day trip to Changchun

I had an accidental day off last week, so a Chinese friend and I took a day trip to Changchun. The boss of the oil company that I tutor was out of town on a business trip for two weeks and apparently my school didn't know since he was still on my schedule, and my other tutoring student was scheduled with someone else. I had never been to Changchun, which is the closest big city to Songyuan, so an adventure was in order.

We went to Jing Yue Tan Forest Park first. When we first got in it seemed really big, but all man made. It was reminiscent of the aquatic park I had been to in Nanjin, Tianjin. Pretty, but disappointing if you're expecting some real nature. After wandering around for a bit though, we discovered the real lake. There are a bunch of small, man made ones that are meant to look nice near the entrance of the park, but as you get further in you find a large natural lake, forests, hiking trails, places to camp, etc. This park also has the highest point in Chanchun, and a really good view of the whole city.

In addition to the usual park amenities, it also has a driving range, a bath house and random carnival type games and activities. My friend and I did the thing where they strap you into the harness and you're attached to rubber bands on tall poles, jumping on a trampoline, bouncing and flipping. Tops of fun. They can mechanically adjust the tension on the rubber bands, so the workers were grabbing my harness, bouncing me crazy high and then flipping me. I was flying around like a rag doll; it was so much fun!

After the park we went to explore the actual city. Changchun is kind of great; it's pretty, has a good variety of food, good shopping, both traditional Chinese and western influences depending on the area you're in, not a bad spot at all. We had Italian food for lunch, made an actual Italian man, and Indian food for dinner, made by actual Indian people. It was definitely nice to get some variety in my diet!

This is what happens when I let a Chinese saleswoman dress me.

The crappy thing was that after a few hours my neck started to kill. And then my shoulders. After a while I couldn't turn my head or anything and I was in tons of pain. As fun as it was, I got the worst whiplash ever from that rubber bandy thing. My friend was freaking out, trying to convince me that I needed to go to the hospital to get x-rays. This was the day after I had gone to the hospital, so there was no way I was going back, but I knew it was just muscle thing; it was hard to explain that concept to my friend. We drove back to Songyuan that night, I popped a couple of muscle relaxers and decided to deal with it the next day. Regardless, all in all, it was a nice little day trip!

cold, bed after baby, families & planning

The Chinese are very averse to cold and they think of sickness, aches and pains and any other physical ailments as cold being in their bodies. For example, when I had cupping done, the woman told me it was to remove the cold wind, and the places where I bruised more heavily were where I had more cold.

This is why they don't drink cold beverages, they don't think you should touch cold things, they never have skin showing until it is ungodly hot, etc. If you are getting sick, they think you need to drink something hot and maybe sit in a sauna to drive out the cold.

A student of mine that I would consider to be very modern and forward/western thinking told me that she gave birth to her daughter in August, so she thought it was sometimes too hot to wear socks. She said she got very sick after that and now her feet bother her regularly as a result of her letting the cold get in them.

Chinese believe that a woman cannot get out of bed after giving birth, she must rest, take care of her baby and keep the cold away since she is weak at that time. Traditionally, her mother in law must come take care of her and she is expressly forbidden to leave the house. That same student said she knows western women are up and about immediately after child birth, but that our bodies must be different. Maybe after all these years of following the practice of staying in bed for a month, it's true and Chinese women's bodies have evolved a little differently, who knows, but somehow I doubt it they could be that different.

Also, apparently abortions are very easy to get in China, which makes sense since everyone is only supposed to have only one child. They don't get a whole lot of sexual/family planning education in school though; I can't remember if I've mentioned it or not before, but I had a 12 year old female tutoring student in Tianjin who didn't know what a period, tampons or pads were, not even the Chinese words. Poor girl is in for an unfortunately surprise, I felt bad for her. I couldn't explain it to her though, I definitely have that "it's not my place" idea ingrained in me. Someone else told me that their teacher gave her class all a book about sex and bodies and such in high school one day and told them all to read it alone.

If Chinese want to have more than one child, I found out they can get a permit and then they don't need to pay the tax. They must go through their employer to get one (can you say awkward conversation? except not, since it's normal here, but it sounds awkward for me). If they have one without a permit, their employer must pay a tax in addition to them, because it means the employer is not in charge of their employees and not taking adequate measures for family planning. They must sign an agreement every year with their employer saying they won't have more than one child. And the government gives them all money for having only one.

