November 23rd, 2013 - Prepositions, Sports Day, and Business School Tour

• Sorry I didn't update my blog for a while
•  The week before last nothing happened so I didn't feel like updating my blog saying, "My wife's friend came over, made us delicious soup, and we all watched Saving Private Ryan together which was awesome"
• I'll never get used to British English
• I learned that in Britain they say that "the cinema is in main st." but in America we say that "the cinema is on main st."
• I learned this because my 3rd grade students "corrected" me right in the middle of class
• I, speaking American English and all and having no knowledge of British English, would not back down to a bunch of per-pubescents and stood my ground
• Then I learned that we were both right
• My co-workers informed me later that British English is just like that but I have no choice but to continue speaking my degenerate American English
• Teaching prepositions
• That was a struggle at first
• This week I taught my students how to answer "Where's Mr. Panda?"  by answering "Mr. Panda is____ the book" with under, on top of, inside, etc.
• Luckily I just used a lot of photobomb pictures which made the kids almost cry laughing
• That sure made teaching easier

• Sports Day
• Luckily we got two days off from teaching this week for the kids to do sports day (which means that grammatically it should be "Sports Days" but this competition was never about English so who cares)
•  Refereeing the high jump and the long jump was ridiculously fun
• After the kids got done doing the high jump I got a chance to be immature and see how high I could jump/see how hard I could land on the landing mats without breaking any bones
• With the long jump I was responsible for seeing if a student's foot crossed the special "Don't Cross This Line" line by raising either a red or white flag which was as easy as it sounds

• School Visit-Sun Yat Sen Business School
• I now truly understand why Chinese students want to go abroad to go to college because after seeing what the 4th or 5th best university in China is like, I have a new found appreciation for my alma mater
• The classrooms and whatnot were great in terms of facilities and equipment, it was just everything else about the university that left a little to be desired
• Honestly, I'm being a little bit stuck up comparing Sun Yat Sen's campus to Vanderbilt but when you have moss growing on the side of a building, I mean give me a break
• It's moss, it's not like it just popped up last night out of nowhere, just clean it off already
• Plus, the dining/living facilities weren't as nice
• I would have had to live off-campus (which was going to be really cheap)
• The best thing about it was the cost
• It was REALLY cheap to do this program instead of an American one (about $30,000 USD over two years) but I would have had to have waited until after I applied to see if I would get any sort of scholarship
• Plus the faculty and staff seemed nice
• Honestly, it's a nice school but I wasn't really digging it
• Looks like I'll be going elsewhere for business school