Sorry for having not posted any pictures recently. I'd like to but my camera huai le'd (done broke) so I'm going to have to stick with text this time. Since Thanksgiving ended I've been going to school but mostly to observe other teachers since I'm now down to 2 classes a week. It's been good though, I've come up with some ideas for lessons and I've also picked up on some teaching methods that work and some that don't.
I've also been tutoring quite a bit, four times a week usually. It's almost always at night since that's the only time when Michelle doesn't have class, so I've been taking a taxi over to her house at around 6:30 and stay there for 2 hours each time. During the first hour we usually talk about what she's been doing and then watch a TV show (usually Friends) for the second hour with me explaining slang or cultural references made during the show. I think the TV viewing is helping her. Maybe, I hope.
I met a couple guys from Britain who teach at the Number 4 middle school across the street from the old campus. They're here for a gap year teaching English before they will return to England to start college. Myself and the other foreign teachers have gone out with them a few times to a couple restaurants and a bar where we were the only customers on a Saturday night. It was a pretty nice bar nonetheless.
I was going to go to a tennis tournament in Nanchang this weekend but it was rescheduled, I think, due to bad weather. But I still play every now and then with various people around the city.
I've learned a lot about the Chinese education system from Michelle, and what I've learned is basically that it's extremely intense. First, from middle school to high school the students have class 7 days a week. Monday through Friday they have morning, afternoon, and night classes, on Saturday they get the night off, and Sunday they get the morning off. There also doesn't seem to be a clear start and stop date for the school year. They just keep studying and going to class and taking tests until the teacher tells them they can take a break, which is sometime around the Spring Festival in early February, and then come back to school until sometime in June. They officially have a summer holiday of about a month but I think a lot of the students still go to classes of some sort, most likely at private English language schools. At the end of high school, they take their college entrance exams. If they do well, then they go to college, and if they don't do so well, they either go to a less reputable college or stay on in high school for another year to study and prepare to take the test again. So there's a ton of pressure on kids to do well in school and study all the time. They're not all sad or really angry or that sort of thing. I guess there's a lot of camaraderie amongst the students. Plus they basically have no choice, it's the only way for them to have the chance to get a higher-paying job. It's just very different from, say, ol' Avery High.
I think that's all I've got for now. I'll be coming home in a couple weeks.
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