Teaching update (Marcus)

Well we found out this afternoon that we start teaching from Monday afternoon onwards. We weren't told freely, we had to ask. Mr Pan drove us to Metro, the huge supermarket a little way away and we asked him when we got back if he knew what we were doing. He said he would ask Raymen - who is the head of the English department, who promptly came over to our apartment with some timetables. God only knows how we would have found out had we not asked.

Initially we are only teaching 7 or 8 classes for the whole week. On the good side, they're all completely different classes, so the one lesson will do for all of them. The other good news for us is they are all in the same classroom. This is most excellent as all the timetables and numbers and so on are in chinese. If we were to run around to different rooms at different times, it would quickly get over-whelming. All of our classes this week are in the afternoon, within the 1pm->4pm type bracket.

We are to teach oral english. That's it. Not written, not reading. They want us to encourage the students to speak english and improve it with i guess our complete fluency and western accents. Raymen has mentioned the way I talk a few times. Firstly he joked that he hoped i would speak louder, then earlier today that I speak slower. Now I will be so focused on my own speech that I will hardly be able to bloody speak english myself.

We are not being provided with any books to teach from. We were (or are) supposed to come up with our own courseware/lessons. We were told we would be given a book, or the school would take care of it - but we arent. It's not a massive issue, but for first time teachers, having to come up with our own lesson plans makes the difficulty factor a lot harder. On the bright side though, we can collaborate together, and it looks like we're teaching a mirror image of each others classes. All this week, our classes are identical. After day 1, we can discuss how they went and improve on them as needed. For next weeks classes, we can put together a new lesson, then roll that out to all the classes again, and/or this weeks lesson for potential new classes. We will be teaching more and more classes weekly - though our contract(if that still exists!) was for I think no more than 17 classes per week, which equates to around 15 hours of work.

I think everything will work out though, the school has been very supportive so far. They have at every instance jumped to make us comfortable and we have been very appreciative. We find ourselves really liking Mr Pan and wish to buy him a gift. He made mention in passing comment that his wife brought him back a purse(heh i promptly explained to him that purse = woman, wallet = man) but it was too narrow to fit the chinese currency - which is about the same size as our paper money of old. I showed him my wallet and slipped his 100rmb note into it and i think he was impressed. I would like to somehow get him an Australian wallet. He's a lovely guy and has done so much for us. We get on really well with him and i think he's starting to really enjoy our company. He does so many kooky things that we're always cracking up. His english is very average but through every means necessary we generally understand each other. For those extra difficult descriptions, he pulls out this little pocket translator, mucks around on it for like ten minutes, then holds up an english word which is usually only the vaguest hint of what he was meaning - but usually does the trick.

Anyway im off now to further experiment with making a heat bag. Courtney and I have been scouring the local supermarkets and the massive Metro for hot water bottles. The bed is much better, but I think we have some kind of allergy to hopping into cold beds. Cant find the bloody things anywhere! Them or dish racks...you know, the kind you leave beside your sink to keep freshly washed dishes in to dry. So we thought to try something different...we have spare pillowcases in the drawer....and an enormous bag of rice in the kitchen....heat bags are full of rice eh? Rice + pillow case = heatbag! Whack it in the microwave and the result is potential hot bag of rice to warm bed at the risk of the bed smelling like a rice dish to which at this point we really dont give a shit what it smells like. Our first test run was a success, but as we heated it further the microwave stopped working.

We had a close call earlier where our beloved lounge room heater and bedroom heater were on at the same time. The fuse wiring is very delicate here and i was worried it had blown the circuit and we'd be back in the freezing cold dark ages again. Thankfully it had just tripped a circuit breaker or something.

Enough rambling, good night, and it has been great speaking to a few people on Skype. With the quality of our internet connection, I was completely surprised that I could have basically full real-time video and perfect quality sound speaking to mum for a full hour. The net at night seems to be horribly slow - late afternoon is probably the most ideal time. But anyway, goodnight!