About a month after my first day of teaching in Shenzhen

• Teaching keeps you busy
• That and making friends doesn't leave you a lot of time to maintain a blog, so I'll try my best with this
• I teach 18 classes a week of oral English where, as my principal put it, "you're main job is to make students happy"
• That means no tests, no homework, no grades, just have fun and try to improve their oral English
• It's really a fun job
• I teach about 6-7 more classes a week than my co-teachers but the thing is that because I don't have grades or tests it evens out so they don't feel jealous of me and how I have to basically teach 800 students a week
• Classroom management is a fun game to play
• So I've tried about two management systems in my first two weeks and they both didn't work because I basically was left with my ultimate consequence being sending kids to their homeroom teacher and having them deal with you (which they were afraid of but that means they're not afraid of you)
• So now I've got a really good system
• Basically it's 3 strikes and you're out, I give them three warnings (on each warning I write their name on the blackboard and give them an X), if they get three X's they have to go to the banzhuren and I take their bookbag, I empty out their bookbag on my desk, and I tell them they owe me 20 bucks or they'll never see their bookbag again
• After the first day I added that if their parents come to see me they get their bookbag back for free because I got in a little bit of trouble, but now it's all cool and the kids are very well behaved
• Pictures of my school

My office (complete with a decapitated teddy bear eraser some kid gave to me as a present and he said something to me in Chinese when he gave it to me and I hope he wasn't trying to say "you're next")

Every classroom has a flat screen TV which means this school has more resources than my elementary school had in America

Little rascals plotting my untimely demise

Mr. T

You will be part of my blog whether you like it or not

I'm glad we're teaching our kids valuable lessons in school, like how if a stranger offers us a prize for our address, we should take them up on the offer

I show my kids these advertisements of help wanted in factories that if they don't pay attention in my class, I'm going to send them to the factory (not exactly in those words, but kind of) and not make a lot of money. So stay in school!

 

•  Today we had a field trip
• Which means the students went to go work on a farm and the teachers went to a really nice lunch, walk on the beach, nap, and get paid to do it while the students were about 30 km away
• Have I mentioned I loved this job yet?

Alright kids, while your teachers are out having fun, here's some pesticide to play with, knock yourself out (and yes, two kids actually got in a pesticide fight)

Peppers!

Hey kids! You need a little bit more pesticide over here.

DA BEACH!

Alright, no "swinning", I'll try my best

My feet haven't seen the sun in a long time, I'm white, sorry

• Shenzhen is awesome
• It's basically the perfect place for you if you don't like too much China with your China

YOU CAN SEE BLUE SKIES IN SHENZHEN! There's not a lot of places in China you can say that

 

• They have a lot of cool stuff to do and parks to visit

Deng Xiaoping, the man responsible for helping Shenzhen go from a little small village to a big modern metropolis

• Here's where the matchmakers work. It's basically at the bottom of Lian Hua Shan Park and a bunch of old women and men set up their son or daughter (when I walked through that part of the park I was extremely extremely popular) and I'm not even good looking

These are the personal ads people put up in the park

These are the old women match-making with pictures and everything

Rough Translation: Hello, my name is Lu Schuai Ge and I'm a Pisces. I'm looking for a girl who is 5 cm shorter than me and won't call the cops.

 

 

 

•  Then there's Da Fen Cun which is a place where most of the world's paintings are made

1+1=3 apparently in China. I don't question as that might get me into trouble.

• Then Zhuhai-the city just above Macau where I visited a friend at

Apparently in Zhuhai you can get ducks delivered straight to your door (take that Billy Mays)

The symbol of Zhuhai - The fisher lady

The first time I've seen blue water in China not caused by chemicals

White clouds and a blue lake-somewhere out there Captain Planet is just giggling with joy

A tree with prayer ribbons which I thought was pretty cool