Another quiet day...

Today has been quite quiet - the kids are still having exams so we've not had any lessons again.

Besides sleeping and reading Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell I've been quite productive today. I've managed to complete my first Open University assignment of the academic year and submitted it - there were some pretty weird questions such as 'What does the term ‘quantisation’ mean in the context of representing images and sound on a computer' and 'Even where a quantity is fundamentally analogue, it is possible that a measuring device may display it as though it were discrete, for the convenience of the user. Explain in no more than 200 words how this is done, illustrating your answer with two examples.' - help! I think I've managed to answer them OK, will just have to wait for the marks to come back to see.

I went to the market down the road for tea today again - it's a fantastic place - it's like a huge open plan factory building with an indoor market inside with stalls selling fruit, vegetables, noodles, bread, groceries, Chinese dumplings, general food, jewelery and loads more. Outside the market, and right the way up the main street in Nanshan there are snooker/pool tables every 5 meters or so - there aren't any bars around here so I guess playing snooker/pool and possibly cards is about the only thing to do.

I've not got much planned for the weekend so don't be suprised if it all goes quiet on the blog front - I may have a walk up to the Buddha again the the tourism district if the weather is nice - will get me out of the apartment and have some exercise.

Yantai

Yesterday the lessons were cancelled again so Ellie and I decided we'd go into Yantai - it's the nearest city and it's about 2hrs away from the school in Nanshan. We told Franny the teacher here what we were planning on doing and she looked horrified we were going to try and get there and back by ourselves - we managed it. Well, actually I think a lot of credit has to be given to Ellie, her ingenuity and the Chinese characters she had written down.

We came up against the first snag in the taxi to the bus station 15mins away, he tried taking us to the shopping centre and we definitely didn't know enough Chinese to tell him it was wrong, a quick phone call to Franny later she translated and told the driver where to go. We got to the bus station and tried to buy tickets - that was the next snag as Ellie only had the characters to tell them she wanted a single to Yantai - and not two return tickets. We got there in the end with one of the bus station workers who spoke a little English.

When we got to Yantai we had to try and work out which bus station we were at (as apparently there are two) - so that if we did need to get a taxi back to the bus station we could do) - Ellie pinched a business card from a hotel a couple of doors down so we could show the driver the card so we could get back.

We didn't do much in Yantai, weren't there that long really - we just did a bit of shopping, found a Wall Mart - so I bought some typically Western food (pizza... :-) and then we just had a wander around Yantai exploring - we found a nice park with some Chinese pavilions and temples in, old people doing exercise and riding bikes around (I swear OAP's are 10 times fitter here than they are at home - they are more active than me - although thats not difficult!) then we went to the beach (although there wasn't much beach as the tide was in).

We used the ingenious hotel business card idea and flagged a taxi then caught the bus home. I was a little frightened we weren't going to get back when we were getting the taxi to back to the school in Nanshan after getting off the bus in Huangcheng - the car stalled at least 20 times and it wasn't even when he was in 1st and getting the biting point wrong - we could be going 40/50miles and hour and it would suddenly stall. The amount of times we got stuck in the middle of junctions with him trying to start the car was quite scary! We got back eventually, in one piece - although I think the taxi really did die when he dropped us off as it made a really loud clunk and the driver had to stop completely and go under the bonnet!

Suitably Punished

OK, I think someone has punished me for the jokey 'hard-work' post yesterday. :-)

I was picked up at 8am this morning and driven up to the vocational school - all the kids are aged between 16 and 19yrs old - and the some of the teachers aren't much older. I got shepherded into a classroom as soon as I got there and the woman that picked me up said "There you go, hope it goes well" and then promptly left me for 40mins!!!

It had to be one of the longest 40mins of my life - I taught them about sports (good job I'd done some prep and printed loads of pictures before I came out here) and covered "I like playing....." and just "I like....." - when you're not that confident and you've been chucked in at the deep end it's quite difficult. For some reason they didn't seem to know much more English than some of the kindergarten kids. I found out afterwards they have probably been learning it a similar amount of time and hadn't been taught it right the way through school.

I went straight from that lesson to the next and I resorted to a different lesson plan - parts of the body - this is the lesson the Spanish speaking girl came in and did when we went on the 'Teaching English as a Foreign Language" course in London - only difference was, her lesson was 15mins long with 8 students and I had to find activities to fill 40mins with 50 students in a class! It went better than the first lesson and I had a bit more confidence explaining things.

