My Chinese Experience

Yo!

So I have now been in China for two months and can honestly say that everything has gone very well. I have been to Beijing (twice), Xian and Xian'an to see two parts of the Great Wall, which was mind-blowing!

With Christmas fast approaching, I have been busy compiling some themed lessons for kids, and I have a Santa-style sack of sweets ready for them! I made the mistake of letting them sign their names on my arms and, I now have a (slightly faded) Chinese autograph on my arm, which I cannot get rid of! Ha!

Recently, one of the topics which I have been doing with the younger students is Emotions, I do actions for them to follow and it works quite well. Only, for the 'unwell' feeling I simulate a throwing up (sick) motion and one four year old boy was actually physically sick when he followed the demonstrations, ha! I actually found it pretty funny..uhoh!

I have somehow managed to lose two phones already and experienced my first illness in the country, when I came down with food poisoning two weeks ago, was not nice and I think I need to become a human trashcan to regain the weight I must have lost!

 For the older students, I have been concentrating on grammar, verbs, noun and adjectives inparticular and for one game I get one student to write a verb on the board and they then select another to act it out. Siuch as the word 'die' is written and one person has to act out dieing. It has some pretty funny and creative responses although, when two boys almost kissed it was a bit cringeworthy!

 Overall, the lessons are going well and I think that I have improved as a teacher in these few months and even as a person as I have tried to adapt to a new language, culture and way of life. 

 Beijing for Christmas, South Korea New Year and 2010 will see me help a fantastic group of children learn a language which will hopefully stay with them throughout their lives.

Not bad eh?

Hello dedicated readers and new additions to my writing repertoire.

I would like to apologise for the lack of a recent update, but unfortunately I have had no internet for the past 10 days or so which proved to be far from ideal.

10 Days ago I left for what was my first trip to Beijing, aside from a brief stop at the airport, which has remarkably clean floors. I went to the capital via a bus, which took around 3 hours. I learnt something new on the ride, as the guy sat in front of me told me that all Chinese people are classified as 1 year old after their first day alive, which I find pretty weird, so essentially all Chinese people are a year younger than what they are?!

Anyway, on the first night we arrived at about 7pm, and dropped our stuff off at the Peking University Hostel which was more like a hotel to be honest. We went out for a meal at a Mexican restaurant that night, which was pretty cool. I found it different to see other Western people around the city, and people weren't staring at me, which was again different from Tangshan, where I make up a tenth of the Western population (that's a guess).

We then went out to a Western bar called 'Lush', which had some nice live music and dirt cheap Mojito's! On the Saturday, we travelled to the Summer Palace, which is genuinely breathtaking, once you make your way up the hundreds of steps the views from the top are mind blowing and you can see across the city. The huge Buddhist temple located in the centre really makes you stop and take notice, I am not religious at all but it still had an effect on me.

The Palace as a whole is very beautiful and well kept and I must have been there for a few hours taking snaps and soaking it in. I should have the photos up on here once my friend Michael loads them up. In the afternoon we went to the Bird's Nest stadium, which was particularly poignant for me as I love sports and was an avid follower of the Beijing Olympics last summer.

I was shocked to find myself being asked for photos SIX times at the stadium, especially considering there were many Westerners present. One girl referred to me as a "superstar", which annoyed Michael so I was pleased with that! The track was covered by a race track, which was a little disappointed but I certainly enjoyed looking round the area, imagine what it looks like at night!

I went out for Halloween on the night, and met a Nigerian fella named Babby (I think) and he ended up getting the four of us free entry into club, which name escapes me, but it was a superb night and I actually knew the tunes! Result.

On Sunday, the snow came and when I say came, I mean poured down. I had no coat and it was so cold, so I felt worse for wear during the train journey home. We looked around Tianaman Square briefly, but the snow certainly gave it a different element, but I will look at that in more detail next time I go!

Teaching wise, I have just begun my fourth week and I am currently teaching them clothes, exercise and sports! Me doing demonstrations of Football, Boxing and Diving definitely seems to entertain the children! I am teaching Kindergarten in front of the parents tomorrow and Wednesday, which should be an experience, I just hope I perform! Haha.

Anyway, I'll leave it at that. I hope it proved to be a good read.

Bye! x

I entered my first week of teaching, with a mixture of excitement and apprehension. Firstly, I had no real teaching experience, just TEFL. Secondly, I was teaching children who spoke a language  that I could barely understand.

My very first lesson was with a Kindergarten class, aged three and four. I decided to do a lesson on Numbers and Colours and bought some stickers for the kids if they did well. They impressed me and picked up the names of all the primary colours really quickly. For one of the exercises, I selected one of the children to come upto front and everytime three or four would come upto the front, regardless of whether I picked them. So, it was pretty funny having to usher some of them to sit back down.

For the Primary and Secondary classes I had, I put together a presentation about myself. My Family, where I am from, my interests and what I knew about China. I brought in an England football shirt and some match tickets, as well as a BBC ID Pass from my summers work there. Everyone seemed to love looking at these, although I thought there was going to be a stampede when I showed the shirt!!!

They all appeared to be genuinely interested in me, and all found it hilarious when I tried to demonstrate the Chinese I had learnt. They were in hysterics when I tried to pronounce 'qing wen' (excuse me), so that was pretty fun. At the end of each lesson I let them ask me questions and a lot of the older girls asked for my telephone number, which was pretty awkward!

I closed every lesson with a quiz on my presentation to see if they had been listening and bought some Oreos as prizes. Mind you, cost me a bomb as I got a pack for every class! Definitely worth it though, as they loved it, the smiles were priceless!

And then the autograph signings in the lessons switchover...crazy! Signing one boys cheek was probably a highlight. I wonder what his would've thought when he arrived home with 'Ryan', written all over his cheek!! Haha. 

Overall, the first week was a real success and very enjoyable. I think everyine enjoyed the lessons, and more importantly, learnt something. Next week, I am telling them all about England and getting them to do short group presentations on China, which should be interesting!

Well, that's all from me, I hope anyone that has read this found my re-telling interesting and let me know what you guys are upto!

Ciao x

P.S. I am starting to get pretty damn good at Ping Pong!