HUAIROU, Beijing Province: Nothing majorly exciting today.. had my two lessons in the morning and did some prep for our Friday tuition in the afternoon.

HUAIROU, Beijing Province: Wednesday - my busiest day... continued with my 'movies' lesson theme, and it went ok! I spoke to Emily about the guy who sat in my lesson yesterday, and it was for just a standard observation, although she was just as confused as to why the guy was taking photographs! She told me about a teaching competition that she's taking part in on Friday, and she asked me to sit in on her class to see if I could make any suggestions (she teach...

HUAIROU, Beijing Province: Only one class today, which is normally my favourite day - and I'd modified my lesson plan, to make it (hopefully) much more interesting & interactive for the students. Unfortunately,. just as the bell went for the beginning of my class - an old man (I'm assuming he was a teacher!) came into the classroom. This isn't unusual, so I waited for him to grab whatever he'd forgotten and scarper - as they normally do, but he picked up ...

HUAIROU, Beijing Province: Back to school again - last week seemed to go so quickly! This week my lessons are on 'Movies' - teaching them Movie Genres, and attempting to get some speaking activities going about their favourite films. They did struggle a bit today, but they are my weakest groups, so hopefully the rest of the week should be OK.

BEIJING CITY, Beijing Province: Got up quite early this morning because we went to Beijing for another day trip! The buses this morning were crazy-busy, and after letting a few go past because there were no seats, we decided just to get on the next one regardless... which unfortunately meant we had to stand up for the hour journey! Not the end of the world - it was definately a full body workout! We met up with Rachael at Bagou subway station, and got a taxi ...