Today was a day that started off well, I woke up quickly and in a good mood. Then, I had my first class. I have never seen a worse behaved class, in China OR England. There was a group of 4 boys that just wouldn't let up, they were consistently chatting, laughing, imitating me, and hitting each other. I tried my best to discipline them myself, but in the end I had to call Cindy, the Chinese receptionist (though she does a lot more than just reception work) in to give them a dressing down in Chinese. It was embarrassing, and I hated that I had to resort to that... but at least they finally shut the heck up!

My other two classes were awesome though, I've finally grasped that you can't teach each class the same... you have to adapt your teaching to each different class. Now that I've been teaching these guys for 4 weeks or so, I've got to know what kind of teaching works best with the,, what the best ways to reward them are etc... and I've got into the groove :) It's so rewarding when you work with aclass and you can tell that they're comfortable with you, and that they really are getting something out of the lessons.

Tomorrow starts with another good class so I'm looking forward to that. Then the week of madness will be over! Got pretty good classes tomorrow too, so I can't complain. The only one that's a bit difficult is the afternoon one, because it's full of very quiet students, who don't like talking, or listening. But i'll work on them! It;s very bizarre to think after this weekend, I'll only teach them 4 more times... Weird.

Had a bit of drama today... Paul and I had a meeting with Ivy - the manager of the school - about our pay. We'd realised that we hadn't been spoken to about it at all, and we wanted to know where we stood. She then went on to inform us that it's the agency that pays us, not the school.So we were a bit annoyed that we weren't told where the payment was coming from, especially me - seeing as I paid £300 for the 'service option', though god knows what 'service' I was meant to be receiving. ANyway, we left the meeting rather annoyed and determined to figure out what the heck was going on. So we went through all the e-mails that had been sent back and forth, browsed the company's website (which annoyingly - has been changed since we applied) and tried to see if we could figure out what my £300 had actually gone on. We couldn't. So I sent a rather snotty e-mail because not only does the website state that the visa will cost £30 (mine cost over £80), but it also doesn't say what that money is used for. I don't really know what I'm expecting.. but this whole experienced has completely bankrupted me. My ever-suffering parents have become a bank - and I hate that. Don't get me wrong, I don't regret doing this for a minute. But if they'd been honest about the costing etc, I would've maybe thought twice. Anne's inheritence doesn't even cover half of what this trip has cost so far. So we shall see.

Managed to speak to Uncle Andy and Aunt Ginny on Skype this evening which was awesome :) Haven't heard from the parents yet, but did get an e-mail from Dad this morning saying they'd made it to their stopover hotel. So they'll be there soon I gather!

Uploaded my pictures from today, took some pictures in my classes, and also of the office :) Enjoy!!