Hello again, long time huh. Give me a chance to explain ... I haven't been keeping up my blog as I would like to but by no fault of my own. Recently there was an earthquake off the coast of Taiwan severing some underwater cables that stretch over to the mainland. The cables provide China with internet sites and phone communications from the westren world. Since the cables were cut 2 weeks ago by a 7.2 powered earthquake my ties to the rest of the world have been limited. The phones where brought back on days after the quake but the internet has been pretty slow on coming back to normal. So please forgive me, and I shall keep the wires full of infromation for you ...
So New Years's is past and all of you are probably ready to return to work and school, back to the grind. I'm Back into the grind after a much needed 4 day holiday for New Year, and i'm preparing my students for there coming examinations. Yes that's right grade 3 students have full exams in English, Chinese and Math. So I have my work cut out for me, to make sure they do real good on there examinations. But I do have experiance so it shouldn't be a problem. But what keeps me happy is the 1 month we get for holiday for Chinese new year which starts at the end on Januray. I'm looking forward to it, it shoudl be a good time, mom is coming and I will show her around Wuhan, then off to Shanghai, then Beijing, then ending off in Yunnan province looking down from tiger leaping gorge ...
So, barring anymore earthquakes I should be spitting information on more frequently and i'm also going to start teaching you a little chinese too ...
Saturday, January 6, 2007
Thursday, December 21, 2006
Pictures
Here are some pictures of me and my students. It's Thursday before christmas and my Christmas gift from mom and dad is great, I've been snapping pictures left and right.
I haggled for a half an hour for my camera and go it at a really good price. So heres acouple ( with more to come) pictures for you to take a look at.
Thursday, December 14, 2006
Seasons Greetings
Well with the holiday season already here and it's kind of hit a stall in China. There is decorations and some jingle bells playing in the backround while I eat stir fried vegatables and spicy meat dishes that are far from the normal holiday tasties you are all enjoying. But hey who can complain, I get Chinese food everyday so all is not lost. But it's all ok the holidays never get me down even though i'm far from home, even though I miss my family, i'm planning on cutting west staright up the great Yangtzee river to my destination of YiChang. YiChang is a city of about 600 000 people as apoosed to where I live which is 6 or 7 million. I'm going there to witness the engineering marvel that blocks off the entire Yangtzee river. Yes the three gorges dam, the biggest dam in the world. Hopefully after navigating the train station and the countless motorcylce taxi's i'll be standing on the top of this huge block of concrete with a massive amount of water flowing beneath my feet. I'm excited to take of and do a little traveling but I only get one day off from school, and the students still go to school that day so I will fall behind a little on my lessons. But who cares because Chinese New Year arrives at the end of January and i'm off from school for a month (long time I know but who's complaining not me I still get paid). Also mom will be making he final landing approach into Wuhan around then and i'll be there to pick her up and take her to show her the sites of Wuhan. Well, i've got some marking to do so, I wish everyone all the best for Christam and the New Year, keep checking for new posts and some new pictures after I get back from YiChang.Merry Christmas !!!
Friday, December 8, 2006
The dangers of Hankou and Christmas in China
Christmas is approaching, and wouldn't you know it Santa has broke through into chinese air space and is unofficially spreading Christmas cheer to everyone. Why not, why wouldn't the mostly athiest population of China embrace this holy day.
China and Christmas go together quite well in fact. Why not, it's a great reason for people to go out and spend money and in China not have all that damn religion in the way. So malls and department stores hoist up there trees to lure those hip young chinese into buying a little Christmas cheer.
so, I decided last week to take a trip to Hankou to get some new sweaters because I didn't want to get caught without some layers when this place goes from cold to freezing. I only know the name of one road in Hankou which I told the taxi driver to take me to. This ended up being nowhere near where I wanted to go, and I was dropped into what we will call the maze.
Ahh the maze what wonders it holds, everything you need from bathroom tiles to fake plants. Packed alleyways in which after about five minutes me and the partner in crime were lost in a sea of people carts and craziness that would drive most to maddness faster than you can blink an eye. But wait, don't you dare blink an eye, oh no,(A) you ethier get more lost and die of starvation trapped between a jeans store and an alarm clock enporium, (B) get robbed and not even know it until you emerge from the maze and find you don't have any money to make it home, (C) get run over by a man furious and speeding with a delivery of 250 fake Gucci hand bags.
