Newbie

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So things have changed a bit around here. I'm not sure if I wrote this or not but our old principal has retired due to personal reasons (and basically working herself way too hard). We have a new foreign teacher who, surprisingly enough, is from Cleveland. This is strange because not only is he from Cleveland but he went to OSU (main campus in Columbus) which is 40 minutes from my school. Also he dated the daughter of a woman who works at Denison's library (where I worked). I don't know this particular woman very well but it's still a very small world. He's only 4 years older than I am so I may have even seen him at some point during my freshman year. He's been in Dalian for a year now and so knows a bit more Chinese than the rest of us and also knows the city a bit more than the rest of us do. I think it's nice to have another American around even though he hasn't really hob-nobbed with me as much as Russell, Cat and Craig have.

I'm starting to settle into my K8 classes and learning better ways to do things like how to make them do their homework and how to drill things into their brains more. I think they're starting to enjoy the classes as am I. My Saturday K8 class only has 5 kids in it and only one of them is a big talker so I'll have to find some other way of dealing with them. My Sunday K8 class had a great debate over the sentence "An effecient worker is worth more than a thoughtful worker." They really enjoyed debating even though in the end one of my students said to me that the debate was like "Which came first, the chicken or the egg." (He literally said that, it was great.) I'm also working out a better way to do the dictation. Every class the students have dictation and recitation. Dictation is when we say something from the vocab/sentence structure of the past class and they have to write it down. Recitation is when they have to recite something that we have given them in the past class that uses the vocab/sentence structure. Recitation is a bit strange for the K8 classes but works well for the younger classes. Dictation I'm going to change so that I tell them a word and they have to write it down and use it in a sentence. That way not only are they working on their listening but I know if they remember what the word means.

As for the set-up of this particular school we're like their second school. They go to a Chinese school all day long that teaches them science, math, social studies, Chinese, etc. and then they come to this one for one or two classes a week. It's almost like when I was a kid and I went to school all day long and then had piano classes in the evening or on the weekends. We only teach them English (hence the name Rockies "English" School). Apparently the Chinese name is Lao Ji Shan (something Mountain).

I'm still a bit sick. I seem to have been some sort of sick for a while now. Now I have a cold and am working on getting rid of it. Apparently my voice sounds pretty bad but I don't feel that horrible so maybe I'm getting better. Don't worry, I'll do my best to avoid the birds around here so I can come back safe and sound.

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