First Blog entry!

I, and my other fellow teachers, have begun teaching here at Pingxiang College, Jiangxi Province and it's scary/crazy to think that we have been in China for almost 1 month now! Already, so much has happened but, I should start at the beginning, as before coming to Pingxiang, we flew to Beijiing and spent 12 days there taking part in a Language Summer Camp.

I can remember really quite clearly arriving at Heathrow on a Thursday afternoon, saying a brief, nearly tearful goodbye to my family (I managed to keep it together!) before meeting with some of the other teachers on the same programme as me; Ben, Christina, Bethan and Abi. We flew out together to Beijing which was pretty good; hats off to British Airways and their film selection, arriving on Friday morning. We were then met at the airport, met some other teachers from other flights as well, and were taken to our hotel, which was in the Shunyi District of Beijing, about an hour away from the city centre. We arrived, unpacked, introductions were made etc, followed by a welcome meeting in the evening. During said meeting, we were given a schedule for our days in Beijing and were allocated into groups of 5/6. We were also told that on Saturday, we would be going to various middle schools in the area, to be begin our teaching, which came as quite a big surprise/shock to all of us!

So, the next day, bright and early (also a bit of a shock to most of us) we were picked up in mini-buses convoy style from the hotel at 8am. I had been placed at Shunyi No. 3 Middle School which was about a 5 minute drive from the hotel, together with 4 other guys; Matt, Seth, Dan and Paul. We arrived, met the Headmistress and all the students taking part in the summer camp , and then allocated to a class. The phrase 'Being thrown in at the deep end' sums up perfectly our first day's teaching in Beijing, especially for me, as I had no teaching experience apart from what I'd learnt when doing the online TEFL course, and had to go from that, into a class of 20 13-15 year olds and teach them for 6 hours!! Nerve-wracking as that was, we managed to get through the day and looking back, it could have gone a lot worse than it did!

Anyway, think that'll do for starters - Beijing Part I. I don't have any pictures at the moment - I know, I know but I'm working on it & hopefully some nice people will help me out. So much happened in Beijing so before I get onto Pingxiang and what life is like here, there's still the trip to the Forbidden City, Tian'an Men Square & the Great Wall, and the night out, which included dancing to a techno version of YMCA. Oh yes.

lots of love xxxxxxxx