National Day and Mid-Autumn

National Day holiday is coming up. I have to teach on Saturday. It's a Thursday schedule. And then I get a week of vacation. Then I have to teach the next sunday, which will be a Friday schedule. How they determine these things I have no clue. I learn things about 20 minutes beforehand, like English Corner this week will be for the 4th graders, who will meet their Hong Kong Australian School penpals next month, and need to practice meet and greet skills. I get a one-week holiday, but because of a snag in our visa processing, many of us will not know until saturday night whether we have a visa to leave the mainland. Well, I know for a fact that my district, Luohu, will not be getting our visas in time. But we will get a receipt saying our passports are in processing, and an ID paper with our pictures and stuff saying that we work for the education bureau, and these, along with a copy of our passports, should allow us to leave shenzhen and take a train and stay at a hotel or hostel somewhere in china. (not including hong kong). so holiday begins 48 hours from now and have no clue what I'm doing yet because we haven't been able to make plans.

Finally went to the public security bureau with the rest of the Luohu teachers who haven't gone through the interviewing process yet for our visas. We're doing it later than the other districts because Luohu is being unusually strict this year, and this is why they're sure I'm not getting my passport back in time. The question inevitably came up: "But you look Chinese!" First question of the day. "yes, my family is chinese." "Where is your hometown?" "umm, my parents are from taishan." "oh, then you speak bakwah?" "um, siu siu" (a little)" and then in cantonese: "so if I speak the rest of the interview in cantonese, you will understand?" In english: "hah! um, not really." "okay, english." and then the normal stuff about my education and experience and if I think I'll be a good teacher. Then he asked a couple questions to Chris, the Scotsman, and it was much less extensive.

It's mid-autumn festival next week as well, and the Chinese are going mooncake crazy. They're sold everywhere. I got a tin of them from one of my teachers, and another from one of my students. Another one of my students gave me a single one. It's fun.