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你好 (Ní hăo),
It's been a while since I posted, mainly because nothing that exciting has happened since our October travels, so here is the routine of our average day in Yihuang.
Lucie and I teach at different times; Lucie never has a class before 10.20am (lucky) but on a Thursday I start at 8.15am and on a Monday I start at 9am.
Getting up in the morning involves finding something for breakfast - usually steamed buns or fruit - pulling on a suitable outfit and then cycling to school. I enjoy the cycle to school, though recently I have found the air a little nippy (between 17C and 23C) before 10am, so jumpers are now worn more often (Yay!). My busiest day of teaching is a Thursday (I have 5 classes) so I end up cycling to and from school 4 times.
At lunchtimes (2 and a half hours!) we head back to the flat and either cook ourselves something small (rice and veg) or if we're being lazy have steamed buns and fruit, and then just relax (it's cooler in our flat than outside, though that's actually beginning to change now) until we head back for afternoon lessons.
Teaching involves a powerpoint introducing the topic and teaching vocabulary, an activity for the class to work on themselves or in groups, and then a group discussion. If there is time at the end of the lessons and the class has been well behaved, I let the pupils choose a song and they can just listen to music for the last 3 or 4 minutes - they often try to convince me to sing, but most of the time I can worm my way out of it :P
In the evenings, Lucie and I edit our lessons, go food shopping, make dinner (we are quite impressed with our cooking skills if I do say so myself, with the basic fresh ingredients that we can find, we make some lovely tasting stuff) and then sit and watch a tv episode whilst we eat (usually Game of Thrones, or the latest Doctor Who.) Sometimes we will watch a film, but most often around 9pm we say goodnight and disappear into our own rooms to either skype family or friends, or do more lesson planning.
So this is our daily routine, not very exciting, but we still manage to see something new or different every day, whether it be in school, or cycling to and fro (for example, one morning whilst cycling to school we passed a goat tied to a lamp post, on returning home, the goat was gone, but there was a large blood stain which hadn't been there earlier…).
We have recently been discussing with our waibans the dates of any time off that we will receive before the Spring Holiday in Jan/Feb. Apparently we will get 3 days off at the start of November due to a 'Sports Meeting', so that tagged onto a weekend gives us 5 days off, and we plan to visit Shanghai during this time off. We also get the two days off in each month for exams, though we probably won't go anywhere for those. Tom, our desk officer, will be visiting us at the end of November and for Christmas, we will get Christmas Eve, Day and Boxing Day (Wed-Fri) so we are in conversation with the other Jiangxi vols, and some northern vols trying to plan something for those 5 days. We will also get New Year's Day off, and then about 3 weeks of teaching until the Spring Holiday! We have so much to look forward to!!
Until next time,
再见 (Zàijiàn) x
P.S. We have been practicing a bit of Mandarin, even though our first proper lesson isn't until tomorrow.
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