Family relationships are also a lot more complicated than I first thought. Chinese call everyone their age "brother" or "sister," and I assumed it was because they don't actually have brothers or sisters. Actually, in the Chinese language, there is a different word for the relationship between every single family member, except for peers (i.e. cousins). So, there is a different word for say your relationship to your mom's older sister versus her younger sister or your dad's sister. I'm not sure why the relationships to those older and younger than you are more specific than those with the family members in your age bracket. Very complicated and interesting though!

time is $$$ (or not)

I'm a pretty laid back person, but sometimes when people (i.e. my school) don't have any respect for my time and think it has no value, it gets a little annoying.

A few days ago my VP was talking on the phone to my school's owner about the schedule, and in the middle of the office with all of us foreign teachers there she said, "We will just put a teacher's name there on the schedule; we don't pay them for classes on the schedule, just for what they teach, so if the student doesn't show up it doesn't matter." That definitely grated at me a bit. Like we have nothing better to do that wait around in the hopes that maybe a student will show up and we might work that day.

The whole value of time issue is also why many of us foreign teachers at my school are aggravated about the Happy Songyuan English Speaking Contest. I've pretty much removed myself from that situation, which is awesome. Earlier this week there was supposed to be a mandatory meeting for all teachers at 6pm regarding the contest. Administration didn't put it on the schedule, didn't verbally tell any of us about it and they just wrote it on the a large white board in the school the morning of. I had conflicting plans, so I didn't go. Nobody said anything to me about it either, which was nice.

I did miss some news apparently though, because when I got to school the next day, there was such a huge crowd out front I thought there was a fire or something. The contest round that day happened at our school, instead of elsewhere. Consequently, most of my classes for the day were cancelled, not that the school figured this out beforehand or anything (because that would make too much sense).

I left when they decided my morning classes were cancelled, but then one of my school admins called me to back school because he changed his mind. When I got back, the student he called me back to teach got into a fight with him because the student didn't want to have class. Meanwhile, I'm sitting around awkwardly watch them fight, getting caught in the middle and not working toward my teaching hours at all (until I did end up tutoring him that day). No bueno.

my cultural tutors

I really enjoy that most of my teaching hours are spent tutoring. It means I have really close, personal relationships with most of my students. I see them all at least three days a week, (one I see six days a week!) so we spend hours upon hours having one on one conversations.

It provides a really good opportunity for mutual learning. I am interested in learning as much as I can about Chinese culture and conversely, they are very interested in learning about American culture. The differences between the two, and reasons for them, are perfect class topics. It makes me happy :)

efficiency & discrimination

Obviously employment is a little bit different in China due to the whole socialism/communism thing. In a tutoring session today with my student that works as a translator in the oil company, she mentioned that her company is not nearly as efficient as it could be, because they are required to employ so many people. Apparently her company owns the rights to some oil rich land in the middle east, and their middle eastern counterparts are often wondering why they have so many people working in their oil fields.

With so many people in China, it can be very difficult to find a job, even with government mandates for numbers of employees and such. This is why the Chinese are so concerned with getting good grades to get into a prestigious university so their diploma will carry weight with companies when they graduate and they can get a good job.

I'd love to know more about hiring and workplace discrimination here. Chinese resumes must include some things that would just be asking for a lawsuit in the States. You have to have your age, date of birth, gender, marital status, nationality and a picture on your resume.

more Korea vs China

I was talking to one of my tutoring students the other day about Korea, and the differences between there and here. She had a lot of questions for me when she heard I had been there. I found it a bit crazy that I had been and she hadn't, given that she lives so near, but it reminded me that I had a few things to add about my comparison between the two.

I went to Korea pretty much right after my skinny Chinese post, so it was pretty top of mind for me. One of the first things I noticed in Korea is that, on the whole, Koreans are much heavier than Chinese. You definitely see more fat Koreans than fat Chinese. Not sure why this is, especially since Koreans are so vain.

Also, as far as language goes, I mentioned that Korean is a simplified version of Chinese and that there is no version of the language written in Roman letters, like the Chinese pinyin. While this is true, the written language of characters is phonetic, so it can be much easier to learn how to read and write. The problem with this is that even if you can read the language and get the pronunciation correct, you still will not know what you are saying.

royalties & privacy

The fact that I write came up with one of my adult students the other day and he was asking about my blog. I'd love to be able to send my students links, but with the Great Firewall, none of them can get to see it. I told this particular student I'd send him a screen capture though so he could.

