Welcome to Xiaolan Captain, you will be teaching......

A few fun facts about my first week in Xiaolan:

• I work for the Bond Educational Group- some of the first words their representative spoke to Sophie and myself were 'We will look after you here'. Things clearly looking up.
• Moved into our new apartment. Over the moon to have  space to call our own. (see my last post for the video)
• Threw a St. Patricks Day/house warming do. I got a little excited and pinned hand-cut shamrocks everywhere to decorate. Things got festive! 

• My guests got a hold of some electrical tape I had lying around and continued my decorating spree for me. I like to think it adds character to the place.

• I am now essentially friends with all of the taxi drivers. I live across from the central shopping centre in Xiaolan, so every time I walked out with shopping they would all gesture for me to hop in their car to speed home. However, as my apartment block is literally across the road from the shopping centre, I would just point, shrug and non-verbally communicate "Dude, I live, like, just there!'. Now, when one of them starts attempting to beguile me into his cab, his mates elbow him in the ribs, point, and say (I  assume) 'Dude, she lives, like, just there!'
• Some fellow interns bought a turtle. I should really say 'liberated' a turtle as he was technically bound for soup. Additionally, he is technically a she. But they didn't technically find this out about Glen until they googled 'How to tell a turtles gender'. Oops. Anyway, I want one.

• I bought a bicycle. His name is Winston, he is Caroline's (my road bike in the UK) betrothed and my pride and joy. Our time together will be magical.
• I was involved in an English 'corner' in a local park. About 400 people came and I think every single one of them must have taken my picture!

• Being a foreign teacher is a bit like being a local celebrity here. I went to go get lunch at a local noodle place and took a picture with every single member of staff in the whole joint, including what looked like the owners Grandmother. Sound!
• I finally have Mandrin classes! Yay! Was able to order 'Chow Mein with two eggs' in a grammatically correct manner. Boom.
• I already have a local- it is a square in the centre of town with a ton of open air cooking stations. And they sell beer. Perfect.

• Mmmmm. Delicious
• I have been assigned to work exclusively in Kindergardens.

I needed to leave a few lines for that to sink in.

And maybe a few more.

Straight in at the deep end! I work in four different Kindergardens, one of which is a good 45 minute drive away and was my first class. Not only was this my first ever Kindergarden class, it was also a demo class so that the school could decide whether or not to buy more classes from Bond! No pressure!

In any case, it went rather well (they have signed on to have more classes) and they filmed the whole thing! Teaching that class has made me realise that absolute starters entail nothing but mimicry. Holding up a blue balloon and saying 'It's blue', is actually too complicated- chanting 'Blue, blue blue!' is the correct way to go about it. That or making up a song.

In fact, here is a sample of next weeks class!

You will now hear it in your dreams.

Teaching at this level is certainly going to be very different to what I have prepared for, but while it comes with its own challenges, it certainly comes with rewards! Hilarously, the game that has gone down the best this week has been a form of child Bop-it: the kid raises their hand and says the correct vocab word = I bop them on the head with a balloon. Radical. They were screaming 'Let me try!' for the next 5 minutes!

A few other fun facts regarding Kindergarden for the week

• Naps, every classroom has a specific area for the children to have their midday sleep in. I'm not going to lie and say that I am not jealous.

• One of the classes that I taught was essentially an after school english club. Translates as 'babysitting children who don't speak your language'. Was rather fun, I think they learned all four primary colours.

At least these ones did, the ones running around in the background were kind of a lost cause from the start.

• Chinese 5-6 year olds really struggle to say 'Kathryn', have now been christened 'Captain' in more that one class. I'm cool with that.
• I will never get sick of the expression on chinese kids faces when I pull my gigantic union flag out of my bag. That’s right, I'm British. You are cool by proxy.
• I will know a song for just about everything you can think of by the time I am done with this internship.
• Also, I wish to teach my children a song by the time I have finished. Suggest things to me :)

I will now go read 'War and Peace ' to rejuvenate my brain cells. Thank you and goodnight!