Raining

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The weather in Tonglu is very similar to my memories of the weather in Scotland. It's raining, and I don't think it's stopped since last Monday. Wet and cold and grey. Even the house has been really cold but that was mainly because I didn't realise until last night that the AC unit in my room can also blow out hot air! I'm going to Hangzhou in the next day or two to look at other English schools and will try and buy a few warmer clothes then.

Saturday was a great day - I taught a whole class myself and spent 20 minutes teaching every other class. The class I taught myself was three adults, all with very good English. I had a teaching assistant but he didn't really need to translate much because they knew such a lot! We had a general conversation about ourselves and then, because they'd asked for conversational English I decided to teach them about the weather! They were surprised that we have so many different ways for describing various types of weather and didn't believe that we can have whole conversations about the subject. It was good fun though, and I think they all learned something. We finished off playing scrabble. In the other classes, I either played Bingo or Articulate, depending on the levels of English.

I've been going to the gym a bit since I've been here and yesterday I met a girl who speaks fairly good English so we were chatting for a while. She studied Business English at Uni three years ago and is worried she's getting rusty but still sounded good to me. I really, really wish I spoek Chinese. So many people assume that because Tarik can speak it I can to. In the changing room yesterday a woman started speaking to me and kind of ignored my i-don't-understand gestures and kept going. She must have thought I was really rude!

Yesterday, there was an incident at the school and apparently it happens now and again. When I was at Explore we had some hard work parents who really made our jobs hard for us. I remember one parent shouting at me over the gate becuase he wanted to treat the centre like a day care and wouldn't believe anything a girl todl him becuase he was so sexist. There was another 'gentleman' (and I use that word in the loosest sense) that was so vindictive and horrible that when his son through a jenga brick at my head tried to make out it was my fault. Anyway, these guys were horrible and at the time it was awful but I realised yesterday that the culture here is completely different to our own. There's a boy here is naughty on a fairly regular bases. when the kids went out to play the teacher kept him behind to have a chat. His grandmother had arrived early (first time she'd been to the school) and saw this. She was irate. When the teacher came out of the class she didn't even ask what happened, immediately started shouting (proper shouting) so much so that her grandson got upset. When the teacher asked her to come into the classroom to talk about it she refused and just stood in the hallway yelling. I obviously didn't know what was being said but I could get the gist. Other staff got invovled and even another parent was telling her to clam down but she just would not accept that her child had behaved in such a way to warrant any kind of punishment. In the end my brother had to ask her to leave, but she wouldn't for ages. It was quite horrible and I cannot believe that anyone would speak to someone else in that manner. Apparently, after the row had started she then felt she couldn't back down without losing face....honestly....so frustrating.

The other thing that is on my mind at the moment is a story that been in the news about three Chinese students that drowned. Apparently they couldn't swim but jumped in a river to save some kids who were in trouble. The kids got out but these students were really struggling. Someone on land asked some nearby fishermen to help but they refused becuase they would get more money for retrieving a dead body than rescuing someone. There's been a lot of outrage here as you can expect, but there are some people who think the fishing company was being reasonable. That a dead bosy is worth more than a live one blows my mind.

Sorry, bit of a ramble today. Have to stop now though becuase my fingers are numb!

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Comments

[Sofia]

nice to hear your news
its good to hear your having a good time :) love