First weeks teaching done.

Its Saturday morning and the campus is quiet. All the kids that board during the week went home to their families Friday after the last lesson.  The last couple of weekends the campus has been busy because the students were doing their military training. So its quite strange.

Living on the campus is fine. All week the place has a buzz about it. When you walk past the classrooms during teaching and during the break times there is that clamour of a thousand voices chattering or reciting their lessons that echo around schools all around the world. Its a lovely sound. And theres always a friendly face, a wave or a smile as the students or teachers pass. Of course Snooks is a great asset as the students and teachers alike want to meet with her.

Every day for me is a school day, I have lessons every day of the week. I only have 9 hours of classes each week (13 x 45 minutes each), but they are all over the place really. I'm not really complaining as I am on the campus and my flat is five minutes away from my classroom so I can get back sharpish for a cup of tea after each class and its not onerous work after all.

This is my Junior A class. They are all about aged 12 ish and are great fun. Their English is quite good but you have to be careful not to have too much expectation based on their spoken English.

The first Unit is about Space so I got them drawing aliens

 These are their efforts, pretty good I thought, the school thought so too and put the pictures on their website!

This is my Senior A class they are about 14/15 ish. They are all good fun, most have pretty good English too. All of these kids are being aimed to go to foreign universities thats why we're teaching the iGCSE

This is one of the dormitory blocks where they live six to a room, the toilets and ablutions are down the hall. As you can see they all do their own laundry. 

This is 'Kimmy' doing her eye exercises they all do following instructions blared out through the loudspeaker system

The is 'Prussian Blue' - they choose their own English names. She likes cats! I've shortened her name to 'Blue'.

The English have arrived!

On Friday as I have most of the day free, my one and only class at the school is at 16:30, AJ has organised me some work teaching IELTs in the city. IELTs is the English qualification that gives students access to foreign universities, they have to achieve a score/grade of 6.5/7 to get accepted. 

This is the view of Nanjing from the 25th floor where the language 'school' is. 

This is the noodle maker at the local market

Snooks taking it easy after her morning walk (running madly after her ball), she seems to have nicked her foot/toe a bit and its been bleeding a bit. I've has a look and I can't really see a cut so it's not serious I think. 

 One of my Senior A students (Jo) Father has given us all a gift of Moon Cake  As you can see its a substantial gift to give the international office.

From Wikipedia:

Mooncake (simplified Chinese: 月饼; traditional Chinese: 月餅; pinyin: yuè bĭng) is a Chinese bakery product traditionally eaten during the Mid-Autumn Festival(Zhongqiu). The festival is for lunar worship and moon watching, when mooncakes are regarded as an indispensable delicacy. Mooncakes are offered between friends or on family gatherings while celebrating the festival. The Mid-Autumn Festival is one of the four most important Chinese festivals.

Typical mooncakes are round or rectangular pastries, measuring about 10 cm in diameter and 4–5 cm thick. This is the Cantonese mooncake, eaten in southern China (Guangdong, Hong Kong). A rich thick filling usually made from red bean orlotus seed paste is surrounded by a thin (2–3 mm) crust and may contain yolks from salted duck eggs. Mooncakes are usually eaten in small wedges accompanied by Chinese tea. Today, it is customary for businessmen and families to present them to their clients or relatives as presents,^[1] helping to fuel a demand for high-end mooncake styles.

One can tell its a special gift because of the statement on the box:

'Give first choice present quality guarantee, adopt advanced technology. Delicious loved by all best enjoymeng'.

Unfortunately I will not have 'enjoymeng' of these as they are usually made with lard. Stephen is giving his to his Chinese girlfriend, I'll find somebody suitable to impress, maybe the guards at the gate might get one each.

Later today Stephen and I are off to Auchan a french supermarket to see what goodies we can find.