He asked me if I write about my students; I told him I do, but I never include the names of people I write about to protect their privacy. Regardless, he jokingly demanded royalties, which cracked me up.

On the privacy note though, I really do try not to include too much detail about specific people or things that might potentially bite me in the ass down the road. The English speaking contest is the only thing I would think maybe I have too much information about (as I have the actual name posted), but at present I'm too lazy to go through and take the name out of posts it's mentioned in.

I'm not too worried about anything really, as I like to think I provide pretty fair observations about everything and the rest is my personal opinions, but maybe that's just me.

My mom is a big worrier, and she's definitely pointed out a time or two when I maybe included more detail than I should have, and I consequently made some edits. She's pretty concerned about someone stealing my identity from information I put on here though. Personally, I think there's more information about me on facebook than here!

A couple of my Chinese friends have asked me why I include so many details about myself as well. I just explain that it's MY blog; it's about MY life; of course there's going to be a lot of information about me! I'm not trying to write an informational book about China.

change of plans

So, a few weeks ago, School #1 tried to mess with my life once again. My recruiter emailed me to say that my position had AGAIN been given away somehow. She said the school wanted to offer me a different position at a sister school in a neighboring city with a nearly identical contract. Knowing all I know now, I know I can probably make more money elsewhere and not get dicked around nearly as much.

I'm also finding that I really like much of the flexibility of a private school (School #1 is a public school, so I lose 90% of that) and also the way my teaching is going right now, both the students I teach and the structure of my schedule.

I was initially looking at public schools in Korea when I first decided to teach abroad. There, hogwans (aka private schools) are more of a crapshoot as far as shadiness goes, and public school jobs tend to be much cushier. I assumed that logic applied to public and private schools in China as well, but talking to other foreign teachers here, the general consensus is that private are better.

My contract with my private school has a set salary for up to 88 teaching hours per month. Anything beyond that, I get paid overtime for and it's completely at my discretion whether I get near that or not. Office hours (for lesson planning and such) don't count towards teaching hours, but since my return to Songyuan I have stopped lesson planning, I no longer need to. This setup is pretty standard.

My contract also says I get one day off per week, public holidays off, and an allotment of personal paid vacation days. Since arriving, I've worked a zillion days in a row, including holidays, and banked all my days off to take long holidays. It's working out to a vacation a month, and every other month is a loooong vacation. I actually really love this because it gives me a lot more freedom to go do things I want, when I want. It's a give and take.

My classes in Songyuan are shaping up to be mostly tutoring hours. I tutor a high school boy that will go abroad to finish high school and then attend university in Canada; he will leave in about a month and has absolutely no interest in focusing, studying or putting any effort into learning English. My only job with him is to get him talking for two hours a day. I have an amazing amount of conversations about high school girls every week, lol. He's going to take me boxing on Saturday though, so there's definitely some perks to teaching him.

I am also tutoring a high school girl that is planning to attend college in the UK. First she must attend a language school there for a year to help catch her up. She is quite the opposite of the boy, she is very focused and tries really hard. Vocabulary is her biggest challenge. I use a book for the basic structure of our daily lessons and then tie in whatever practical life things come up.

Both of them spend almost all day every at our school studying and do not attend their Chinese high schools at all, ever. They actually took a field trip back to their high school yesterday and were somehow allowed to just join their former classmates in what they call PE, but seems to be the equivalent of recess. Somehow I'm thinking security and school shootings are not an issue here...

In addition to them, I tutor a man that is the administrative assistant of a president in one of the oil companies here, an oil company translator that has worked primarily with written language and then teach my old favorite class, Oil Adults 2. I'm pretty happy with everyone I teach.

Thinking about these things and then what School #1 was offering me, I told them I was no longer interested in either contract, and I parted ways with my recruiter as well. As much as it makes me a little nervous not having a job or apartment lined up for September, I know this is definitely the better way to go.

I've just been looking at a map of China, figuring out where I want to be and then trying to find jobs there. I will probably take a holiday in May to visit a few cities I am interested in and just drop in on schools there and see how it goes. People tend to not plan so far in advance in China, and espeically since I am already here, it will be fine.

great morning

Today is off to a fantastic start! One of my tutoring student's mothers showed up to watch class last night. Unannounced. For an hour. And she doesn't speak English. Slightly nerve racking, but I wasn't too worried. When my student back came this morning, she brought homemade breakfast for me from her mother! Apparently mom thought class went well (or she felt bad when my TA told her neither of us cook)... delicious.

