I'm Back

Hey Noobleys,

Sorry about the lack of updates lately, the teaching timetable has been pretty taxing so far. Not that I have to do many hours (only 18 per week), but writing 2 hour lesson plans for three different levels of english is taking its toll on me and my psycosis! Also, although I only have to work tuesday to friday, I have to travel 40 minutes to school via the teachers bus and 1.45 hrs home via public transport (1 bus and 1 taxi) so by the time I get home I'm usually pretty tiiiiiiired. Anyway, other than all of that, all is well.

It's fun teaching the chinese students, they are all around 20-21 years old and are all very excited to have me as their teacher (a young white foreigner). I did a class this week on Australia and Australian culture and I taught them some slang and informal contractions (wanna, gonna, dunno, watcha, doin', d'you, woulda, shoulda, coulda, g'day etc). The better classes really enjoyed it but some of the classes with v. poor english struggled to grasp some of the words/concepts. (By the way, for all of those thinking, what the hell is he doing teaching them improper english and slang! Most of these students are doing a 3 year business course preparing them to come and do further studies in Melbourne, so the chinese teachers assured me that teaching slang is great because they need to be able to understand the Australians when they go overseas). Yeah so that's going ok. My semester is 17 weeks and I have to set 100% of each classes assessment so that's also gonna (going to) be tough.

My School...bad photo...everyone was looking at me.

Caitlin has found a bunch of Australian and German friends at her uni who are all doing the same Chinese thingy as her. They had to do a profeciency exam yesterday to decide what level chinese they have and what classes they would be in and, although Caitlin only went ok on the written section (90 minute test completely in chinese.....screw that for a joke!), Caitlin absolutley smashed the spoken and listening part of her exam...100%. It's funny because she was stressing out so much about it and she went better than most. There were people there who hadn't learnt any chinese before so it was a very broad mix of students. She'll prolly tell you about this in much more detail but that's the gist of it.

I havn't taken too many photos lately although I should take some photos of some of my classes seeing as they all take photos/videos of me on their mobiles during our lessons.

Also, one of Caitlin's friends got a guitar for her birthday so I think I will be giving her guitar lessons every now and then. I hear she's a quick learner and already plays the cello so it shouldn't be too difficult.

Oh and one more thing! Caitlin and that same friend got asked to do modelling in a shopping center (standing next to some luxury cars) for $200 Aus per day with a personal driver all meals included for 3 days. They turned it down though....noobs.

This is Caitlin and her friend Liz. They bought chinese bicycles and promptly got laughed at by every Chinese person they rode past. One man was hunched over on the ground he was laughing so hard. But they are more shocked than anything. It is strange for them to see white foreigners in Jinan, let alone seeing them try to blend into the culture. The girls don't care though and are still riding their bikes as much as possible. Caitlin rides to Uni (let's see her do that in 2-3 months when the average daily temperature drops to around -5 degrees...she'll have to pop some chains on the wheels and about 15 layers of clothing on her back!)

That's all for now.

See ya later!

Pauly

P.s o yeh, we found a great western food import shop (called u mart) and bought blue cheese, cheddar cheese, corn chips, salsa, guacamole, cereal, hersheys fudge topping (mmmm), and some Captain Morgans Black Label RUM! nice. We had nachos for dinner last night...can life get any better? I submit that it cannot.