is it december already???

There you go. It's Dec. 1 today already. I can't believe it. Each day here seems to drag by as I count down the number of blocks left until 3:40, but boy, the weeks just FLY by. There are only 4 and a half weeks left until 1st semester is over. In other words, if I take out the holidays, my contract is already 1/4 finished and I feel like my seat isn't even warm yet. It's probably because life is so busy here... Thinking back to what it was like in Vancouver, each day felt like 3 days, because there was nothing ever to do. Sure, I went to school, hung out with friends, , or whatever.... call it "fanjian," but I feel so much more accomplished when I am able to battle through the frustrations of dealing with lazy students every day, instead of lying around on the couch watching TV like I used to do back home.

That having said, I think everybody in the world should go to Asia to work. It's probably one of the most annoying but fulfilling things in the world. However, I know I'm definitely not getting a good representative of what work in Asia should be like... this is a Canadian school I work for and too many benefits come with it despite long work hours. I think we all need to suffer a little if not a lot, myself included, before we can say we've lived life.

the cold is coming

It's amazing how fast the temperature can drop. Last week, I was still wearing a t-shirt. Today, I have to wear my fuzzy jacket to go teach. Yup, winter is coming and there is no going back. I have heard too often about how miserablet the winters are here in Wuhan. It's going to be a long, bleak winter. I think many people on staff will flee from this place come June.

On another note, it's now the end of October already! Crazy how fast time flies here. Students are busy prepping for midterms that are rolling around next week. I'm trying to cram in the last bunch of marking before report card time. Busy busy busy. I seem to have no life anymore.

when in rome...

As it appears that I have not been very diligent in updating my blog, I've decided to take some time sitting here today writing up a new post.

It's been exactly two months that I've been in China now; it seems like forever. My parents are here visiting at the moment. Ever since they've arrived, I've been noticing how much I have changed from being here for merely eight weeks. I used to be quite finicky about cleanliness; after being in China for a couple months, that stuff really doesn't matter anymore. Finding a huge fly in my plate of food no longer surprises me. Throwing garbage around on the streets to me now means creating more jobs for street cleaners. Public toilets in China are now useable. These couple days have been a whir of "fancy" dinners with Mom and Dad, because that's what they eat. To be honest, I actually prefer sitting on plastic stools on the garbage-chicken-bone-spit-barf ridden streets eating street food. People reading this now might be thinking, "Oh my gosh! China has totally de-civilized Hedy." What does this really mean though? It's just the way people live here. When in Rome...

Of course, if this keeps up for say, five or six years, I will probably feel like I'm suffering. Never before though, since I have come here, have I ever felt guilty of being in a middle-class family in North America. Interacting with Chinese staff every day at school makes me realize how excessively privileged we all are in Canada.

I'll be back in Vancouver for a couple weeks early February. I am anticipating a reverse culture shock of some sort.

a break for myself

This week is a 6-day work week. Students have to attend class and teachers have to work Monday to Saturday. Why? Because next week is National Holiday Week, and all of us get an entire week off. I will be heading to Hong Kong during this time... can't wait to see family and friends!

To drive my classes slowly and steadily into this week-long holiday, I've launched three of my four blocks into research assignments. This way, they don't have to listen to me talk, and I don't have to plan as much. This is a little treat for myself before coming back from holidays and having to run into a long, long haul of work from October to mid-January with no breaks. This I am dreading.

A thing that has been annoying me lately is the sudden disappearance of students for days on end. Most of the time, they are suspended for things like smoking or escaping from dorms. I don't have to deal with the suspensions, but it bugs me like crazy that the counsellors never notify the teachers of what's going on. It's pretty much up to me to solve cases of disappearing students. And then there are the sudden pull-outs of students from classes by counsellors. Who knows why the counsellors need certain students to sit in their office all block... why can't they ever let me know beforehand???

Despite this and being drowned by paperwork this week, I can't believe tomorrow's Wednesday already! Time flies in this school.

another last-minute surprise

ML has got to have the most disorganized class scheduling system on the planet. On Friday, the principal told me that a new class has been created for a group of failing students - English 11 - which (surpise surprise) I have been assigned to teach, starting Monday. How is it possible that ALL of my teaching assignments this year were given to me the day before the courses start?? To make matters worse, I just realized the pressure of having this class because these kids, who are actually in gr. 12, are taking English 11 first semester with me, in hopes that they will pass and can go onto English 12 next semester, where hopefully they will also pass so they will graduate on time with their peers. If I can't help them pass, they will not graduate on time. Arrrgh.

11-hour work days + weekends in the office is no fun.

awkward silence

During my teacher ed program, my instructors always joked about awkward silences that occur in classrooms when teachers don't get a response from students. I think that no teacher has experienced truly awkward silence unless he or she has taught a class of Chinese students in China. Kids here refuse to voluntarily answer questions, resulting in me having to call on students randomly (which I absolutely hate doing). Here, every class, I'm begging for responses. Hopefully things get better once the kids are used to it. I also eliminated my rule of hand-raising since they never do anyway. When I ask them to do it, they'd rather not talk. It's surprising that things like this slip in the Chinese education system although it is overall so much stricter than the Western way of things.

Today is my second day of teaching, and I would not use the word "great" or even "good" to describe it. I am so under-preprared because of last-minute teaching assignments, and I am still struggling to get the kids talking when i want them to, and shutting up when I'm talking. Hopefully, next week, things will be running smoother and will flow better.

I want to upload pictures, but the school internet is too ridiculously slow. Sorry!

things sorted out... for now

It is now 6:40pm, and the first day of school is tomorrow. I kid you not - my teaching assignment was not finalized and given to me until 4:00pm. This resulted in me madly rushing to come up with things to fill up my first class tomorrow. I have officially been transferred over to the high school, and will be teaching 2 blocks of some obscure ESL course, and 1 block of IT 10. Ha ha, who thought that I, being completely un-computer-saavy, would end up teaching IT.

My new office is with the rest of the ESL department, and everyone here has left for the day already. However, there is much noise in the hallways as the students are hanging out in classrooms (goodness knows why; school starts tomorrow). I walked down the hall just now to the washrooms and boy, my heart is pounding now because I am actually a little terrified of these teenagers. The boys tower over me and the girls look older than me. Tonight will be another sleepless night.

Not only this, but the office is also in chaos. The principals and secretaries are experiencing super high stress now printing off final class lists (a lot of which are actually wrong), and the office is bombarded with students. It is insane over here. Tomorrow will be an interesting day.