Happy Halloween!

The SCIC students decided to throw a Halloween party on Saturday. Halloween isn't a "thing" here, so it was interesting to see how the students chose to dress up. Many of them didn't, but those that did had rented elaborate costumes and painted their faces. Their attention to detail is pretty amazing. Likewise, they throw some pretty elaborate parties.They started by having foreign teachers and other "guests of honor" parade through the crowds of students in our Halloween costumes, and do a kind of parade around the campus. There were games, a legitimately scary haunted house, an MC'ed costume contest, and dancing. The dancing, of course, was all pre-choreographed. The students had requested that I teach them the Chicken Dance, the Bunny Hop, the Macarena, the Soulja Boy dance, and the Electric Slide during the week prior. It was actually really fun!

Midterm week is fast approaching, which means I will have my hands full with marking three sets of 40 exams. Luckily I just met my TA, Celine, this week. She will be a marvelous help when it comes time to weed through all that ESL writing.

I wore this to school on Halloween. The funny thing was that I got stared at, but not significantly more than I do on a regular day.

Some students also being fierce cats!

A tug of war competition between classes.

This comforter is as soft as a...ferret? Hopefully it smells better.

Chinese Song

Last weekend was the 10th anniversary of the language school I teach for, Sino-Canadian International College. Students had been practicing for over a month to perform on the night of the celebration.

Some of the foreign teachers had been asked by the Student Union to perform Auld Lang Syne (the new year song) in Chinese. All of us, few of whom speak Chinese, had about 2 weeks to try and learn two Chinese verses and a chorus. We tried our best, and nearly pulled it off, if I do say so myself. Luckily we had prerecorded our song and we just had to sing along Milli-Vanilli style. The students had choreographed the routine for us, and here is where I could clearly see a difference between American University students and Chinese. The student choreographer had the teachers standing in a horseshoe and waving while about 20 students sat in a line in front of us, swaying to the music. It was quite cute, but definitely something you would never see a 19 year old college boy do in the US!

I've been a terrible blogger lately! I haven't updated this thing in over a month....which is due to the fact that school has started and I've been busy learning the names of my 40 students, lesson planning, and teaching.

So here's the update: I have really been enjoying teaching. My students are awesome, and I am reminded why I wanted to come to China in the first place. They are such respectful and fun people to teach. I've been a little run down physically because of the sudden increase in workload. I hadn't worked since early July, so going from zero to 60 was a little taxing on the old immune system. I had a pretty gnarly cough for the first couple of weeks of class. I felt bad for the students, who had to listen to me rasp and hack though the first several lessons on top of being unsure of my foreign accent and teaching methods. I'm feeling much better now, but I'm still a little hoarse. I think that's mostly due to having to speak loudly for several hours a day.

I have this entire week off school in honor of National Day, the holiday set aside for celebrating the founding of the People's Republic of China. In typical Chinese fashion, some of the days off need to be made up for, so I will work on Saturday and Sunday of this week. It's been nice to take a little breather, but unfortunately we have been dealing with the fall out of a cyclone this week, which means it has been chilly and pouring rain the entire time. So, I've celebrated National Day by snuggling up in my apartment with a good book. Right now I'm reading "The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency" series by Alexander McCall Smith, a series that I really recommend checking out. It's set in Botswana, and it's quite charming. An awesome foreign family that I met here a couple of weeks ago, who happen to have a pretty expensive library, loaned me the first couple of books in the series.

Anyway, I wish I had some photos of my class, but more will follow later. Here are some pictures from the past month:

All students are required to complete a military training during their second year of University. It was hot and miserable, and these poor kids had to spend all week running around in their heavy wool uniforms. 

Chinglish!

Many of the cakes in China look so appetizing, but taste like sawdust!

This was actually a pretty tasty dessert: it's super-finely saved ice with mangoes and mango syrup. The texture is unlike anything I've ever had before. Yum!