Those who can't do, teach...

this saying is bullshit! teaching is hard.  anyone who says this about teachers is a) an idiot and b) has never taught in their life.  That being said i've realized that i have mentioned very seldom the reason why i am here in the Chinas: to teach English to the children of this country.  At first, i'm not gonna lie, i was drained completely and scrambling for time and ideas.  However, as the semester has worn on i've adapted to the planning that's required.  i've even developed new techniques for discipline, including but not limited to, slamming the textbook on the front desk to command attention and throwing a note back at the person who threw it across the room, and considering my bad aim actually hitting them in the head!  Below is the motto of the Huzhou New Century Foreign Language School: 

"Read Diligently and Write Attentively, Behave Kindly and Be a Noble Man"

but i think a better translation would be "person" because that's what the last character means

...

Last week was so great it made up for all the crap i've had to put up with from the administration and uppity students 

(it was my birthday and the students went all out, more about this later). i've begun to develop more of a relationship with my students and other kids on campus; they try to teach me Chinese and are down-right shocked when i use Chinese in class, even if it's just to say the page number! During a break one day last week i attempted to show some 12-year-old boys how to correctly pass a volley ball, they started to get it and it was really fun.  Every time i walk down the hall or stairway i'm greeted with the usual hello! how are you? and sometimes surprised to hear good evening appropriately used in the right time frame.  i don't think i've said hello so many times in my life; considering the over 2 million Chinese in Huzhou and the fact that there are maybe 25 foreigners in the city and almost everyone wants to say hello when they see one, i don't think the number will be curbed anytime soon.

i wanted to share a little bit about the campus that i teach at and the schedule that these children keep.  Living on campus (not for long, maybe, we'll see) i know more intimately than i would like the habits and schedule of my students.  so it starts:

• they awake at 20 after 6 in the morning so they have time to get ready and eat breakfast. then sharply at 7:30am the loud speaker goes, playing cheesy, probably very patriotic music for the students to jazzercise to in military fashion.  Sometimes there also little pep talks in the morning with a teacher leading chants of "I'm the best!" 
  
• first period begins promptly at 8:20am and i have class at this time every day of the week with 7-year-olds, needless to say after being awake for two hours they are tired, but somehow have full bursts of energy when we play a game!
• these kids have class until 4:35pm with only 10 minute breaks in between each class and an hour and a half lunch period.  
• They get dinner time until 6pm.  This usually means that they wolf down their food and then go out to play with their friends for as long as possible.  
• This is so because at 6:20pm they begin self-study, when they go back into the classroom and silently do their homework while a teacher sits and guards them to ensure no talking, it lasts until 8pm for the younger ones and 9pm for the middle schoolers.  
• Lights out for everyone between 9:30 and 10pm! 

Can you imagine having this kind of schedule when you're a kid?  It makes me a little more sympathetic to their plight during class, but still i have my limits, you know.  + it's hard to be sympathetic when the torrent of children screaming down the stairs at the crack of dawn makes so much god-forsaken noise and then, on their way to bed they insist on banging on my door and running away into the crowd of no-pants, tighty whitey wearing, pre-pubescent boys in the hallway!

Enough about that... so actual teaching consists

of me drawing many pictures, playing musical chairs, teacher says and pictionary with the little, little ones; a lot of hangman and acting out dialogues for the Primary 5 classes; and the most fun is to be had in class 704, Junior 1.  They have the best textbook, they're the best behaved and they have the best command of English out of all the levels of my students.  Not to play favorites, but really, there are only 22 of them and i see them three times a week, so yeah, i like them best.  We do many different games like, telephone, 20 questions, and we did a scavenger hunt with Gino's class; it was a lot of fun for them i think to just get out of the classroom. 

i give them treats to celebrate their individual

birthdays and i think this might have had some influence on their decision to give me a birthday party during their homeroom period.  Over the weekend three students gave me the cake to the left.  Apparently at one of the cake shops they have art cakes, which means you get to decorate it yourself!  How cute is this winky, dribbly-faced panda bear, i ask you? The party was on my real birthday, so fun, they were really creative

 and cute! + they gave me all kinds of presents, and we all know how i like presents! 

It was a big celebration with lots of games like musical chairs, they made me act out clues and then they guessed what it was, we also drew a face on the chalkboard blindfolded and they taught me some Chinese like "ni xihuan hanbao ma?" 

meaning "do you like hamburgers?" There was more cake and one of the students played the traditional chinese violin-like instrument called the erhu, very beautiful! What a great way to remember my first birthday overseas! Then the festivities continued but that will have to wait for another post...