Hey all, I'm in China. Again.
New school, new people, new experience. Maybe. I am now teaching middle school kids at Shenzhen Foreign Language School, the best middle school in the city. School's been in session for just over a week now, and these kids really are smart and mostly well behaved. They speak English very well and are very impressive. It's looking to be a good year of teaching, but unfortunate circumstances made my workload double from what I thought it would be. We were supposed to have another teacher at my school, but that didn't work out, so intead of about 8 classes a week, I now have 16. Which is okay, I guess, but I have other things that I want to do so it's just kind of annoying. Today is Teacher's Day, and we had our banquet on Saturday. Good food. Meaghan, the other teacher from my program at my school, and I won suitcases in the raffle. Not sure how big (there were 3 sizes, but they were unclear about which was being won at all the different times they were drawing numbers). Anyway, it was exciting, and it should be delivered to me sometime I don't know when. That's how China works.
My apartment (room, more like it) is very nice and clean, with nice tile floors, finally! I'm quite pleased with it. Disappointed of course about the number of classes I have (I think this is mostly due to the fact that meg, as assistant coordinator of the program, only has 8 classes). The school is friendly, but much more hands-off than my old school. The place is huge and maze-like, and the foreign teachers have our own office so I don't get to see the other english teachers on an everyday basis like last year. As a foreign language school, we have 2 foreign english teachers, and one each of French, Spanish, German, and Japanese. So that's pretty cool. None of us really hang out in the office of course, since we all live on campus, but we come down to use the internet. If I want internet in my room, I have to pay for it, which I think is ridiculous since I'm on campus! The teachers last year got it somehow, so we're trying to figure out how they did that.
I'm also starting work at Wall Street English, an adult training center. Part time 12 hours a week. I'll be busy this year, but busy is good for now I think. It's an international company, you can look it up if you'd like. I live near the Shenzhen stadium sports complex, complete with nice pools so I will be swimming again finally. It's a little pricy, US$3 per time with a 15-entry pass, but I think it'll be worth it.
That's all I can think of right now, email me with your own updates and stuff, and just to let me know who's reading. I might have to send a mass email out again since no one knows I'm here anymore. Take care, talk soon.
