Got the homesick blues.......

Its Tuesday, nearly 11 am, it’s my day off. But not for long as I have been given more teaching, and this teaching will take place on a Tuesday, with another 8 am start! But I think it might be worth a bit more money for me.

Have been feeling a bit blue with a bit of a bout of homesickness, missing Lucia and Matilda. Too much spare time is probably the culprit and I guess Ill get over it.

The weather has changed. It started to get cool on Saturday and it rained in the evening. Sunday was distinctly chilly when I went for a run and Monday was blooming cold! I believe we are in for a short Autumn before Winter sets in. It was really chilly on my bike and I was wearing a fleece and a jacket.  It’s a bit warmer today, bright but much cooler than last week when it was scorchio!

At last my talents have been recognised and I have been invited to sing my party piece at a party for the freshmen tomorrow. I had to go to a rehearsal yesterday so the could hear what I could do.  I had to resist their suggestion that they provide a backing track. I had to refuse, because I am sure they will not use music in the right key and Ill sound even worse than I do now.  There’s a full rehearsal today at 3:30, which I have to be at so that should be fun.

I do have a full diary at the moment. Tomorrow evening is the freshmen thing, and then Thursday evening is a dinner for all the foreign teachers put on by the department we work in. Oh and tomorrow morning I am being dragged off to the Police Station.  Hopefully this is just for the final bit of getting a resident’s visa rather than an interrogation! And of course watching the Rugby over the weekend.

Time for a bit of bragging:

This is the sort of vehicle parked in the underground car park of my flat.

There’s also a good representation of other Western Luxury cars, Mercs, SUV’s, 4x4’s and so on. Makes my twist n go scooter look a bit lame in comparison.

These are some of my students. My classes should be bigger than this but a lot of the students don’t turn up. I’m photocopying the register today and showing my ‘leader’ to grass up the missing students. They should attend at least 2/3 of the classes if the want to pass otherwise they fail. The catch22 however, is that we cannot fail students.

Talking about the students, in the main they are pretty poor in terms of their English, despite being in college for 3 years, taking English during that time and doing English in their junior and secondary schools.  I was told they were the worst English students in the college.  One class is so bad that yesterday I told them I was taking them back to the beginning to module 1, they told me they were on module 7, but the patently are not understanding what’s going on. So its remedial classes for them.

 This is the bunch that's going remedial

Its very strange that all these students are 21 or 22 years old but they are hugely immature. They act like they are 16 years old and the boys are the worse. They are hugely prone to embarrassment and will cover their faces and giggle like a little girl if I ask them to say something and they can't do it. 

So that's it for today, I'm stuck in waiting for a water delivery, if it ever comes, that is if Richard ordered it in the first place! I think Richard seems to think that all we teachers do is sit in our flats waiting to be asked to do something at the last minute by him. For example, he turned up at my door at 7pm on Sunday evening wanting my degree certificates, which I didn't have and my passport, which I did. This is on top of the emails and the txt messages and telephone calls we get telling us of some last minute message that we have to be somewhere at a certain time to do something. For example is the Teachers meal, I've been told about this on the teachers grapevine, but I haven't been officially invited, I don't know where it is or at what time we have to be somewhere. (This is China!)

Later....