"Maybe it will rain a lot" and "I want to bird home," the typhoon and round two with my worst class.

Classes were cancelled yesterday due to the typhoon...of course no one told me this, but when I woke up and looked outside the school was dark and there were no children to be found. Instead of just assuming there weren't any classes I called my contact teacher to make sure.
"Oh yes, no school today because of the storm," she told me, adding. "You can relax." thank you, I think I will.
So the day was spent doing not much of anything. The worst of the storm hit to the West of us, so they probably didn't really need to cancell school, but I sure wasn't complaining. The rain was hard enough aparently to keep the school's repair man from coming to fix my toilet like he said he was going to. He lives in my building, he could have just walked up the stairs! Anywho, my power never went out so I spent a good portion of the day online.
Today, the air outside almost felt cool, as it wasn't above or near 100 like it has been pretty much everyday. I had to teach four classes today, two before lunch and two after. Now, the one directly after lunch is my least favorite class. To put it mildly they suck at life. There is a group of boys who love to act up no matter what we are doing, they're English is almost worse than some of the kids a grade below them, and they never shut up; ever. For example, today we were doing travel and transportation so I had them write up where they wanted to travel, what they would do there, and so on. One of the boys would not write anything so I stood by his desk until he wrote
"I want to bird home."
Normally I would have explained to him what it was we were doing and how to fix what he wrote, but this kid was smirking up a storm and clearly knew he wasn't doing the right thing; similarly another boy told me his name was ABCD when I asked their names. They understand a lot more than they let on.
Last time I taught this group I had dubbed one of these boys my nemisis as last time he seemed like the ring-leader. Today however he wasn't too bad. Another boy seemed to have taken up the position for the day. As I was yelling at them to be quiet I hear him mimic me...oh hell no he did not just do that. I walked right over to his desk and said get up (those around him looked slightly scared) after saying it again in a voice that clearly showed I was not kidding, I marched him to the front of the room and made him stand in the corner facing the wall for the rest of class. The other students seemed to get the hint that I was not pleased and were relatively good, but of course still chatty, for the rest of the class. Luckily I only see this class once every two weeks, and with next week being a holiday I won't have to deal with them for three weeks. Score.
A quick note on next weeks vacation: I still do not have my passport, and according to James Jones most of the people teaching in my district will get their's tomorrow, but my name was on a list of people who won't. That's just terrific. I really don't want to spend the whole week here in Shenzhen, it will seem like such a waste of a break.
On a happier note the repair man finally fixed my toilet! He came to my room this morning looked at it and then gestured to me (as he didn't speak English and I don't speak Chinese) that he would have to rip out the toilet to fix it...and then he left with no indication that he was coming back. Fast forward to my first class after lunch, I was teaching and my contact teacher came to the room and said she needed my room key so the repair man could get in. When I was finished with teaching I went back to my room and the repair man and his helper were just finishing up, and now I have a properly working toilet, which I'm sure everyone wanted to know about :0)

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