Toothy Ideas

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Wait! Don't pull that tooth! Ouch! Listen to me! I don't want that tooth pulled!

This was how my class felt this morning. Hey, I have a fun idea! Let's make people who don't speak English fluently try describing a picture with shapes and the placement of shapes. For example: draw a circle, draw two points a quarter way down from the top of the circle of equal size next to each other, then draw a curved line going from just below the left point down and back up to just below the bottom of the right point. What do you have? For people that don't speak English fluently you currently have a headache! Now, even better idea. Get someone who doesn't speak English fluently to explain how to draw that or an even much difficult picture of say a bus to you or to other people who speak just as much non-fluent English! Way to go kids, you've now officially developed one of the most complex classes alive!

That was this morning. Unfortunately I also forgot to take a pill on time so I also have a bit of an upset stomach (which I think was fortunately forced away by all the work I had to do to make that last class work). But knock on wood.

Last night was extremely interesting. I had English Corner yesterday in which I taught what we decided to name "Movie Physics". In other words the types of effects that one can produce in a movie that aren't possible in real life. For example, a person flying or time freezing. After talking about some different effects like these I gave them each a different element to work with. For example one group got knives. What kinds of things can you only do with knives in a movie? Now make a scene in which that element is used. So one group had invisible knives in their story. Another group had houses which can change into anything you want them to so you can carry your house to work in the form of a briefcase. It took a little while to get going but I finally did and they enjoyed it a lot. After they presented their stories we talked about a scene from Queer As Folk in which time is frozen, confetti is frozen in air and then moved by the one person who can walk around in frozen time and some still-life cartoons are used. They absolutely loved the scene. After it they said "play the whole episode, we want to watch!" "Is this a gay bar?" "No, but this show is about gay people" "We want to watch! We want to know what gay life is about!" "I can't play this in China" "It's not fair you can play this in America but you can't play it here!" "I will get fired if I play this entire episode here." Maybe I should do an English Corner on "taboo" subjects like gay life and teenage pregnancies. That would be mighty interesting!

This school is on the 23rd floor of a building. Once you come out of the elevator on this floor you are presented with the front desk. Curving off to the left and back to the elevator is one part of the school and curving off in the opposite direction to the right is the other part of the school. On the left curve there are three small classrooms on the left of the hall and one big classroom on the right. The smaller classrooms are meant for private classes of about 4 or fewer students. The bigger classroom is for a Salon of about 5 to 10 students. Farther away from the front desk is a large English corner room where we stand on a short stage above the students at their different tables with a large board covering the entirety of the wall behind us. Unlike most boards at schools this is not a blackboard or a chalk board instead it is a glass board which we write on with the same markers one would write on a white board with. There are smaller versions of this huge board in each of the classrooms. Continuing around the curve the next room on the right past the English Corner is the AV room which is a small theater with a huge TV on one side. The last room on this curve is the offices where we get to "thumb in" every day. The curve to the right of the front desk is a bunch of smaller classrooms, another salon room and two more private classrooms. This curve ends in a large computer room which the students can use. All of the classrooms have glass walls with darker glass walls in between them so that everyone and anyone can see what we're doing at all times.

Over the past couple of weeks I have been working with a guy named Michael who is extremely loud. Our teacher's room is right across from the front desk and when Michael teaches you can hear him from the teacher's room. No matter what room he is in or how far away from the teacher's room it is. It's pretty amazing how loud he can be. We all comment on it all the time. Fortunately he is a pretty great guy and speaks, reads, and writes Chinese really well as he's been here for four years. He is a student at a university that is fairly close to my house (but farther away from the school). Over the past couple of weeks while working with him I have spent some time thinking about teaching myself and have come to the strong conclusion that I would enjoy taking classes as a student at this university. I talked with the girl who does the scheduling here at work today and she said that she doesn't see their being any problems with me taking classes in the morning and teaching here during the afternoon shift (from 1pm to 9pm). She just wants me to talk to the school to see how many hours and when I would need to take the classes. All I know so far is these classes would go from March till July and would be 9000 kuai (about 120 dollars). Other than that I would need to talk with the school which I am planning to do on Wednesday. I asked dad and Cam about it last night as I was searching for opinions of what people thought of the idea. "Great idea. Go talk to your boss and the school and then we'll talk about whether you should do it or not. Now go to bed! You're exhausted!" Was basically exactly what they both said to me.

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