pets

In an attempt to ensure the correct grammar and spelling, I shall write my entry up in word. I noticed lots of typos in previous entries you see. Izzie and I have been out for dinner the past two days, despite both of us saying that we were on a budget. The more often we see the canteen food, the less inclined we are to put up with it. Bad food is one thing; the same not particularly nice food day in, day out is well just not that great! We completely missed our mandarin lesson on Wednesday by the time we came back from having dinner. We went to apologise to our teacher who handed us the sheets for this week.
I’m trying to get as much sleep as possible. I’m suffering from slight insomnia at the moment but I think this is due to the lack of a mattress. I wake up and I ache, particularly my neck.
This week I have made much more of an effort to integrate with the Chinese teachers. They all seemed to want to make friends but I didn’t go out of my way to talk to them. They ask us for help sometimes with their English. Just small things, like double checking whether its ‘play in the computer’ or ‘play on the computer’. Two of the girls, Marina and Michelle, are actually lovely!
HuanQi yesterday went OK. There seems to be quite a big difference between the pupils there and the ones here at the school. They were also very disappointed that I hadn’t brought any stickers with me this week. Oh dear. I made a note of the bus journey so that Izzie would know where she was going. Despite it being my 3rd visit, she hasn’t been yet. However, despite a detailed map and descriptions of landmarks, she completely missed the stop and stayed on the bus until it reached it’s final destination in the next town over. Oops!! Bless her.
We had a wander round the plaza again last night seeing as we were already there for dinner it seemed like a reasonable thing to do. We bought some hamsters. We couldn’t resist. We had wanted to buy two bunny rabbits at first but this was the safer option. Mine is called Alba and Izzie’s is called Sìog. There may be a school policy against pets though; Jeanette said it was OK, Vicky said it isn’t…… They shall just have to remain a secret. Jeanette will look after them after we leave and pass them onto the next set of TTC interns in the Autumn. It can be our legacy if you will!
I’m learning that incorporating conga lines into my classes are an exceptional way of making sure that each student says the target sentence correctly. They cannot join the line unless they have done so. Furthermore, they think it’s the best thing ever! Our P6 students now have nice posters on the wall consisting of FINE BEAUTIFUL INTERESTING NICE all with big red crosses through them. These words are banned in all contexts. It is possibly am little frustrating for the teachers as they also overuse these phrases but it is for their benefit and the variety f their language. I was very impressed with one boy the other day actually. He managed to explain to me that he had left his glasses in the computer room which was now locked and that he needed to find somebody with a key because he couldn’t see. At 12 I couldn’t have explained that to anyone in another language!