First week

My first week as a teacher is over now and it has really been hectic, luckily I was free all Monday due to teachers' day but it has still been quite overwhelming. Monday I spent most of the day resting, cleaning and doing laundry, and had dinner with my friend, which I told about in my last post.

It was on Tuesday everything started, quiet unnerving as I was supposed to have 3 primary school classes in the morning, and the primary school is really had as I have no real idea of what to do, but those were cancelled so I had gotten up early and biked to the office for nothing. In the afternoon I had 3 kindergarten classes though, which was tough enough, but after the first two classes I kind of got the hang of it and the list of teaching points, new words and a sentence each week, made it quite easy; someone had just forgotten to give us that before.

With more confidence I got up early once again on Wednesday to be driven outside of Chengdu for some more kindergarten classes, this time I knew more of what to expect and how to behave and how long each part of the class would take. I had one class in the afternoon too and I think the children were as tired as me, afternoon classes are harder than morning I think, there is just no energy left in anybody. At night I went out for hotpot dinner with a newly made friend.

Again an early morning but this time for a primary school and with no preparation or even a hint of what we were supposed to do it was the worst organization so far, I didn't even find out that it would be 5th graders that I would teach until we were on the way there. The first class I had sucked pretty bad actually, especially in the beginning, I got the hang of it after a while though and I used my experiences from the first class to do the second better. I didn't have a third class so I looked in on one of the other foreign teacher to get some hints. No classes in the afternoon and at night I met a friend, actually a flirt from a Jack 'n Jones store where she works, and we had once again hotpot, but this time a buffet which was rather interesting.

Today was a little later morning, didn't start until 9am, but still too early for me to be happy, at least there is no afternoon class today. I had 4 classes in kindergarten this morning and I entered with some false confidence; the first class went rather well I think, a little bit older kids, 5 years old, and a quite small class, older mean more lively though and at times we had to stop for a while to take control, for every class it became worse though, maybe because I was really tired, but the kids just started scream and running around sometimes, damn it's hard to control. Well I did survive at least, even though I'm exhausted after 4 classes, I'll probably try to rest up and clean my apartment, it's rather dusty in some places now, and tonight I'm meeting yet another friend, this time not for hotpot.

I've have started to do sit-ups and push-ups every day, at least tried, I've been feeling a bit sick the last few days and had really big problems sleeping for 2-3 nights, it's a bit better now, maybe because the weather turned better today, I think I'm losing weight, despite all the McDonald's and KFC, I'll join a gym that is close to here later, when I have money, I already checked it out, quite neat, close and not crowded if you go on the right time. I hope it will be better for next week because I have classes both in the morning and afternoon every single day, and I can't afford to be sick. And tomorrow is no time for rest, I will meet some friends for dinner at Pizza Hut to celebrate my birthday, if anyone forgot it it is tomorrow, and then go to this big warehouse party, probably some techno club thing with lots of DJ names on the posters, but it's supposed to be big so I'm going.