First English Corner

It finally happened. I got to meet real students of mine!
I arrived 5-7 minutes early, hoping that the computer would work and that I didn't have to write down the discussion questions on the board. It turns out that the computer was in a case, and a student had to open it up for me. In the case were a monitor and all the controls for the projector and the screen. Lucky for me, it all worked!

Over the course of the English corner, I managed to write down all 16 different names of the people who attended (well... actually there were two different people who both had the same name so that was only 15 unique names). I think I managed to get them talking to each other in English, but when they talked softly, I'm pretty sure a lot of it was in Chinese. Since there were only 16 people, I could ask each one of them to answer questions so they could talk directly to me, but also so that their peers could listen.

At the end of class, I was shutting down the computer and turning off the projector. The student with the keys had to stay until I was finished, because she had to re-lock the computer case. She mentioned to me that they enjoyed the English corner, and that when I smile, it is very cute. ...I had to say "thank you." Oh the joys of China... At least I didn't get the dreaded "Do you have a girlfriend" question yet!

Anyway, let's hope that it only gets better from here!

Not teaching yet... Still not teaching...

Due to teaching freshmen, the start date of actual classes is not until September 24th. This gives me 12 hours teaching freshmen and 4 hours leading English corners. I feel like I have way too much time to goof off and do nothing... Anyway, aside from spending 2 ½ hours today watching Band of Brothers, I figured I'd write a blog post.

When it was still Monday, our entire group (at least all who were able to attend) had to perform at a Teachers' Day show. Yes, there actually is a “Teachers' Day” in China, and it's especially strange for me since I haven't taught any classes yet. So the performance was basically a variety show of poetry, music, and dance. Featured in the show were some students, some teachers, international students, and international teachers (us). We saw girls dressed as cheerleaders dancing, girls dressed in traditional-looking Chinese attire dancing, Chinese teachers reciting poetry, etc. Now our contribution was about 2 minutes long, and it took 2 days to prepare. We put together a routine set to Michael Jackson's “Thriller.” Basically, everybody loved it but said it was too short – we cut the song short so we didn't have 2 more days to finish it. If you are one of the stalkery people, you may be able to find a video on Facebook.

Skip back to Friday. It was 6:00, and we were on our way to KTV. KTV is Chinese karaoke. You rent a room that has at least one TV screen and a couple microphones and a bunch of different lights. Then you pick which song you want to add to the playlist from a touchscreen. We had a few of our local friends organize the entire thing, so some of the songs were in Chinese, but most of them we managed to get in English. Basically it plays a music video with words that come up on the screen. Some of the videos were rather questionable with scantily clad women, others were sad songs that everyone seemed to love for some reason, and a couple of the videos were to rock songs that I personally enjoyed more. Next time I go, I'll give more input as to the songs that I want to hear, assuming there is a next time.

Random things: I had liver for the first time. I didn't really like it, and didn't know what it was until someone told me. If I had to describe the taste, I would say something about it resembling a beef sausage with essence of fish. Something of note – Walmart has cheese here! It is very hard to find cheese, so I'm glad that it's in the store that sells everything. A&W root beer at the import store costs 9.9 Chinese Yuan, roughly equal to $1.55 for a 12oz can. I guess I'm saving them for a bad day. Another thing – Popcorn here does not really have butter. It's all some sort of kettlecorn, which is okay. I just still prefer to have my butter, and we can only get it at an import store.

In closing, I like butter.

-Andrew