Rough 'n' Tough
Hello again!
Thanks to my wonderful, super-duper editor-in-chief, my main man, Cheryl Li, who has just celebrated her 24th birthday (yay! Cheryl's a big girl now!), I can now VIEW my blogger. Woo-hoo! Has that ever made my day. A whole month in China and I can finally SEE what I write! And then I realised how much junk mail has been put in my "comments" - is there any way of getting rid of that? Don't bother, junk mail people out there: I'M NOT INTERESTED!!!
Today was a rough 'n' tough day (new expression). I didn't get to bed until later-ish (10:30 PM) and then I couldn't fall asleep for some reason, and then the huge pipe noises - due to neighbours using the water system - started up at 6 AM and woke me up. I was already tired yesterday, so today I was exhausted. Life's not so great when you're exhausted. Whatever. Class was class. I let my students leave early. Not so bad. I had lunch with a class monitor and we joined two of her friends in a Korean restaurant on top of one of the campus cafeterias. I taught a new class this afternoon - they're freshmen (first years) and boy was it tough. Many of them are super shy and don't know a lot of English. They don't speak much at all and it was difficult to get the class going...argh...I need to revise my lesson plan big time. Some people wonder why I bother. Apparently the foreign teacher I'm replacing used to play a song at the beginning of every class and get the students to write their feelings about it. You'd think they'd be happy to get someone who actually cares about them learning something, but they don't want to practice their English. They say they can't speak and then they don't even try. Terrible.
Enough bitching. Everything outside of class is wonderful, and I guess I should concentrate on that.
This past weekend, we (Geoff, Dave and I) were supposed to go see the Great Wall but we ended up going to the new Summer Palace (huge park built by an Emperor's concubine, called Xici, at the turn of the century). We took a boat there, which was nice and relaxing. We walked for three hours around the park. It's quite large. We didn't even make it to a pagoda-type thing (one of the main attractions) because we couldn't be bothered to find the entrance (not evident enough, I suppose). We were tired and a bit cranky coming home. Dave and Geoff were in fact becoming sick. They spent all of Monday resting up, preparing for the Great Wall which I hope they got to do today (that was the plan anyway, haven't talked to them yet).
Last night we went for Peking Duck at a restaurant not too far from campus. It was delicious. There were ten of us around the table - 3 Koreans, 3 French, Melanie, me, Dave and Geoff. Dave speaks Korean and Geoff doesn't speak much. :-) The common language was definitely English. The duck was really very good. There was too much to eat, though. Tons of food.
So once again, Happy Birthday to Cheryl! And happy travels to Dave and Geoff (they're leaving tomorrow - Wednesday - at 4 PM). For my part, I'm in good health and hanging in there.
Oh yes, pictures to come soon. I've taken 243 so far, but just haven't quite figured out how to transfer them onto this blog...well, I know how to, but actually doing it might be a different story.
And now you can comment and I can read them! So comment away!
Thanks to my wonderful, super-duper editor-in-chief, my main man, Cheryl Li, who has just celebrated her 24th birthday (yay! Cheryl's a big girl now!), I can now VIEW my blogger. Woo-hoo! Has that ever made my day. A whole month in China and I can finally SEE what I write! And then I realised how much junk mail has been put in my "comments" - is there any way of getting rid of that? Don't bother, junk mail people out there: I'M NOT INTERESTED!!!
Today was a rough 'n' tough day (new expression). I didn't get to bed until later-ish (10:30 PM) and then I couldn't fall asleep for some reason, and then the huge pipe noises - due to neighbours using the water system - started up at 6 AM and woke me up. I was already tired yesterday, so today I was exhausted. Life's not so great when you're exhausted. Whatever. Class was class. I let my students leave early. Not so bad. I had lunch with a class monitor and we joined two of her friends in a Korean restaurant on top of one of the campus cafeterias. I taught a new class this afternoon - they're freshmen (first years) and boy was it tough. Many of them are super shy and don't know a lot of English. They don't speak much at all and it was difficult to get the class going...argh...I need to revise my lesson plan big time. Some people wonder why I bother. Apparently the foreign teacher I'm replacing used to play a song at the beginning of every class and get the students to write their feelings about it. You'd think they'd be happy to get someone who actually cares about them learning something, but they don't want to practice their English. They say they can't speak and then they don't even try. Terrible.
Enough bitching. Everything outside of class is wonderful, and I guess I should concentrate on that.
This past weekend, we (Geoff, Dave and I) were supposed to go see the Great Wall but we ended up going to the new Summer Palace (huge park built by an Emperor's concubine, called Xici, at the turn of the century). We took a boat there, which was nice and relaxing. We walked for three hours around the park. It's quite large. We didn't even make it to a pagoda-type thing (one of the main attractions) because we couldn't be bothered to find the entrance (not evident enough, I suppose). We were tired and a bit cranky coming home. Dave and Geoff were in fact becoming sick. They spent all of Monday resting up, preparing for the Great Wall which I hope they got to do today (that was the plan anyway, haven't talked to them yet).
Last night we went for Peking Duck at a restaurant not too far from campus. It was delicious. There were ten of us around the table - 3 Koreans, 3 French, Melanie, me, Dave and Geoff. Dave speaks Korean and Geoff doesn't speak much. :-) The common language was definitely English. The duck was really very good. There was too much to eat, though. Tons of food.
So once again, Happy Birthday to Cheryl! And happy travels to Dave and Geoff (they're leaving tomorrow - Wednesday - at 4 PM). For my part, I'm in good health and hanging in there.
Oh yes, pictures to come soon. I've taken 243 so far, but just haven't quite figured out how to transfer them onto this blog...well, I know how to, but actually doing it might be a different story.
And now you can comment and I can read them! So comment away!
posted by Caro at 6:07 PM
1 Comments:
you couldn't read my comments before? man, do i feel like a chump.
;)
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