So well lost in the maze I was starting to lose all hope, when what to my wondering eyes appear a mechanical Santa Clause and no reindeer. Yes there stood Kris Kingle, five feet tall and ringing his bell, a light of hope for me as extreme hunger started to set in. Well let's say I was charged and decided NO I would not die here. So with new found strength I charged out of the maze unharmed. But don't get me wrong and don't underestimate the maze it has claimed many-a-soul and it's navigation is trecherous, but you can buy anything you want there ... anything ...
In closeing I guess my spotting Santa actual relates me back to China and Christmas.
I think that anyone who wants to have Christmas should go ahead, religous or not, Christmas is a holdiday for everyone and i'm glad it's shared around the world as a festive time, even if you have to spy it out on the other side of the world amoungst fake trees and mechanical Santa's ...
China and Christmas go together quite well in fact. Why not, it's a great reason for people to go out and spend money and in China not have all that damn religion in the way. So malls and department stores hoist up there trees to lure those hip young chinese into buying a little Christmas cheer.
so, I decided last week to take a trip to Hankou to get some new sweaters because I didn't want to get caught without some layers when this place goes from cold to freezing. I only know the name of one road in Hankou which I told the taxi driver to take me to. This ended up being nowhere near where I wanted to go, and I was dropped into what we will call the maze.
Ahh the maze what wonders it holds, everything you need from bathroom tiles to fake plants. Packed alleyways in which after about five minutes me and the partner in crime were lost in a sea of people carts and craziness that would drive most to maddness faster than you can blink an eye. But wait, don't you dare blink an eye, oh no,(A) you ethier get more lost and die of starvation trapped between a jeans store and an alarm clock enporium, (B) get robbed and not even know it until you emerge from the maze and find you don't have any money to make it home, (C) get run over by a man furious and speeding with a delivery of 250 fake Gucci hand bags.
So well lost in the maze I was starting to lose all hope, when what to my wondering eyes appear a mechanical Santa Clause and no reindeer. Yes there stood Kris Kingle, five feet tall and ringing his bell, a light of hope for me as extreme hunger started to set in. Well let's say I was charged and decided NO I would not die here. So with new found strength I charged out of the maze unharmed. But don't get me wrong and don't underestimate the maze it has claimed many-a-soul and it's navigation is trecherous, but you can buy anything you want there ... anything ...
In closeing I guess my spotting Santa actual relates me back to China and Christmas.
I think that anyone who wants to have Christmas should go ahead, religous or not, Christmas is a holdiday for everyone and i'm glad it's shared around the world as a festive time, even if you have to spy it out on the other side of the world amoungst fake trees and mechanical Santa's ...
Wednesday, November 29, 2006
The Sleepy Hitman
So I have been pretty busy the past three weeks and haven't been talking the bus (which actually isn't a bus at all but a 12 passenger chinese van) to school in the morning, Mondays and Tuesdays my classes don't start until 10:40 so it gives me some time to sleep then just take a taxi to school. With all the show lessons and stuff going on these past weeks the Driver whose english name is "Don" has probably all but forgotten me ...
... But it seems of late i've been getting back into the daily routine of taking the free morning ride to the school which leaves at 7:30 in the morning. But don't let the title of this post fool you even though I'm damn sleepy in the morning the title does not pretain to me at all, but to our esteemed bus driver "Don"...
... Don must navigate through the worst traffic I have ever seen in my life, daily, with his precious cargo of foreign teachers. He must travel through 3 schools in the morning dodgeing people, bikes and speeding cement trucks bent on getting their cargo to the job site as fast as possible...
... Don has developed a little problem, which I will speculate on a little bit later, the problem is that Don can't seem to wake up in the morning. He is driving us to work and his eyes blink and an close slowly as we roll down the road, and his head wavers from side to side. Even at stop lights he cathes a few Z's and sometimes we have to wake him up. Scary no ...
... So what is Don doing to be so damn tierd in the morning. I've come up with 3 options ranging from the probableto the maybe inprobable. 1) Don just has a hard time getting up and or falling alseep at night and some simple medication would probably help him. 2) Don is up all night drinking chinese rice wine and gambling playing Ma Zhong (mah-jong). 3) Don is a hit man of some sorts for the chinese mafia and has a night life of things we couldn't imagine...
... If the problem doesn't get better, I have a great canadian solution for Don. I'll brew up some of Canada's finest coffee (Tim Horton's) and make him a cup everymorning, that should wake him up. And if that doesn't work I have another canadian solution, a swift, cold and swooping right hook to his jaw will do the trick...
