I've had my first week teaching now, 19 lessons a week of grade 8 students, all about 14/15 years of age and all Ok so far. We've had Teachers' Day when we had a big meal with one of our schools and our first 'performance'. Just poem recitation and a bit of Chinese, which went down well, getting a big cheer. It's amazing to see Chinese schools in action, the kids doing their eye exercises to music at certain times of the day, the sleep time after lunch when each ...

This has been a trial

I think I may be up and running here, but not on my own computer, so here goes.I'm waiting for a local 'expert' to have a look at my computer as I've been having trouble with the Internet here in my flat. This one belongs to my flat-mate,Jade, and is not jinxed by the Fletcher techno curse. I've been in Suzhou about a week now and it seems a good place to live and light years away from Wenshan. I'm sharing a flat (with someone whose mother is 40) next door to th...

I've just about made it through the training program here in Shanghai, realising I'm soooooo on the wrong course but it's going surprisingly well. I've been having lectures on how to teach and even had teacher training for beginning teachers. Fortunately my mentor let me off after a couple of lessons and so I've had plenty of time to stroll around here and practise my Chinese a bit. In fact, after the initial shock of being the only oldie around, things have been...

I've arrived in Shanghai after a good flight and have spent my first couple of days here realising my age. I could see after the British Council meeting in London that I'd be more than double the average age of all the other language assisatants here and felt a bit apprehensive about that, wishing the first two weeks to be over as quickly as possible. We're on a two week training course in the Pudong area of Shanghai, learning Chinese from scratch, learning teach...