Almost famous

The weather has, thankfully, got much cooler and I am writing this with the window open, wearing jeans and long sleeves.  Things are sooooo much easier when you don't have to do them in the baking heat.

I was thinking the other day about how kind and polite (most of) the students here are.  Some examples of kindness from the last week:

1.  I arrived in one class to find the teacher's desk dirty and covered in chalk dust.  This, by the way, is not unusual.  The classrooms all seem to be dirty and I spend my life covered in chalk and trying to dust myself down without spreading more chalk on myself.  Anyway, a student rushed forward and wiped the desk down with some tissues before I had to chance to put my stuff down on it.

2.  Power cut on Monday evening about 5 or 10 minutes before the end of class.  When it didn't come back on in a minute or so (having tried to get the mobile phone wielding students to sing a song (!)), I abandoned class.  Two of the students stayed and waited for me to pack up and then guided me on my way with their mobile phones.

3.  Took speakers to class in order to play a song from the textbook via my mp3 player.  Of course there is a CD and a VCD to accompany the book, but no such thing as a CD player or a high likelihood of my getting my hands on one of the multi-media classrooms.  The speakers are quite heavy and as I was leaving the building, the class's form tutor (? - often called 'Head Teacher' here, but that's just confusing for me!) told two of the students from my class to help the 'laowai' [foreigner] with her bag...

Now I know that that last example was due to prompting, but I'd had offers before to help me with my stuff.  In fact, one of the boys from another class actually did help me (unprompted) on a different day.

As for fame, in Pingixang it comes easily and un-asked-for if you are not Chinese or Chinese-looking.  The cooler weather has left me able to have my hair down again (after weeks of having it off the back of my neck at all times).  I'm not sure if this makes me more noticeable or not, but this morning R & I attracted quite a lot of stares, though remarkably few 'hallloooos', it has to be said.  We had a fan club of small girls in the dumpling restaurant at lunchtime, but they were quite cute.

Well, we're on holiday now and the campus is noticeably quieter as some students have gone home.  Not sure what we'll do yet.  Today we went on a shop investigation to a new department store that actually sells proper coffee, Ferreo Rocher (sp?) and plastic cheese.  Hurrah!

It's all about the little things...

Chaos in the classroom

It feels a little bit that way sometimes, particularly in speaking classes.

Now, don't get me wrong - I'm not saying they're out of control.  In fact, they come to heel pretty quickly and if any of them step out of line (talking when I'm talking, for example) they soon stop if you single them out.

However, it's just a bit mad at times.

Today, for example, it was really windy.  As I wrote before, it's ferociously hot here at the moment, so the breeze was definitely welcome and there was good reason to leave the windows open.  However, it also meant that every piece of paper not anchored down soon flew off the desk.  I am used to this to a certain extent, as the ceiling fans are usually on right now, but today it was about five times worse than usual.  Joy.

What else?  A few common things: 1) I forgot my lesson plan!  Oops.  Luckily my good memory did its job and I remembered what I'd planned.  More or less.  2) Dropped the board rubber on my denim skirt.  I hate chalk!  I spend soooooooo much time dusting down my clothes and often just end up spreading more chalk.  3) Caught my nail on the black board - I HATE that feeling.

Oh, and my mature student decided to make today his first class.  Oh yes, I have an engineer who works for one of the mobile phone companies coming to my first-year oral English class to improve his English...  Not a problem, but I'm not sure how keen he was on singing 'Stand By Me' with the rest of the students.  Tee hee.  I enjoyed it though.

One more good thing: in English classes at university in China there tend to be very few boys - the most I've got is 5 out of a class of about 50.  They also, almost without fail, sit together at the back of the classroom.  And, I'm sorry to say, are quite often the laziest.  So today I was more than happy to see four boys in the front row of my class.  The reason "It's because we're confidence[sic]."  Hmm... must work on the whole noun / adjective thing.  Next week...

Back in the Middle Kingdom

First of all, apologies for not having written this sooner. I promised lots of [may be a slight exageration - a few] people that I would get writing my blog again once I was in China and I've been here nearly three weeks now and not written a thing...

Smooth journey, collected successfully from Changsha Airport and taken into Changsha, where we stayed overnight, in order to have our compulsory medicals the next day. All went more or less smoothly and it appears that we're both fit and well. Phew! Only slight hitch was when R was rushed from the blood sample room to the toilet for a wee sample and mid-flow his arm started off bleeding again. What to do?!!! Haha.

The College is busy and full of students (big surprise there!) We had some respite - only one day's teaching the first week and the first year students missing for the first two weeks. (They have to do military training and we could see them on the football pitch every day, getting shouted at by the soldiers!!)

Teaching has been fine so far. Getting used to the noise of 50+ students all speaking at once in an Oral English class. I quite like it actually, providing they're actually practising their English and not taking the opportunity to have a sneaky chat with their friend in Chinese... I only have Oral and Writing classes this semester, which makes planning relatively easy, though teaching can feel a little repetitive at times.

The apartment is slowly taking shape - we've cleaned a lot and the cleaner has been in twice. Still killing the odd cockroach, but I believe (optimistically) that they are getting fewer and fewer. There was also a scary flying spider last night, but I'm sure that's a one-off!!!

Will post photos soon when I've taken some.

It's good to be back in the land of cheap DVDs, good food and being semi-famous.

Altogether now: Halllooooooooooo!