Changed my strategy for teaching today and slowed down the story writting making sure that everyone was at the same place for each task. It must have been incredibly annoying for anyone who is any good, but it was very satisfying to end up with a plot for everyone even if I didn't quite manage to get them to do the final task of writing the story! Had our first Mandarin lesson this evening, so we went home after school, got changed and then went to meet Miss Ca...

Woke up this morning with a horrible cold and went into school feeling really sorry for myself. The morning lesson went okay, but the class were really noisy, and I just didn't have the energy to keep telling them to be quiet. Went for hot chocolate at lunchtime to cheer me up and then spent the afternoon in the office trying to work out how to make a lesson about English surnames interesting! The lesson this afternoon was even worse and I only managed to get ...

Back to school and all the teachers wanted to know how I had found Datong. Most of them have never travelled anywhere in China except to visit family, and so to them it is a really big thing. Got the text book we will use for the next 8 weeks, and my topics are Stories, Laughter and Beauty - it's going to be fun finding activities for them!! Had to pick up our wages this afternoon, but despite the school dictating how much we will get paid for the work with th...

Got woken up this morning at 8:00 by firecrackers which appeared to be going off right outside my window. This usually indicates that a new business is opening, but seriously, who cares at that time on a Sunday!! Gave up trying to sleep at 9 and spent the morning searching again for lesson inspiration. This evening we treated ourselves to Pizza. We hadn't been for about a month and so appreciated it all the more - particuarly all the cheese as this is really ...

Spent the morning trying to find some activities suitable for my lower ability classes for this week without much sucess and then went to meet Hannah for lunch. We decided to try out some of the street food which seems to be in abundance at the moment, and settled on some potatoes which had been crinkle cut finely and deep fried (much like chips only they hadn't changed to the golden brown colour) and then mixed with a combination of 4 spices. They were really ...