Candy Theives and Mickey D's

Seriously my kids are candy whores. Not that it bothers me, I'm glad because I bought waaaay too much candy. Of course it's only day two in this holiday fiasco and it seems that I will have to buy some more before the week is over.

First of all.....let me know if this is a better template to read these blogs. I've been getting.....complaints.....about the last one hahaha. I didn't mind changing it, I needed something orange.

Saturday we made the excursion out to Dongmen..or should I say I made the excursion out to Dongmen by myself to meet the rest of my shameless crew who couldn't wait a bloody hour for me to finish my training center classes. Failures. I have no patience with these people. I am uber polite, both me and matt are really two of a kind I think and I see it now. Very rarely are these kids considerate or thoughtful, only once in a blue moon. I understand that they had to come back around 5 but it's the principal of the thing. Plus if they had waited for me I would have shown them a faster way. It took them nearly 2 hours to get there while it takes me just under an hour. Oh well, serves them right for not waiting. I got there by myself and everything. I'm sort of glad that I am learning to travel by myself instead of sticking to the group like they tend to do, makes me feel more grown up, more on my own.
All in all, shopping in Dongmen went rather well. We found some cute clothes and I learned that even in China I still tend to have a monochromatic wardrobe of blacks, whites, and greys....must fix that. I also bought some Miyazaki DVDs because no matter how low I am, Miyazaki makes it all better.

Sunday was quiet. I spent the better part of the day cleaning and organizing lesson plans, getting ready for the week. It's rough being a teacher, not to mention a teacher who doesn't have their schedule for the year mapped out for them as a lot of my teachers growing up had. I have to make up things as I go along - which sort of blows. I did have two China encounters Sunday that made up for the quiet however.

Around 2:30pm I decided to leave my cave and head out to wal-mart, find some food and then internet cafe. I stop in front of a bulletin board near my school and start to stare blankly at the Chinese characters trying to recognize any of them. All of a sudden one of the male teachers walks up to me and beckons me to come into the room where they've been having that giant teachers' test all weekend. "Weishenme?" I keep asking him in Chinese which means "why?" I can't understand what he wants me for, because they're obviously busy and I'm just the wandering foreign teacher. I enter the classroom which resembles many of the auditorium classes from college days and notice that most of the teachers have finished for the day, the only few that remain are some of the ones that I know and a few from different schools. Also the headmaster and the vice principal. None of whom speak English. I explain to them a little that I intend to go shopping and eating. One of the men (who this weird little obsession with me) says that he wants to go shopping with me sometime. I say sure, knowing what an awkward situation that would be. Suddenly help arrives in the form of my contact teacher. I tell her that they attacked me and I'm not sure why. We all chat for a while - her acting as translator - me picking up on more and more Chinese than they realize. I can't wait until the day when I can yell at them for talking about me in front of me in Chinese. Can't. Wait.

Eventually I bid them adieu because they need to get back to work and I make my way off for food. I cop out and decide that I'll be having McDonald's...1. because it's edible and 2. because I'm not too nervous about eating there by myself, and 3. because I know what the food will taste like. I sit down with my food and my book and enjoy myself. About 10 minutes later I'm passed by a small group of kids in party hats heading for the counter for ice cream. I get the obligatory double take from them as they pass. I keep reading. When they come back my way to return to their seats I get a couple "hellos!" to which I give the natural response and continue on reading.

About 5 minutes later I am distracted from my story by the same "hello." When I look up it is the same gaggle of kids. The oldest one is holding one of the party hats out to me and says shyly, "this is for you." Wide eyed and smiling I thank her and then they all giggle and rush back to their area of the MacDonald's. I stare at the hat, it's green with a hippo on the front of it. Too cute. What to do? Well, I had to go find these little buttons before I left. So I abandoned my empty tray (which by the way is what you do here, you don't bus your own table and believe me, it's really weird) and headed in the direction they went. I come upon their party in the back corner of the restaurant, all full of giggling and happiness. It must be someone's birthday (I;m kicking myself because I forgot to ask at the time) so I ask if I can take a picture with them. I manage to get the three older girls in the photo and we all put on our awesome hats. They tell me their English names and that they attend Anle primary school (which is actually right next the MacDonald's). I tell them who I am and where I teach. It's about this time that the teeniest one looks at me and says "my name is sissy and I am FOUR!" You haven't seen cute until you've had this done to you by a four year old Chinese little girl. Oh my God. Precious. I thank them for the hat a tell them goodbye and skip all the way to the bus stop.

I'm going to interject here. Mom tipped me on to something that I realize I may or may not have covered and that is the atmosphere of my teaching experience. Every class I walk into is packed with between 50-60 students. It is me against them, there is no translator, there is no helper teacher - just me and them. We get along relatively well, as long as I keep them fairly entertained. If they act up I usually have to quiet them down with a smart and loud "ANJING" which means BE QUIET. Usually when I say it one or two other kids in the class will scream it until they shut up. If a specific kid is acting up I'll sit him in front of the class until he can prove that he can behave. If the whole class won't settle down I explain that we can either do the fun thing that we're doing or we can do book work (which I don't like and they don't like). I've only had to resort to canceling a fun activity in one class so far. I have my good kids and I have my bad kids and I have favorites in both of these groups. I also have my smart mouths who are generally really bright but like to mouth off. In my opinion if they're mouthing off in English okay, Chinese not okay. My younger kids I tend to have more fun with because they are more easy-going and enjoy almost anything. However they are more often the ones that I have trouble keeping quiet most of the time. They do tend to be the cutest little things though. Their ages range from 10-14. The older kids tend to be anywhere from 13-16 and tend to be a little rougher around the edges. Sometimes they don't want to do things, or they find it boring. It really depends on the class with these guys. I'm going to have to do more topic lessons with them and more things to get them engaged in conversation. Some of my older kids are really bright though I have to hand it to them which makes it fun to teach them as well.
So far in my classes we haven't done too much but we've covered introductions, greetings, describing, some brief American culture and now Halloween. Next week they go off to military training for a week so I get a bit of a break. The week after is mid-terms I've been told. There's no rest for these kids!!