Then, I got back to my apartment to find my first piece of mail since arriving in China. I get pretty excited by little things (like getting mail), and as if that wasn't enough, I open the package up to find a Kindle! As an avid reader, it is an absolutely perfect gift from a friend. So excited! Now I just need to find some ice cream...

teaching vs planning

This first few weeks in Tanggu has really been my first introduction to teaching, as I only taught maybe 14 hours the week prior in Songyuan. I have felt in Tanggu like I have been doing so much work, way more than I should be doing, outside of my teaching hours. The foreigners and the Chinese I know all agree with me as well, and I am finally getting a handle on it and making a more reasonable balance for myself.

All foreigners' contracts are structured based on so many teaching hours per month, lesson planning and office hours are expected and we are compensated as such, but they are not necessarily tracked and do not count toward our teaching hours. When you tutor or teach a class that isn't working from a book, teaching requires a lot more work outside of your teaching hours to prepare, as you are essentially creating all course materials yourself. This has been my struggle; I am not as good at coming up with things in class off the cuff and I don't want to be a boring teacher, so I feel the need to prepare a lot before class. A lot of foreign teachers don't do this.

For the two middle schoolers I am tutoring I am creating their material as we go. We don't work on their work from English class, as they are both really good with the language and ahead of their class. We aren't working from another book, and we aren't really working towards anything. One wants to take the SATs, but she's too young for a lot of the practice materials out there.

The labor union guy I am working with wants to be able to give a speech in English by the end of the year and has a 52 lesson course we are working through, which helps. He studies ahead of each class and learns very quickly though, so we burn through the lessons in no time. The lessons also need to be supplemented quite a bit to teach a well rounded use of the language.

The government class I teach has 40 people registered and between five and ten people show up each class, all with vastly different English levels. The class is theoretically supposed to be business English, and there is a sort of book for it, but no one in the class uses English for their jobs (which are all in different bureaus of the government by the way) and all they want to do is practice speaking. When I met with the people that contracted us to teach the class, their only measure of success was how many people return week after week. Given all that, I am not using the book, so I am creating all my own material for them as well. I teach them in three hour blocks at a time, which can be very long, and some people come every class, some only come on Fridays and some only come on Saturdays, so I have to remember who I am catering to each class.

Oof.

But like I said, I am keeping a better balance for myself since my friend was in town all last week. I am also finding things to do around the city, even if my TA doesn't want to go, and hopefully this week I will meet some new people too. Regardless, my plan is still to return to Songyuan soon and get back to my life and friends there :)

Beijing Books Building adventure

I'm reading "Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl" and "Are You There God? It's Me Margaret" with my two middle school tutor students and I had been "borrowing" the text for both online so far. My school owner sent my TA to Beijing today to actually buy the books, so I decided to tag along for adventure.

I discovered today that traveling with her is almost like traveling with another foreigner. People always want to scam me because I'm foreign. People always want to scam her because she is so very, very naive and it's very obvious. She has never lived on her own or really traveled on her own and she prefers to ask people questions to figure things out rather than look around for signage and instructions. She always impressed when I can figure out where we need to go and then I point out the English on a sign somewhere.

I had to tutor tonight at 5pm, so we had to get up pretty early and catch the 8:30am train to Beijing. We got to the train station right around 8am and heard that our train was sold out. Naturally we get up to the ticket counter though and, seeing a foreigner, first class tickets are suddenly available.

So we get to Beijing and our school owner tells us he'll meet us at the book store instead of picking us up; no biggie, we take the subway there. It. Was. Insanity. On the subway; so many people, in such a small space, an agoraphobic's absolute hell. We get to the bookstore and it's this monstrous building that is also absolutely packed with people. Being a big reader, I could have spent a week in there; my TA on the other hand, not so much with the reading.

"Beijing Books Building"

We find the books, school owner doesn't show, so we call and he says he'll pick us up when we're done and take us to lunch, but asks me to pick SAT study books for my tutoring students as well as Oral Business English textbooks and Comprehensive Business English textbooks for a government class I'm teaching beginning next weekend. Never in my life have I picked out a textbook. The girl I'm tutoring that's studying for the SAT is 12. I've never met the people in the government class so who knows what level they are or what their needs are. Eek. To top it off, the book store isn't organized very well (or at all) and there are rows upon rows of textbooks, which naturally have only Chinese on the spines. Now that was a project and a half. I'm pretty happy with my choices though, and he was too so, yay me.

