Great Start.
This morning started out interesting. First, I woke up to a fone call from Coco saying my morning class was canceled due to exams. That meant I had no classes at all in the morning since today is my easy day. But then, it poured rain for about 10 minutes. Then it turned to a sprinkle, then after awhile, around 1030, the sun popped out and its bright and sunny now. Very nice. Also, my computer finished downloading the Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith Soundtrack. It sounds pretty good. I read a couple articles online yesterday that said that Kevin Smith had seen the movie and that it was "...as good as Empire." Which is definitely a positive review and could be the only saving grace for the prequels at all. However, I have a couple reservations on that because Jason Mewes is the one that was mentioning this news and Kevin Smith is in league with Lucasfilm now about making a Star Wars TV Series. I wonder if he had to say it was good. Who knows. I guess I will have to wait for it to come out. Depending on how things go, I may go to Hong Kong for a weekend and while I am there, go see the movie. That would rock. I don't know if it will be in Theatre in China. Maybe it might. Lord of the Rings was.
I went to 1+1 for lunch and ran into Robert. We chatted about things. It was enjoyable. More complaing of the teaching issues. He said that before he got here, he thought he wanted to stay for about 2 years to see the children progress. After a couple weeks, he was all like, "Aaaah, HELL NO!" He said he tried to do a project where kids would research other countries and give a small presentation. Stuff like Population, History, etc. Afterwards, his teacher said that the kids don't know what this stuff is. "Duh, that's the whole point of the project!" The whole system is against us here in China. If you haven't been able to figure that out already.
Time for afternoon classes with good 5th graders. The first class went well. The chinese love to play Paper Rock Scissors so I tried to incorporate that into an English game. I don't think I heard anyone speaking english. ugh.
Anywho, during this first class there was a rainstorm. Lets see...It poured this morning. Then it cleared up late morning and was absolutely gorgeous. I am sure there was a rainbow behind all the pollution in the sky. I rode my bike to school and it was still gorgeous. When class started, it was nice. Then about 2 minutes later, the sky got darker and continuously got darker until it was realy dark. The wind had picked up big time and was blowing the doors shut. I could hear all the doors in the school slamming one right after another. So the kids shut the windows and its a good thing too, because right after they shut the windows, it started storming hard. I haven't seen it rain this hard in China yet. It was like God was drinking barrels and barrels of the finest Heavenly Brewed beer and then running to the metaphorical toilet that is the Earth and letting it flow. Thats how hard it was. Kids who were outside for the span of a few seconds were completely drenched. The windows were shaking from the wind and it started lighting and thundering. As class ended, I headed to the office. All the way to the office I heard kids shrieking from the Lightning and thunder. When I got to the office I asked May and Anna, "Do you get tornadoes at all in this area of Guangdong?" They didn't understand "Tornadoes", they kept thought I was saying "tomatoes". So i went online and showed them pictures of tornadoes. They said, oh, "Typhoon", I was all like, "Sucka, don't you know a water storm from a land storm. Fool. Typhoons happen over the water and disipate dramatically once they hit land. Tornadoes form on the land." They then realized their folly and understood what I was talking about. "No, we do not get those in this area of Guangdong. Very rare. But in Xiamen, they get alot do." I think something like that. Very interesting.
The second period I had was special. Ivy had to prepare for an open class tomorrow morning where other teachers from other schools will come to watch. So she took about 15 kids... all the good kids. I was left with the ones who don't like doing anything. Great. Ivy said I could punish them in anyway if I needed too. She left and I thought we could have a fun class. Guess what. These kids started fooling around, not paying attention, and running around the room, throwing stuff and other things. So, i tried to get their attention by playing some games. One of the games I tried playing was "Telephone". It took me about 5 minutes just to get them to make a circle in the room. They knew how to pass the words down right away. And of course, no one was getting simple words that they just learned at all. And some tried to be comedians by shouting out the words or not being quite. After i told them to be quiet many times, those that broke the quiet rule and shouted the word out had to sit on the floor in front of me on their knees. As in Japanese "Seiza". I had a total of 4 kids doing it. 3 boys and 1 girl. When that game fell apart, I tried other things. I was doing all I could to make it a fun class, but these kids wanted to just rather spit in my face and tell me to screw off, so I was like, thats it. I went down to the office to see if the headmaster would accompany me back to the class, but instead I was given the head homeroom teacher of that class. Good enough. I brought him back and the kids were all over the place. As he walked in they scrambled for their seats as he was yelling at them. They were like cockroaches when the lights go on. I tried to make it a fun class but you would rather disrespect me so now I am bringing down the hammer. You brought this on yourself. Suckaz.
