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I don't think I mentioned this, but several weeks ago, on our way back from visiting Ned and Matt in Zixi, Nicole and I made a new friend called Bob on the train. Bob is the headteacher/owner of a private English primary school in Jiujiang and came to talk to us because he wanted to find some real-life white people to help out in lessons at his school at the weekends. We've since visited the school to check it out and been back to 'teach' several times, so I'll try to give a brief description of the school for those that are interested.
The school is housed across six floors near the centre of the city. It's half really nice and modern, and half unfinished and slightly dodgy looking: the ground and first floors, where the lobby and teachers' offices are, are smartly fitted with glass partition walls, neat oak bookcases and the like; on other floors, there are dusty ladders and buckets clustered in the stairwells, and the students sit on little wooden stools. There are motivational slogans in English and Chinese hung all up and down the stairs: "the best start is doing" "we are all capable of achieving our best", all bedecked with pictures of bees and butterflies, and the classroom doors are decorated with over-sized paper Santas holding 'Feliz Navidad' signs. Classes only take place on Saturdays and Sundays, because the classes at the school are supplementary to those the students already attend at regular school. Three groups of students come each day, each group staying for two hours of lessons. These groups are split into classes by age, the classes varying in size from between eight and twenty students. The youngest students (that I've met, at least) are eight and the oldest thirteen. So far, I will admit that a lot of this sounds quite suspicious, however the school's teachers are genuinely really great. Every single one of them is not just friendly and enthusiastic enough to be a Blue Peter presenter, but their level of English is seriously impressive - possibly the best I've encountered in China. They know all of the students by name and teach with lots of songs and speaking activities, which has made a really obvious difference to the students' confidence in speaking: there are eight and nine year olds at this school who are able to talk to me better than teenagers I've taught at No. 2 Middle School. At the end of their class, the teachers lead the students to the street outside the school where they sing a goodbye song together whilst they wait for the parents to arrive. This is one of the cutest things I've ever seen! There are two main songs, both of which involve marching on the spot, fist-pumping and a combination of English and Chinese, but one ends with "I go to my home, to my home" and the other with "I can do my best, I can do it, I can do it!" I'll try to film it sometime because it really is adorable.
Mine and Nicole's role so far is just to be led around from classroom to classroom showing the kids what a real wai-guo ren (foreign person) looks like and asking/answering basic questions. Honestly, it's quite awkward. We only spend ten minutes or less in each classroom, introducing ourselves and having a questions session, listening to kids read dialogues from their textbooks and correcting pronunciation or playing a quick game. This week I went alone, practiced colours with the students and played a single round of Hangman with each class. The classes are always friendly and eager to talk, and some of the kids are unbelievably sweet, but it's pretty obvious that our only use is as novelty white people. Oh well. The money I earn (roughly £10 an hour, between £20 and £50 in a weekend) is financing my trip to Hong Kong in mid-June and, whatever the reason, everyone does seem to want us there, so I guess it's not too bad.
Cute stories so far: one little boy wanted to ask me why my eyes are blue when his are black. I explained that it was because my mum and dad had blue eyes, his teacher helped translate, there was a brief pause and then a little girl stood up to ask why my parents had blue eyes. In another class, the tiniest little boy you can imagine got up to ask me a question and then just grinned and told me, "you is beautiful!" (He's obviously one of my new favourites.) I've posted a video from another class where more students tried to welcome me by singing a special "Nice to meet you" song their teacher had taught them, although they actually were pretty bad and their teacher had to carry the whole performance by herself. Earlier today, when I was teaching, the teacher had two little girls come to the front of the class to teach me the class' favourite song, something about hopping and climbing and being an apple which involved the three of us hopping and climbing and pretending to be apples. I'm not quite sure what was going on; they were very keen to teach me but they were terrible mumblers - I think they just liked the hopping bit, really.
I'll post some pictures as proof of the adorability soon!
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