My First Week of Teaching

Hey guys!

The computer lab isn’t open today (‘tis Sunday), so I can’t reply to your questions or news until tomorrow, but I can give you the skinny on current events in the good old school.

Our rooms are chilly but not…cold, exactly, except for Laura and a chosen few who have properly functioning heaters in their rooms (which means that the temperature hovers just below ‘decent’), and overlook a scenic construction site. It rains, and yesterday snowed, almost constantly, and so the scenic construction site is also full of muddy water and backlit by moody gray skies. Fireworks herald the beginning and ending of construction, so distantly we hear what sound like gunshots at sporadic hours. We’ve each got a washer in our rooms, but we’ve been warned that they are pretty harsh on clothes, so most of us hand wash then hang our clothes up on poles above the bathroom area. The squatter and shower in a tiny room to the side share a tile floor, and the water heater above them provides exactly 15 minutes of hot water an hour (supposedly) for us and the conjoining room. I am now a master of the two-minute shower. We’ve also got a little fridge/freezer, a microwave, and a non-functioning TV. Our floors are tiled, and surprisingly nice, and I’ve already described the beds- which no longer earn my adulation. I have discovered that comfort is relative to your exhaustion, and after 10 hours of make-up sleep, the sleeper finds that the spine has assumed the flexibility of a steel girder. The muscles thereof are a tight as piano wires, as contorted as a pretzel, and as sore as Cailyn’s legs after a long lacrosse practice. Do NOT throw out the mattresses, guys! L

Hm…Changzhou. It is dirty, VERY dirty, and full of people who sound angry all the time. I’m serious, some people smile at each other and make such very angry sounds that you think a fistfight is just waiting to happen. On the other hand, the kids are nice. The kids…wow. They are about the rowdiest, loudest, most hyper kids I’ve ever seen outside of a nursery. Chinese reserve? Not with the kids! The teachers don’t try to control the behavior, so I guess that’s the norm. I can’t help but think, though, every time I hear them shouting in the classrooms or halls that this would never fly in an American school, especially a boarding one. But even with the crazy behavior, they’re really very sweet and cute, and they’re just so precocious! *squee!*

The guards at the school like us, which is great, because the kids like us, which is awesome. Andy, our chef, also likes us, and therefore he makes sure we don’t have to have chicken feet for every meal. Yay!

Since we are all kind of feeling our way around still, we aren’t going to try to find a church today, but we will have a lesson in Laura’s room.

Oh, I just had a thought- who is feeding Christopher?

Later-

We had awesome testimonies after the lesson on service, and then everyone kind of napped until dinner (which was delicious). Dinner was an egg soufflé, which tastes like a spongy egg, chicken nugget-bits, chicken in sauce, beef-and-peanut toppings, and the staple food, rice! No chicken feet, hallelujah. I’m pretty glad Andy likes us!

OH. Before I forget! You know those ‘English names’ that every Chinese person is getting these days? Well, you’ll never guess who names them- we do! We, the English teachers, in the first semester of teaching, get to assign our students an English name which they will have for the rest of however long they are in school, and then beyond! Some of the names of the students are sweet, like Cherry, Jim, and Heron, but some of the kids got some pretty…odd names as well, like Roxas (a video game character), Sully (her name is from the guy in Monsters Inc), Bruce (another girl), and Michal Jackson (must I expound on the weirdness? Well, the kid is a little weird himself…). Yeah…we weren’t here for the first semester, so we didn’t get t name any kids, but it’s still pretty awesome.

Anyway! Goodnight, love you all! Calissa

Monday! (9:30 am)

Hey guys, what’s up? I started my day at five in preparation for my first day as an ELE teacher, much to the dismay of my roommate who does not start teaching until 12pm, and waited for 7 (and my first Chinese breakfast) with glee. Unfortunately, it seems they do not serve breakfast on Monday, as today is the day students return to the school, and presumably they are fed at their weekend homes before being dropped off. Blegh. I really wanted to try that gross porridge everyone complains about…

In other news, I will probably be called into a class to be the object lesson soon, which is what ELE teachers are for. I’ll practice conversations with the older children, give spelling/vocabulary tests, read chapters from books, and generally help out! This is terribly exciting for me, since I haven’t been in contact with any kids older than 7-8 years since I’ve been here. I hope I make a good first impression on the teachers and kids, and that the teachers who are teaching the English classes can actually speak it well enough to tell me what to do (this is a bit of a problem here).

Umm…yeah. Not a lot going on presently, but hopefully that will change. <3

Did I mention that Laura is teaching us how to say fun stuff in Chinese? We’re learning such useful expressions such as, “What?!”, “I don’t like you”, “Delicious!”, “Not _ yuan, _ yuan!”, and “Thank you”. I’m still a little shaky on everything but the “What?!” and “Thank you”, presently, but maybe I’ll be able to embarrass everyone with nonsensical Chinese on the cruise, right? LOL

And jumping to another topic, everything is four stories up and requires stairs to get there. It’s just like climbing to the Lofts at SVU for every class. Oh, the unspeakable joy. I better look good in a bathing suit after this.

Love you all! Calissa