- I was recently reminded that I had a blog because someone just so happened to post a comment on an old blog post from February-ish which sparked a second wind for me to update my post and try to prove that I'm still alive in China
- Start of school
- Because of the way Chinese people work, they don't really like to make plans so I was notified 5 days before school started that "Hey, we're going to start school in 5 days, we hope all of you teachers are ready"
- The thing is that after living in China for over a year now, I'm so used to expecting the unexpected that it didn't even faze me
- And now I'm getting to the point where I kind of like it，it just gives me another tale to tell my grandchildren when I'm 45
- It's kind of funny that I can look at some school districts' websites in America and know the exact date that they're going to start school three years from now, but there's been no such desire for that kind of scheduling here.
- Mandatory pre-start of school training
- So the training center that I work, Shenzhen International Personnel Training Center, is providing all of the foreign teachers in Fu Tian District with free training
- No "whoring"
- There was an introduction to new laws applicable to foreigners working in China and the literal word-for-word translation on the powerpoint slide said that "no whoring" was allowed, which shouldn't be a problem for me because I don't want my girlfriend to think bad about me
- And China doesn't need to give you a reason if they deny your visa or cancel your permit. It is an actual written law that it is their right to not have to tell you, but the guy said that other countries do this too.
- I shouldn't kick a farmers' chickens because if that farmer decides to sue me for hurting his chickens, I can't leave the country until that issue is resolved.
- What type of foreign teachers does Fu Tian district want?
- Responsible, cooperative, professional, patient, and healthy (apparently one person complained that their foreign teacher was always sick)
- What do they not want?
- Undisciplined, arrogant, "a person who likes to nag", "suspicious"-my personal favorite, bored
- Got all of my new ideas for lessons for the semester
- There are about 40-50 teachers here for this training and we had an activity where groups of two of us had to make a lesson plan in 5 minutes
- I wish we did this activity two times over because then I wouldn't have to rack my brain trying to think of new things to teach my students for the entire year
- Some ideas include: Italian food, American stage acting, Fruits, etc.
- Got other good ideas too
- I should get rid of my "3 strikes and your out" class management system and try to do a "terror level" type of system where I have an arrow and a big bar from 1-10. If my students get to 1 then they have to read ALL of the vocab words from their book one time but if they get a 10 they get preferred activity time
- I need to really make better group activities, in last year's class they would go great right up until one kid (I won't write his name) literally stood up, ran to the other side of the class and hit a kid in the back of his head just because he could
- I was exposed for the first time to the realization that Chinese students view the classroom as "theirs" while American students view the classroom as the teachers. This is because in America a student has to get up and walk to class to switch classes during the day so the classroom they enter is "Mr. White's classroom" or "Mr. Spencer's classroom" so it's not their property so they have to follow the rules. In China, it's the teachers who shuffle in and out so the classroom is "the fifth grade, first class classroom" or "the fourth grade, second class classroom" and so I have to work with that viewpoint when it comes to establishing my authority and my rules in a Chinese classroom.
- Applying to business school
- This is going to be my last year in Shenzhen teaching English (I hope I don't end up biting on those words) and I plan on going to business school next fall (if I'm deemed by a business school to be worthy enough to enroll)
- This is mainly because I want to chase my new-found nerdy passion of trading foreign currencies
- IT IS SO ADDICTING! I LOVE IT!
- I have eaten, breathed, and slept foreign currencies since this April and I just love it. I spend about 4-5 hours a day doing market research, executing and monitoring trades, etc.
- I've taken the GMAT and the GRE (I took the GRE long before the GMAT)
- I had three days to prepare to take the GMAT and so I only got a 720 which isn't that high but for three days worth of hardcore studying, I think it's alright
- I only had three days to study because I want to apply during the first round to business school so I needed to take a GMAT quickly, I wanted to take the GMAT before school started (which I planned on being sooner rather than later), and I just so happened to have a good opportunity to take the GMAT for free thus saving $250.
- Review of summer trip
- So I had two months to go travel and I wanted to travel to a lot of places but I also needed to save some money for business school applications (when you make a teacher's salary in China and an application can be anywhere from $125-$250, you really start to appreciate every RMB you earn) so I went throughout southwest China and here's where I went
Yangshuo
Dragon's Backbone Rice Terraces
Wind and Rain Bridge
Basha
Xijiang
Anshun-oh the delicacies were so good
Yellow Fruit Tree Waterfall
Zhi Jin Cave
Chengdu
Le Shan Big Buddha
Mt. Emei
Chongqing
Zhangjiajie
Feng Huang Village
