by heart. Trying to keep their attention is impossible. Argh! […]

Still ill! 🙁 First day of teaching at Batong, the public school. Classes of 20 6-7 year olds. The class is CRAZY. A primary school bigger than my university. About 8 buildings, each 4-5 stories, a huge courtyard where every morning all the students amass ( a lot of students, in the thousands easily ) and […]

Today, a revelation! Finally found out why my leg has been hurting for the past few days: CAUTION: Photo contains copious amounts of inner-thigh flesh. Vegetarians / easily offended need not apply. that said, click here to see my nice bruise. For the less brave, my upper hamstring is sporting a nice 20cm-square Africa-shaped corned-beef-looking […]

😀 So, Woke up, still with my cold so had a lay-in until about 11 to try sleep it off – didn’t work. Headed into school to pick up my pay, then headed to the duck shop to meet up with the guy I’ve dubbed “Dwayne” (his Chinese name sounds like Dway – ne) As […]

Woke up Monday with a sore throat, hurt like hell to swallow. As the day progressed I had a case of the sniffles. Had quite a lazy morning, I watched a movie or two, had a flick through some of my class text books, and listened to some music. In the afternoon Tim was feeling […]

Started the day with a PC3 class. Teaching 5-6 yr olds is awesome. They’re full of energy, and they do the funniest things. Their parents are also in the classroom, and the parents seem to appreciate my slapstick teaching style. Thanks to some rescheduling I finished the day at about 15:30hrs. Me and Tim went […]

First day of teaching = done! It went better than expected, I really, really enjoyed it! The kids were great, and everything fell into place quite easily. Both kids and parents are really respectful of teachers in China. The children eagerly say “lao shi, lao shi!” (teacher, teacher!) when they know the answer to something. […]