The planning I was doing for our rogue class P5B?? never got finished. I got thrown into a class where I had a vague idea of the topic and no planned activites, oh it was fun! I didn't lose control of the class about which I am most impressed. It wasn't through disorganisation that this occurred, rather the last minute changes or notifications in China. They filled up my dedicated lesson planning time with a meeting with a specialist from Hong Kong. We did have a laugh but I'm not sure what we were supposed to get out of it as it was aimed at making the teachers sound like native speakers, which I am so I should hope I sound like one!! Our first mandarin lesson was fairly amusing. She was intent upon getting our intonation just right so we can be easily understood. To check, everytime somebody walked into the office, we had to say whatever phrase we had just been learning to them. This involved saying "pass me the chopsticks please", "be quiet!" and "may I have a spoon?" to unsuspecting students.
Thursday lunchtime was spent at the bank. We had to set up chinese bank accounts as well. This was a massive pain. One of the chinese teachers came with us to explain all the forms and we still filled it out wrong 8 times. They pointed out all our mistakes one by one instead of all together so we didn't keep filling out the same form over and over. In the end, I refused to fill another form out so Isobel actually opened my account for me. I didn't sign it or anything whch defeats the object, anyone could have done it. As much as a pain that it was, it did mean that we got paid on Friday and have a bank card that will work at any machine not just selected ones.
We took a bus down to Zhongshan on Friday and spent the weekend there. The company had organised a meal for all the Guangdong interns. We stayed in a flat with 3 of the girls based in that city. It was really nice to see lots of people. Nearly half of the whole training group was there! We had a mooch round the town. Most people went shopping. But Nash, Chris and I walked round this park/mountain and filmed a nature video of the species 'greatus britainus'. It featured the 3 of us attempting to climb a slope with nash's commentary. Quite an amusing way to spend the day! It was so warm all weekend, which made the bus journey home rather unpleasant. We still entertained ourselves. After that Izzie, Mike, Ali and I went to Papa John's for a nice pizza. We ordered one of everything pretty much so it was expensive, but we got cheese!! We all said on the bus how much we missed cheese. It was a very pleasant way to end a busy weekend.
It's back to teaching however this morning. Well my one class which is half an hour. A child got a nose bleed during the class as well. Always fun! They are fixing the broken shower and my toilet which decided to stop flushing on Friday at some point today. If all goes well shall get on to the case of getting a mattress, a microwave and find out what's happening with my camera! Apparently, our contract stipulates certain things we have to have and we don't have all of them and I intend to get them.
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