We finished with that and then he tells us to get a cab and meet him at the restaurant. We went to The Peking Duck for lunch, which I'd actually heard of before and was pretty good. Then we headed home. Or tried to. The 3:30pm train from Beijing to Tanggu was sold out when we got to the train station, so we opted to take the 3:30pm train to Tianjin and cab back to Tanggu in order to catch my tutoring student on time. The line for cabs when we got to Tianjin was over an hour wait (which would have put me around 45 minutes late for tutoring), so we decided to take a bus. Which we then had to take a taxi back to our apartment from. And took forever. I think we finally got back at 7pm, only two hours late. I was supposed to tutor until 9pm so she stayed until 10pm.

Then I had a full night of lesson planning ahead of me. I tutor the labor union guy tomorrow morning for an hour and a half and he's a very quick learner and goes through material like nobody's business. Then I have the middle school girl from 5pm to 9pm. I also wanted to get a jump on my lesson planning for the week because I have my first visitor coming out on Tuesday! I only work 5pm to 8:30pm Tuesday through Thursday, so a Chinese friend from Songyuan is coming and we're going to go on adventures around Tianjin, I'm very excited. As much as I love my TA, it'll be nice to have another non-student here, and it'll give her a chance to catch up on work (she's very excited about this part as well, ha).

Chinese lessons & more

My TA and I had a free day yesterday until 5pm when we had our two tutoring students, so we went out on adventures. The big company I did the demo class for the other day ended up picking an older teacher with another school, so now we're always free until 5pm Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays.

We went to a coffee shop in the morning to get some studying done. The Chinese don't really drink coffee and I don't know of a single coffee shop in Songyuan, but because TEDA is much bigger with more foreigners, there are lots. And of course they have Starbucks. Coffee is very expensive though because they it's not a standard commodity.

While we were there my TA ordered something that the menu called "sherbert with red beans." Sounds like a weird/gross combo. It ended up being small red beans in a sweet sauce over the ice from an icee that had a very light but sweet flavor to it. Strange, but not bad.

Our main point of study there was teaching me Chinese! Chinese is crazy to learn; she was laughing at me and how excited I got every time I got something right. There are four tones (flat, rising, falling then rising and falling), and the same word said with each of the different tones means four different things. I am only learning to listen and speak, not read or write the characters. That's a whole other can of worms that I really won't be here long enough to tackle.

I learned a couple key phrases and words yesterday, and then my TA started asking me to rearrange the words and phrases to make new ones. Word order doesn't change as much in Chinese and isn't quite as important as in English, so once you know a few phrases, it isn't too hard to pick words out of them and combine them into new phrases. Last night I introduced myself to my tutoring students and asked their names and they understood. This afternoon I did the same with my student; it makes people smile when I use Chinese (probably in part because I speak so slowly and get so excited). After tutoring this afternoon I told the cab driver I wanted to go to the grocery store and which store to go to in Chinese!

Aaaaand then I made us banana splits for lunch :) her first one. More cross cultural education.

I was seriously disturbed to notice afterwards though that my spoon was from KFC! I cannot escape KFC here. It's everywhere...

After Chinese lessons yesterday, I proofread my TA's introduction to a big English paper she has due at university and then we wandered around Tanggu (the area of TEDA that we live in) a bit. It was also my first time wearing my Chinese Warm Pants out (which I am in love with). Chinese Warm Pants are a cross between leggings, long underwear and amazingness. They fit like leggings, are furry on the inside and you can wear them by themselves as pants or under other things. They're awesome! The Chinese don't call them Warm Pants though, just foreigners. They're almost like something a stylish L.L. Bean would make; L.L. Bean for the 20 somethings.

financial area

Seriously, I'm going to start a campaign against KFC.

apple wisdom

The middle school girl I tutor shared a great piece of wisdom yesterday, so I felt the need to pass it along. This came up when discussing the vocab word "Jewish" and she was telling me that Steve Jobs and Warren Buffet were Jewish.

The 1st apple was in Eden with Adam & Eve.

The 2nd apple fell on Newton.

