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Today was the 28th annual National Teachers Day in China - as we were told at 9 this morning, in the same phone call that explained we would be teaching Tuesday's lessons instead of Mondays and the last two periods of the day were cancelled, because we would be at a meeting with all the other teachers in the school and taking part in an important ceremony. No complaints from me, because this meant I only had to teach one lesson, and I got to avoid the Senior class I'm terrified of for another day!
Nicole and I each only had one lesson that day, hers directly after mine, so after my lesson had finished (they gave me a rose, woo) I went to spy on hers. I narrowly avoided making a fool of myself at the beginning, when I sat down at the back of the room on what turned out to be a broken chair and nearly caffled on the floor. A couple of students noticed, and one boy gave me his chair, before fixing my dodgy one with his pocket screwdriver (?) for himself, so that was nice. It was a loud class, but all of the students were really friendly and excited to have us there. At the end of the lesson, one boy came over with his English book for me to sign and I made the rookie mistake of signing it whilst backed into a corner. After they saw me sign his book, every student around me leapt up with their notebooks and pens and surged towards me until I was hemmed in on every side. I have no idea what was happening to Nicole at this point, because I couldn't see past the students and their stationary. I tried to get a photo of them, managed to get one with some of them, then started wading through the sea of students towards the door, with them circling and pushing around me, still trying to get a signature on their workbooks. Nicole had to come to the rescue and pull me out because I was doing such a rubbish job of shoving past people. The celebrity experience!
From there we went to the teachers' meeting, which was held in a conference room with criminally uncomfortable tiered seating and staffed by two photographers and one cameraman. Right at the start, Nicole and I were each presented with little red envelopes containing our Teachers Day bonuses - 500yuan each, which for me works out at around £10 for each lesson I've taught! We had lots of photos with the headmaster, Mr Hu, showing off our red envelopes, then we got to sit and listen to about 45 minutes of very fast Chinese until our next appearance. All of the new teachers in the school - us included - have been assigned mentor teachers from the senior staff, so we were all invited to the front. We newbie teachers presented our mentor teachers with enormous bouquets of flowers, and were each given a gift-wrapped book in return. (Mine and Nicole's have turned out to be 600-page histories of the school, written entirely in Chinese characters.) Then we all sat back down to listen to another hour of speeches. Nicole managed to sneakily read her Kindle (tut tut) and I stared creepily around the other teachers, hoping one of them would be doing something interesting. No such luck, although there was one guy who grinned the whole way through and cheerfully tried to start rounds of applause at every opportunity - including after his own short speech. I also had a brief commentary on the proceedings from a young teacher sat next to me: turns out the groups of teachers being called to the front were being given certificates and cash rewards for outstanding teaching and/or the performance of their students in various exams and competitions. One guy even got a metre-wide brass plaque!
That evening, Nicole and I were taken to a swanky hotpot restaurant (so swanky that the staff are required to wear little plastic mouth-guards that they must raise before talking to customers) by my mentor teacher, Mrs Liu, the teacher whose class were making the film for National Teachers day. This was also played in the meeting, although thankfully they'd cut most of the bits with us in! Apparently the headteacher, Mr Hu, has told Mrs Liu that as I am his daughter, Hu Tong, she must teach me especially well... and make sure I am better than Nicole! Dinner was really good, although as usual we hadn't a clue what we were eating, and then we were whisked off to the Chinese equivalent of Debenhams to gasp over how expensive everything was and be bought lots of biscuits, cakes and chocolates by Mrs Liu. Such fun!
Cheerio,
Ella xxx
- comments
the other Simpson (Anna) Anything I post will sound boring and bland in comparison to your updates, but feel I should leave a trail of my stalk. Everything sounds amazing! Also planning to start a blog too, if I can handle the technology, so you will have a cyber-gap-yah-rival to contend with. xox
Angie I really wonder what it is with you and chairs?!!! You just must pick always the one's which are broken :-)... I had a glimpse of memory of you collapsing under the table when having dinner at the family Pinsent round table in our flat. Thank god this did not happen surrounded by chinese students. Cheers. Angie
Ella Angie, noooo, don't remind me! but Anna, I love a good gap yah blog, make sure you link me if you do start one so I can do some reciprocal stalking ;)