The funny thing was I was accosted by a group of girls (and teachers!) as soon as I got to the school, swarming round me saying 'hello' and asking where I was from and talking to me. I even got called 'charming' a couple of times - I think I like this place more now. :-)

The next 3 lessons we went down to a school lower down the hill (although still part of the vocational school) and I did the same lesson - I'd worked out exactly what I was doing and could easily fill 40mins and have activities/speaking time for the kids. The staff at this school were fantastic - a lot of them weren't English teachers yet their English was better than some of the English teachers at the Junior and Senior schools down here in Nanshan. They were a really friendly, fun bunch.

There were two Korean teachers - Angel, 22 years old (she didn't have an English name so we made on up for her - she was far from an Angel!), Deerwin, 23yrs old, who very helpfully showed me how to write and pronounce my name in Chinese - now I know why they keep calling me Ree-shard-a! A Chinese teacher - Pei-jingchun, 26yrs old, who was trying to learn English and said he had a love for English music - I listened to his MP3 player and I think a lot went out date along with Vinyl! Still, we had a good old sing-a-long in the English office! And then there was John Steven, 23yrs old, a politics/economics teacher whose English was the best.

We had lunch and then sat in the office chatting, singing, learning English and Chinese - it was good fun.

I was then taken to another school, again still part of the same vocational school, but further down the road where I did parts of the body (again!) and was getting pretty bored with it, I think it showed - either that or kids were just rowdier as it didn't go as well. It didn't help that half had to be taken out for 15mins half way through as the lesson kind of lost it's momentum by that stage and I just wanted to go home!

The final lesson I'd had a chat with the English teacher in the school, who surprisingly spoke very little English (god help these kids!) and asked her for ideas - I introduced myself to the class and spoke a little about myself, my hobbies and where I am from - they looked a little lost and you could tell they really weren't following what I was saying. I split the sentences down so they could fill in the blanks and then got a few to come up one at a time and tell me about themselves - I was quite mean as I picked the ones that looked like they really weren't listening to a word, or were hiding when I was walking around trying to pick someone. There were a few good English speakers, and a few terrible ones but they muddled through it.

We then did a word game called JAWS -its a bit like hangman, but instead of hanging someone - which for some reason is deemed a bit un-politically correct for some odd reason (although it probably wouldn't have mattered out here) - you have a man that goes down the steps every wrong answer until he reaches the sea where a shark eats him. I based it on sports (as I knew from the first lesson in the morning which sports they really don't know over here!) and we muddled through it - they got the hang of it in the end!

Anyway - 7 forty minute lessons in the one day with next to no preparation is enough for me! I'm off to the food market in a minute to get some tea - then I might go buy some more lager!

Hard days work

I'm sat here with a beer, chocolate & crisps after having a hard day at work - Well, 25mins teaching anyway :-D

I did a lesson on animals today with the younger kids in the Kindergarten - I'd printed a load of animal pictures before I came and picked a few today to teach them. We had Zebras, Sheep, Cows, Elephants, Pandas and a few others with them eagerly shouting the answers back and trying their hardest to pronounce the words after I said them - they were extra enthusiastic when they found out they got smiley face stickers when they got the answers right.

Ellie did the next lesson and did colours - for some unknown reason one of the boys just got up and hugged me in the middle of the lesson - the kids are so cute sometimes.

I'm off to the vocational school tomorrow morning at 7.30 - I don't know much about it - just that I'm getting picked up and driven somewhere new. I think these are older ones that are in work and learn English part time.

Yantai

Yesterday Daniel drove us into Yantai - he had a business lunch which for some reason we were all invited to - it was the same people that we went out with the other night - we must have made a good impression! We went to a hotpot/BBQ restaurant where you cook your own food either by boiling in the large hotpot in the centre of the table - or by BBQ'ing the food on the top.

In the afternoon we did a little bit of shopping and then Ellie and I got a taxi to Crescent moon bay in Yantai and walked along the sea front back into town. We went to Jackies western bar for some good old western food for dinner where I had Spaghetti - it was Daniels first taste of western food and he didn't quite know what to do with a knife and fork - he did pretty well though and said he enjoyed it.

I've got no lessons today again so am going into Huangcheng this afternoon to try and book my coach ticket to Shanghai for the 17th November - I booked the flight back to Beijing from Shanghai this morning.