The 3rd apple was bitten by Steve Jobs.

a day in the life: TEDA

Life in TEDA has been busy so far. I got in late yesterday afternoon, had two tutoring sessions with children yesterday evening, with minimal time to lesson plan, a demo class to a corporation this afternoon, a sort of meet and greet with an adult I'll be tutoring this afternoon and then my two tutoring children this evening. I'm not teaching all that many hours per week here, but I am teaching every day. That in itself I'd be ok with (accumulated time off is great), but my teaching hours are all spread out throughout the day. I have adults midday pretty much every day and children every evening, so I really can't go anywhere or do anything. Saturdays are my only option for exploration because I don't have anything until 5pm. We'll see how long this takes to drive me crazy...

I was thinking about a field trip to Tienanmen Square this Saturday morning and I asked my TA if she wanted to come but she declined. And discouraged me from going as well. Apparently it will be crazy on a Saturday and there's not that much to see anyway. She said she'd be up for a different adventure though, so I am now in search of anything else to do in the near vicinity. There's an art museum we passed yesterday that I want to check out, but I don't think we need an entire day for that. TEDA does have some fun and random public art that I saw today though.

The whole TA thing is kind of interesting for me. She was initially presented to me as a teaching assistant. When I got here she seemed to be more of a personal assistant to my school owner and now sometimes to me. She opens my car doors and shuts them for me and things like that. It's kind of strange, like she's almost trying to take care of me. We had some dirty dishes in the sink from our dinner last night that I washed today and she was so surprised at a foreigner washing dishes that she took a picture. What on earth have other foreigners been like?! She's fun though, and teaching me Chinese and we seem to have a lot in common, which makes for a good roommate situation.

My students here seem ok as well. I have a boy that is in middle school and absolutely amazing. His English is phenomenal. Better than my TA's or my school owner's. He cracks me up, when I was first asking him what he's interested in he tells me politics and history. Unfortunately I am interested in neither of those things, soooo on a compromise we are reading Anne Frank. I also have a middle school aged girl whose English is quite good, but not on the same level as the boy's. She has traveled all over the world and I am definitely jealous.

As far as the adults go, my demo class today was to an international software company. I ended up there through a contract with the government. The company saw my resume and decided I was too young though, so this demo class was my make or break, no word yet on how that went. They gave me no direction or level of my audience ahead of time, so I taught a class on marketing. Turns out I was teaching a bunch of managers in a technology department. They had no concept of marketing and were not participatory at all, quite different from my business English class in Songyuan.

Outside of them (if they decide to keep me), I have the middle school boy's father, who is actually very high up in the labor union here. He seems nice enough, but he has a very low level of English right now. Very different from anyone I have taught so far. Apparently I made a very good impression on his son yesterday, because he brought me a gift, a China tea set, this afternoon.

So I spent my Valentine's Day with a bunch of students, my TA and my boss. This morning my TA goes, "Happy Valentine's Day. I got you a present. It's breakfast." Made me laugh. We cracked up over our Valentine's dinner too; our school owner and another caretaker type guy that works for him made us dinner because they both cook and we don't. Nothing wrong with men cooking for two women on Valentine's Day!

and so it begins

When I came here, I thought I was going to prefer teaching very young learners. I told my school as much, but I asked to teach a bit of every age group and English level just to get the experience, and see if maybe something else turned out to be a better fit. This is the beauty of private schools, and mine in particular, the opportunity for flexibility and catering my classes towards what I want.

I had my first "class" yesterday, I tutored a high school senior for two hours. She is applying to universities at the end of this school year and would like to study English there, so she is coming to my school for additional study above and beyond her public school English classes. Since I am tutoring her, not working through a class with a book, I come up with all of the materials and focus on whatever she needs to get in to the university. I have her working with Judy Blume's "Are you there God? It's Me Margaret," which makes me probably happier than it should. We also worked through a news piece about July's haboobs. It's the little things!

I really enjoyed working with her though. She was very shy at first, but once she got more comfortable a lot of working with her is really just conversational. She is a very quick learner and tutoring her flows very easily. Maybe I will end up preferring this age...

My full class schedule for next week included all ages and levels of English, including my five hours this weekend with a group of business English learners from a local oil company (oil is the main industry in Songyuan). BUUUUUUT I have a big change coming. I will keep my working hours through this weekend here in Songyuan (another tutoring session, a level 2 Oral class and then my business English classes) and then Sunday night I will fly to Tianjin to teacher there. More on that to come!!!