By the end of this class, the sun had come back out and it was shinning. I am sure there was a rainbow, except for the pollution covering it up. I headed home and got my stuff together for Kindergarten.
Kindergarten was good. Just went over the emotions I have been teaching them. I also introduced some new things like, "Push, Pull". Next week, I will do more with those and quickly review the emotions. I am still spending about the 1st half of the class doing greetings. Most of them got "My name is...." Down. Prolly about 80%. I will try to increase it next week then move on and just review that stuff every lesson.
Afterwards, I scored some Tomato and Eggs at Wooden Chair. After that I ran to my place and grabbed my computer and chinese stuff to take to chinese lessons and show the software to Lisa. she was excited and wanted to copy the CDs. Good luck. She felt they were good. I am still working on the first one. Its wierd. To go from disc 1 to disc 2, it feels like there should be a Disc 1.5 because on the 2nd Disc, there is lots of pinyin and complex explanations in Chinese. I'm clueless on it. As for the chinese lessons. I don't think they are very good. I am not learning much, especially for the amount of time I am putting in. I can't remember anything and the stuff goes in one ear and out the other. Irritating me. Nothing I learn in that class have I really needed to use or been able to use with Megan or Amy. Ugh.
After lessons were over, I am also continuously tired by these lessons. Very boring. I had about 40 minutes to relax before I ran to the KFC at 8pm to watch a performance. That girl from Lion Dance that was chatting with me on Tuesday has a dance recital and asked me to come. So I went. I was there for prolly 40 minutes waiting to see thier show, but they didn't go on. About 820pm, a breakdancing group took the stage. They started out and I just laughed my ass off. I said it once and I will say it again. The only thing funnier and more pathetic than a white man trying to act like a hip black man (which make me laugh as well) is an asian man trying to act like a black man. Don't get me wrong, breakdancing can be done by anyone, and the head of the troop that came on halfway thru had some talent. Most of the kids were just ok, I mean, I have only had 4 lessons, and my body rock and 6-step are much cleaner than theirs, but they got some of the hand stands down that I just can't get. But man, were they sloppy and when they weren't breakin' they were trying to act all street/ghetto, and there is nothing you can do but laugh. I do have to say, the head of the group, who was acting the worse, was the best in abilities at breakin'. But he still looked like a total tool. Ha ha. I luckily was able to get my video camera out right before he came on stage. I left after the break dancing bit because I had to meet everyone at 830pm for saying Goodbye to Lynn and Toby. Of course, I was the first one there, then Nick and Megan, then the rest of the Big House showed up. That was around 845pm. No one else showed until after 9pm. Thats what I get for being punctual.
We got some beers and some eats and we had ourselves a good ol time. There were lots of people there. Most of the foregin teachers in Xiaolan and Guzhen were there. I got to meet a bunch of the new teachers in Guzhen. Shevon from Ireland, Glen from Britain, Debbie from Wales, and Betty from New Zealand. They all seemed pretty fun. I chatted a bit with Debbie and she mentioned, "I just can't believe given all the facts, the majority of the American people could have still voted for Bush. Why would they do that." Great....we finally get rid of Toby and his Anti-American rhetoric, and now we get another one. I actually lost a bit of respect for her when she mentioned that.
Around 945pm, Yumi called me after her class was over and I told her to come over and she did. So that was nice. There were prolly 25-30 people around the table, because a bunch of the chinese staff were there too since it was Lynn's goodbye gathering as well.
As for Toby leaving, really, if he stayed it wouldn't have bothered me, becuase I haven't gone out with him in the past couple months since John left. So, he hasn't bothered me. And he didn't get drunk enough for me to record him saying stuff about America and I just didn't want to push it either. he was very well behaved tonite.
As for Lynn leaving. Its odd. Last semester I would have been happy to get rid of her, but now, with me avoiding Bond and only really dealing with her outside of the office, things were much better. Its like losing your Arch-Nemesis. The both of you are out to get each other while you are around. And you spend your whole life/time seeking the destruction of each other, when one of them leaves, you have all this time on your hands and you eventually miss them. I think thats how its gonna be with Lynn. The night was really good. I had lots of fun. I hadn't gone out drinkin like that in a while. It was good. The pain in my knee disappeared. I think it was from the acohol. It does a body good.
Goodnite.