- Matt (NOV/30/06)
... But it seems of late i've been getting back into the daily routine of taking the free morning ride to the school which leaves at 7:30 in the morning. But don't let the title of this post fool you even though I'm damn sleepy in the morning the title does not pretain to me at all, but to our esteemed bus driver "Don"...
... Don must navigate through the worst traffic I have ever seen in my life, daily, with his precious cargo of foreign teachers. He must travel through 3 schools in the morning dodgeing people, bikes and speeding cement trucks bent on getting their cargo to the job site as fast as possible...
... Don has developed a little problem, which I will speculate on a little bit later, the problem is that Don can't seem to wake up in the morning. He is driving us to work and his eyes blink and an close slowly as we roll down the road, and his head wavers from side to side. Even at stop lights he cathes a few Z's and sometimes we have to wake him up. Scary no ...
... So what is Don doing to be so damn tierd in the morning. I've come up with 3 options ranging from the probableto the maybe inprobable. 1) Don just has a hard time getting up and or falling alseep at night and some simple medication would probably help him. 2) Don is up all night drinking chinese rice wine and gambling playing Ma Zhong (mah-jong). 3) Don is a hit man of some sorts for the chinese mafia and has a night life of things we couldn't imagine...
... If the problem doesn't get better, I have a great canadian solution for Don. I'll brew up some of Canada's finest coffee (Tim Horton's) and make him a cup everymorning, that should wake him up. And if that doesn't work I have another canadian solution, a swift, cold and swooping right hook to his jaw will do the trick...
- Matt (NOV/30/06)
Friday, November 24, 2006
Show Lesson Madness
Ok, this week I had to do a show lesson in front of all my co-workers ( that's 14 foreign teachers and probably the same in chinese-english teachers.) Also my bosses watched too. Little did I know also that this show lesson would take place in the school auditorium, a big gaping room that holds more people than Taylor feild ( not really but it seemed like it when I walked in.)
I had to pick a class to teach the lesson to. I have 4 classes avalible outof the 7 classes I teach. No way will I pick my grade 4 classes because me and them are still working out some disapline issues, in which I teach them like an army commander, US Marine Corps. rules do apply. So they are out of the picture. That leaves my grade 3's whom I had last year. But who do I pick, 3A is smarter than 3B, but 3B doesn't have horrible habit of yelling out answers ( and they have my secret weapon, a girl named Samiao, who lived in Canada for 2 years and probably speaks better english than me, ho ho.) So I went with 3B, for the reasons above.
So now with everything set the children filled into the giant room and we began the lesson. I was flying solo with noone to translate for me because my chinese teaching assisant had a meeting to go to ... It all went very well, every student raised there hand for every question. The lesson was fun to it was talking about "favorites". The children loved it at one point I had a micrphone and we had our own little talk show going and all the teachers loved it, and at the end I invented a game of blackboard soccer, which the children loved and my Boss Mr.Ye loved too ( he wanted to playing the game, ho ho.)
All in all it went perfect and flawless, everyone said the loved it. Now I only have 2 more show lessons left because next week is when parents come in and watch your class. Yes, that's right 44 parents who pay 10,000 RMB for there children to learn english will be watching my every move. Well they can bring it on, ill be ready, let's just hope they are mwahahah ...
I had to pick a class to teach the lesson to. I have 4 classes avalible outof the 7 classes I teach. No way will I pick my grade 4 classes because me and them are still working out some disapline issues, in which I teach them like an army commander, US Marine Corps. rules do apply. So they are out of the picture. That leaves my grade 3's whom I had last year. But who do I pick, 3A is smarter than 3B, but 3B doesn't have horrible habit of yelling out answers ( and they have my secret weapon, a girl named Samiao, who lived in Canada for 2 years and probably speaks better english than me, ho ho.) So I went with 3B, for the reasons above.
So now with everything set the children filled into the giant room and we began the lesson. I was flying solo with noone to translate for me because my chinese teaching assisant had a meeting to go to ... It all went very well, every student raised there hand for every question. The lesson was fun to it was talking about "favorites". The children loved it at one point I had a micrphone and we had our own little talk show going and all the teachers loved it, and at the end I invented a game of blackboard soccer, which the children loved and my Boss Mr.Ye loved too ( he wanted to playing the game, ho ho.)
All in all it went perfect and flawless, everyone said the loved it. Now I only have 2 more show lessons left because next week is when parents come in and watch your class. Yes, that's right 44 parents who pay 10,000 RMB for there children to learn english will be watching my every move. Well they can bring it on, ill be ready, let's just hope they are mwahahah ...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)