America in Beijing

I wish we had pictures, but we went to Starbucks today and it was every bit as delicious as I was hoping for. :) Yes, I had a tall mocha frappuccino, something that you can say in English anywhere in the world and be understood. For the twenty minutes that we sat inside sipping our drinks, I almost forgot we were in a different country. In fact, the people closest to us were two men that kept alternating between speaking Mandarin and English- one of the men was American. Then we walked back outside to the cars honking, people spitting, men baring their midriffs everywhere (what, you don't pull up your shirt and let your tummy hang out in the heat? Oh. Chinese men love doing it!) We decided to continue our American streak and stopped in Papa Johns for a dinner of cheese pizza with black olives- semi satisfying because it was familiar, but China really doesn't know how to do cheese (or any dairy product for that matter) so it never tastes quite the same.

So, three more days of training in Beijing, then one day of touring before we get on a train for a 30 hour ride down to Shenzhen- luckily it's a hard sleeper, so we'll hopefully get SOME rest. We both had evaluations again today, and they went well. Martin was told his lesson was “kickass” and Katie said I did absolutely awesome...especially considering my teaching partner decided he was 'sick' today (hungover much?) and just didn't show, so I ended up teaching an hour lesson when I had only planned for half an hour. Yay flexibility!! Those of you that know me well know that I'm not the best at dealing with last minute changes of plans, but clearly China is testing me in that regard. :)

In other news, we've unofficially been told that we'll be teaching junior & senior levels, which was our first preference, so that's pretty great. They had WAY too many people request to be at the senior level and I guess there were only like 8 open spots, so most people are going to end up teaching primary. Things could still change around up until the minute those contracts are signed, but doubtful.

BTW, my students are in LOVE with Taylor Swift. How did she become some cross-cultural pop-country mix star?! Also, I'm a big fan of the fact that any 'Western' sort of place here has old Britney Spears and Backstreet Boys songs usually playing.


Off to lesson plan some more and finish writing some of my newly learned Chinese characters 50 times each. Joy!

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