Blogs from Changzhou, Jiangsu, China, Asia - page 2

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Asia » China » Jiangsu » Changzhou October 16th 2010

I guess I was unspecific about our plans, we have many job offers in Beijing (with good pay). Also, we have legitimate legal reasons to cancel the contract not just due to the scheduling problems. I am more interested in working in an ESL kindergarten in Beijing while Tom is not sure, he could be a translator or teach math/science. Anyways we will be fine, I have included a picture of us when we went to see a play that Tom's sister funded and produced.... read more

Asia » China » Jiangsu » Changzhou October 15th 2010

first meeting was today... the nice meeting, where they apologize a bunch. On Monday is the blaming meeting where they try and say quitting is our fault and charge us money for breaking the contract. Hopefully we can keep our sh** together and call it even. Send us positive energy and thoughts... read more

Asia » China » Jiangsu » Changzhou September 26th 2010

I had all three classes today 8am - 3:50pm, long day but much better than yesterday. Everyone picked English names so I would not embarrass myself trying to say their names. Explaining why "Gay" "Lucifer" and "Dick" were not good names was HILARIOUS. Also there were some names like "JackBauer" "Coffee" "Paper" "Apple" "Blue" and "Clean" lolololzzzzzzzzzz After a while everyone settled on a name, lots of people picked "Jack" and "Kobe". Everyone seems to be understanding my instructions and progressing well, yay. -Laura p.s. Lucifer changed his name to Dante... :) ... read more

Asia » China » Jiangsu » Changzhou September 25th 2010

So my Chinese learning has not been progressing as fast as planned, I am here to tell you CHINESE IS HARD. I keep saying it wrong, today was hard I woke up late this morning and have had lots of trouble with computers. I also got very discouraged today when I boy snuck out of my class early, literally made a run for it, also my last class was impatient and hard to work with, my spirits are a little down today as said before, staying optimistic. So far my power point presentations have been a big hit and I love working with them, and today my fav class turned in their first homework assignment and it looks good YAY. Anyways all of the bad stuff that is going on today can be overshadowed by the ... read more

Asia » China » Jiangsu » Changzhou September 20th 2010

My first day of class today and I was very nervous! My first class was engineering students and their were about 25 boys and one girl. My second class was commerce majors and it was about 2/3 girls. In my first class it was over 32 degrees C in the class room and I was sweating up a storm! My students looked legitimately worried, lol, I was so embarrassed! Students kept passing me tissues to wipe the sweat and all their 7-ups and water, face = red. So far I have been AMBUSHED and I do mean ambushed, by two excited freshmen who wanted my phone number so when I have time we can 'play' I'm not sure what this means but Tom says they just want help with their English. The 1st ambush was at ... read more

Asia » China » Jiangsu » Changzhou May 23rd 2010

On our Tuesday off from work me and Tina visited a Dinosaur park in a nearby city called Changzhou. The park was quite big with some model dinosaurs as well as a museum with some dinosaur bones, there were some rides like small roller-coasters and some shows, 4D movie and Bird, Elephant and other shows. The weather was very good, warm and sunny.... Price of the park was 160rmb per person... read more
Dino Drink
Attacked
War Dino

Asia » China » Jiangsu » Changzhou December 10th 2009

I've got other stuff to write about, which I probably won't get to soon because I'm incredibly busy, but this just has to get written right now. This week I was teaching a lesson on rhymes. All native English speakers do rhymes endlessly as children, but my students, despite being English majors, haven't spent much time on them. Every Mandarin syllable (each character is one syllable) ends in either a vowel, an n, or an ng (or occasionally an r). And in Mandarin, there are just over 400 possible syllables, whereas in English there are thousands upon thousands. So there's a lot more opportunities for rhymes in English. So I prepared a lesson that looked examples of rhymes that are spelled alike (cat/hat/rat), rhymes that are spelled differently (stuff/tough, great/eight), and alike spellings that don't rhyme ... read more

Asia » China » Jiangsu » Changzhou November 18th 2009

Asia » China » Jiangsu » Changzhou November 17th 2009

Some of my most nerve-wracking as well as exhilarating moments have come from ping pong. I'd been saying from the moment I decided to come to China that I would love to learn some good ping pong technique if I could just find a very patient partner to play with. I mentioned this to Mr. Wang, the adviser, who has connections to the physical education department (or, as they call it here, the physical department). He brought me to the first meeting of one of the ping pong PE classes, in a room with at least 50 tables and 100 students. The teacher, who is also the coach of the university's team, lent me his paddle and watched me volley with one of his players. Now, I've played enough ping pong that I can competently return ... read more

Asia » China » Jiangsu » Changzhou November 16th 2009

I had been warned by many friends who had been to China that I would get stared at all the time, especially being 6'3" (1.91 m). (By the way, because many people have asked: no, I don't constantly feel like a giant here; rather, I did much more in Mexico, partly because doors and street vendors' awnings are all much lower there.) Anyway, given the warnings, I was actually surprised how little I got stared at when I first got here, both on campus and in the city. The freshmen arrived my second week, though, and the staring increased quite a bit. (It's hard for Americans, especially New Yorkers, to comprehend, but so many people have told me that I'm the first foreigner they've ever spoken to. I mean, odds are there was a foreigner in ... read more
Halloween at Dinosaur Park
Halloween at Dinosaur Park




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