The Grind...

Now that we've been here almost two months, things are starting to settle into a fairly consistent routine: wake up, teach, go home, fry up some dumplings, watch prison break, sleep, rinse, repeat. Classes are becoming easier and easier to teach as I become more comfortable in front of my classes. Things are less and less structured, and we (the students and I) are able to have a bit more fun. The days are going by faster and faster, and really, it's hard to believe that we're half way into October.

But, there were a couple of things recently that broke the routine. On Tuesday, Niko and I hosted what our English department called the "English Square". This consisted of Niko and I MCing a presentation to the entire Junior 1 class. That's about 250 kids. I was initially worried, but it turned out to not be too big a deal. We played catch-phrase and Jeopardy. At first, the Jeopardy contestants understood the rule that the first person to raise their hand answers the question, but towards the end of the competition (when things were getting a bit more heated) they resorted to jumping out of their seats, flailing, and just calling out the answer. The end result was that whoever got called on had the answer screamed in his ear, and was pretty much guaranteed the points.

Another routine-breaker in the past couple of days has been our walk home from school. It just so happens that we tend to go home at the same time that the elementary school gets let out. As you can see in the picture, we now have a couple tag-alongs on our journey home. We let them listen to our iPods, let them hitch a ride on our backs, or just drag them along. They love it. Next on the list is coming up with a good Halloween costume and planning our school's little Halloween festival. Who would have thought that at age 22 I would be bobbing for apples in China...