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As of today, it is exactly 2 months since I and the other PT volunteers arrived in China. I realise 2 months doesn't sound like a big deal, but it's a marker to show us how much time has already passed and, I think for this reason, I've got very excited about it. Nicole and I marked the occasion with China-versary icecreams from MaccyD's and I also received a parcel from home, which made my day. I'm not exaggerating when I say I skipped home from school after the gatekeeper gave me it! Highlights of the parcel include Werther's Orginals (!!!), some more clothes from home (although they're so prettily wrapped that I'm saving the unwrapping as a treat for next week, or possibly my birthday. Sad, I know) and a banner to wear on my birthday. Unfortunately the banner does say "Happy 30th Birthday", and the jury's out on whether I can pull that off.
Teaching the last two weeks has varied. I spent another week on English names with my Junior classes - the idea was to help them learn each others' names, but it basically meant playing lots and lots of hangman, which my students love. They are all incredibly competitive, especially when I drew Teacher vs Class scoreboards, and god help any student who let the class lose a game through failing to recognise when their own name was being used. Using just the names of students in the class became too easy for the fastest classes, so I let them use famous names as well: Einstein, Pythagoras, Lady Gaga, Ronaldo... one particularly smart kid chose "Piaget" for his turn at hangman. The class had got as far as Piage- and they were all asking me for help, whilst the student at the board asked me "do you know it?" repeatedly. After he'd filled in the last letter, he asked me again if I knew who Piaget was and tried to prompt me by telling me he was a famous psychologist. He seemed surprised when I admitted I had no idea, which made me feel like a prize idiot. My favourite part of last week had to be walking into one of the Junior 1 classes that had annoyed me last week to find that they'd all made and decorated signs for themselves with their English names. One of them had also come to find me before the lesson with a speech he'd prepared, that read: "hello teacher. I am sorry, I do not like the name Walter. Please can I have the name James?" - it was gratifying to see they'd actually been interesting in the lesson after all!
This week I have been teaching combined "Places in town" and "directions" to my Juniors, then talking about Halloween with my Seniors. I completely ripped off the lesson plan for directions from a lesson we had in Lanzhou; I taught my class direction words, then made them clap in the direction I shouted out. I've experimented with different ways of doing this in each class, sometimes having the whole class doing it at once, sometimes having several students stand up to compete with each other - if they get it wrong, or are much slower than the others, they have to sit down until I'm left with a winner. After a while, I started introducing direction combinations; instead of just "up", they would have "up-down-left" to clap out, and then got the rest of the class supplying combinations for performing students. This entertains them far more than it should, for far longer than it should but I have had some really funny lessons with it. When they do it properly, you can make the clapping students look as though they're dancing, and it also works well as a reprimand for any students who are talking. I also used this punishment method for a boy I caught blowing condom balloons in one of my Junior 2 lessons, although the rest of the class were too hysterical with laughter when they realised what he was being punished for to pay much attention. The "places in town" parts of my lessons have gone pretty well too, although it turns out that, contrary to what the textbooks suggest, the Junior 2s have learnt all the vocab already. I started the lessons by practicing some of the vocab, then letting students brainstorm more "places in town" for us to use in sentence building. There is always at least one joker who comes to write "W.C" on the board - turns out, 13 year olds aren't as original as they like to think - which is absolutely fine by me. When it comes to the sentence-building part of the lesson, I make sure to include "He likes to go to the W.C" as one of the example sentences, whilst pointing at whoever wrote "W.C" on the board. This has raised the funny-or-cruel question between me and Nicole again, but it's a very popular move with the my classes and being able to elicit raucous laughter from 60 plus kids is one of my favourite parts of this job, so I have no plans to stop doing it!
Teaching-wise, I've also identified about 4 children who I would quite happily throw out the window and had one really awful lesson. They were loud, several kids kept fighting, several boys made a girl cry... and I couldn't get to the bottom of any of it because of the language barrier. I managed to get the names of several students who were misbehaving and found a Chinese teacher after the lesson to explain it to, but I still don't know what I'd do in a lesson if it happened again. It'll be a long time before either Nicole or I are able to speak enough Chinese that it will really help our lessons, although we do spend at least an hour a day trying to teach ourselves now. (This week, we've been trying to learn the names of fruits and vegetables, so we recite the vocabulary to each other as we take a morning walk around Nanmenhu lake. Lots of funny looks from passersby as we wander around chanting, "tomato, eggplant, cucumber, grapes" etc., but also a thumbs up from one old man who was clearly impressed by our efforts!)
I'm afraid nothing desperately exciting has happened since I last wrote. We've started our tutoring sessions with Bettina's daughter, Rainy, who is ridiculously cute, although we're yet to be paid. Julie, Zoe and their children have come round for dinner a few times, where they told us that Nicole's dad looks like Vladimir Putin, and one of the Chinese teachers at school keeps turning up to and taking over my Senior lessons (he speaks no English so my attempts to explain that I should be teaching, not him, have been fruitless). Our nightly walks/runs around the lakes continue... and continue to be hilarious, as there are still elderly Chinese men practicing vigorous Elvis-style hip rotations on every corner, but we have to set off a bit earlier now, as we've been told off for being out too late aka past 9pm. Unfortunately, our plans to visit Nanchang have had to be put off indefinitely as it turns out Winston hasn't sorted our visas after all, but we have started talking about plans for our Spring Festival travels with other volunteers, which is exciting!
Anyway, lots of China lovin'
Ella xxx
- comments
Jo Glad the package arrived safely... sorry about the 30 - no one does 19th banners, although they should. Hope that you have resisted - will resist - the temptation to open that envelope until 6 Nov. Been doing lots of 'communication' on my 4* course this week, but the sound of wind and helicopters barely count as obstacles compared to what you have to overcome in a class of 60 chinese. All strength to you, wonderful daughter....XXXXX
Mrs Putin Another great blog Ella - keep them coming
Diane Kitchen Very disappointed that you could not use that well known Little Spanish dittie donde esta la piscina por favor? To teach directions as well as the very special one an only prepositions song featuring the In between the legs action for 'entre' don't pretend you have forgotten! It 's forecast snow here Tom! Bad times! Happy birthday for the 6 th.
Gran It's great to have your interesting blogs, Ella. I upset Dad by crediting your writing talent to your Gt Aunt Edith but managed to redeem myself by adding 'through you'!!! Looking forward to the next one. Had a nice trip to Durham for Megan's 19th - she seems well settled in and very much enjoying it all! Think of you often. Luv
Ella Wait, so you bought the banner knowing it was a 30th birthday one? Oh madre! Diane, unfortunately I did waste the opportunity to teach donde esta la piscina, but may manage to squeeze vamos a la playa in at some point later in the year... glad you enjoy the blogs granny, and don't worry about offending dad - Ali & I have trained him up, he's used to it now haha xx
Padre del Norte Not only have you inherited the writing talent but the tendency to violence too! This is why I never became a teacher so, as Mum says, "All strength to you", though not in the same way. Glad you haven't got your classes to say what your Dad looks like. Love the blogs, very vivid and very cheering..