My job in China – The First Day

In the last post I spoke about the airport problems. Well, in this post I’m going to talk about my first full day in China!

After eating a very spicy KFC, Dan and I got into the car with the headmaster’s nephew and his friend and we drove.

and drove

and drove some more.

It felt like Zhuzhou was an eternity away from Changsha. When I googled it back in the UK, I saw that it would take us over an hour to drive from Changsha to Zhuzhou. But my god felt like we had been driving for 4 hours.

We finally arrived at the apartment we would be staying in and I dragged my suitcase up 5 flights of stairs while Dan walked baglessly in front of me.

When we got to the top floor (I was completely knackered and sweating from every hole in my body) I saw a man and a women in pyjamas waiting for us. The man introduced himself through his nephew (because he didn’t speak English) as the headmaster and the women was called Anna she taught at the school.

Dan and I were shown two rooms and we decided which one we would have. Dan let me have the room with the bathroom.

Not gonna lie, these photos look horrific but my room wasn’t that bad. It was decorated with flower stickers on the wall and look….a double bed~

The bathroom however doesn’t look nice. It clearly hadn’t been used that often, but I didn’t care if it was a little dirty I was happy enough that I had an en suite ahaha it saves me from having to walk across the hall if I need to pee~.

and the view from outside my window ^^ so it was quite a built up area we were in

This is the main living area, you can see that open door on the left? that is my room

A shot of that perfect archway. I loved that archway…maybe too much

And this one is the view from my “bathroom” window. I occasionally saw some people on that roof right in front ahaha~

The Next Day!

So we were told that we would start teaching tomorrow and had to leave the flat at 8. Which wouldn’t normally be a problem, except we were so jet lagged.

Dan asked me if I managed to sleep last night, I didn’t, neither did he. The poor guy had to wear the same clothes as yesterday because of his missing bag.

We left the flat with Anna and she bought us breakfast from a lady selling jiaozi on the street and then we got the bus.

For 2 yuan (RMB)

2 YUAN!!!

In Cambridge it costs you £5 and your first born child to ride the bus. No lie.

Once we arrived at the school that was in like a multi-purpose building. Like the first floor has a ballet and a piano school, the 2nd floor was our English school and I have no idea what was on the third floor..

But the building was surrounded by shops and things. If you walked down the steps to the square there would be people dancing and exercising in the mornings and evenings~ It was really cool~ Nothing like I was expecting

So we meet the other 9 English teachers briefly before I was sent to a class with one of the teachers I just met and Dan was sent to another class.

The first class I was teaching was full of 7 to 8 year olds. It was amazing.

The weird thing is they were only learning A, B, C and D and 4 words that start with those letters. I must have gone over those 4 letter a thousand times in the 2 hours, but I was having the time of my life

After that first class every other class was relatively the same. The day was split into 5 periods

1 – 8.30 until 10am (these were usually the really young kids: 5 to 8 y/o)

2 – 10.30 until 12 (I liked this class too~ they were around 9 and 10 years old)

3 – 2.30 until 4

4 – 4.30 until 6

5 – 7 until 8.30 (the classes at this time had the 15 to 17 year olds in- I loved this class)

All of the 1 and half hour periods were split into 3 sessions that were 30 minutes long. So I could teach for 1 session at 8.30 and then nothing until 10.30. I had to teach 8 sessions a day.

Usually it would be 3 in the morning (1st period) and 3 in the evening (5th period) and then 2 other sessions in the 2nd, 3rd or 4th period.

It was an alright system, I got a few breaks, sometimes I didn’t need to be in until 10.30, other times I was in straight away at 8.30am.

Every morning a teacher would come up to me and say “Laina you have my class!” and give me the text book pages that I would be working on.

Unfortunately because we were only summer school teachers Dan and I weren’t allowed a lot of freedom when it came to how we taught the class or how we presented the material, but it was kinda okay because if the class sucked, we could always blame the textbook.

After the morning classes, some of the teachers and the headmaster took us out to lunch at a restaurant really close to the school.

They asked us what we wanted to eat. Dan and I looked at each other…we had no idea. So they ordered for us. Maaaaaan that food was delicious.

The thing you should remember with Chinese cooking is that when you order chicken or fish….it comes whole. Not like in the UK where everything has been removed and you’re left with the meat. I had to pull a few bones out of my mouth but it was totally worth it because I have never tasted anything that delicious…(I lie…I ate something amazing the week after when we went to Shaoshan…ugh my mouth remembers it so well~)