Orientation Number 2

August 24, 2011

I don’t really have much to say, but I figure I am probably overdue for an update. Everyone is at the school. We now have seven Americans, three Canadians, two full Brits and one full Australian, and one half British half Australian teachers. Our vice-director of foreign studies and her husband are from Indonesia. Gyu (the vice director) has been at New Oriental since the school opened nine years ago; Halim joined her about five years ago. My fellow Canadians are indeed north of Vancouver as Paul told me, but they are three provinces over: Manitoba. I am the oldest of the 20 year olds. We are a great group 

Orientation started on Monday. It’s nice to have western food back on campus, but this time around, I do think that the mixture of western and eastern is upsetting my stomach. A lot of people complained of this at summer camp, but I didn’t notice then. Now that I have spent most of a month on mostly Chinese food, I am noticing the difference. It’s weird for me to have to think about what I want to do for dinner – I almost still wish that the summer food schedule remained in place. However, I think that I might end up losing some weight with this food schedule. The trick is to eat a small lunch at the western cafeteria. There is a marathon in Yangzhou in April and apparently we all participate. I might just do the 10 km because, well, it hurts me to run, but I will do a part of it. I guess the school has the majority of the people who participate enrolling over 2000 people each year. George and Patrick say they will make me train with them, and I think I will try. II would love to join these guys and say I finished the half marathon (21 kms) but I don’t think I can. We will see what happens over the next several months. Hopefully, I will come home without my Ghana weight!

Orientation isn’t much, and I am a little disappointed. Like I said, I am nervous about school starting and my abilities as a teacher. I spent our down time this afternoon positively affirming my skills but I am still sketchy about it. Orientation is a lot of group work, which in our case is a lot of question and answer for Erin. This is helpful, but I could use the practice that I thought was coming. We were supposed to do demo lessons today, but Paul did one instead. Maybe I am just high maintenance. The four of us with the small children have to make our flashcards as we go along, but we are currently doing them together. Erin found pictures one day (while we watched) we trooped over to the print room (which is open!) and printed the pages, and then spent an hour colouring them in and taping them to the construction paper.

Each week we will teach a song. So, our first week (not counting the real fist week where we learn names and rules) we will teach a song called “Can you say Good Morning”. One day one, we will teach the vocabulary of the song. On day two, we will teach the song. On day three, they have a dialogue about the song to practice. And day four, the final day, we have a review session of the week’s lesson. We have the same five classes every week, and we teach each class for 40 minutes a lesson. This adds up to a 20 teaching hour work week. We are required to spend 30 minutes in our office a day. Erin and I share an office with seven other grade two teachers. Each teacher has their own computer in the office along with a desk to keep supplies at. Three of my classes are right near the office, but my other two are in a different building. We, the English teachers, move from class to class. I think I will probably be ready to never hear the song again after five classes of it!

Tomorrow is the last day of orientation, but we (the grade one and two teachers) have no part in it tomorrow because we have finished everything. When we finished today, we went to the blue market and bought 700 plastic folders and 700 notebooks because the school didn’t think we needed them for our singing classes. However, the group feels like the children should write down the vocabulary words we learn, and have a folder for each child makes our lives a little easier since we have 175 children each. Erin bought it all, but the school will reimburse her; we just didn’t want to get them in like week 5, we wanted them to start the term off. We are meeting in the morning to organize these – a book, a name card (blank), a colouring sheet and whatever else we come up with in each folder to start. Some of the children won’t have English names, so while the teacher names the children, the rest can colour for a bit. At the end of the lesson, we will collect their folders and bring them back to our office. Now we have a record of who each child is, and won’t have to try to rename them when they forget their name by the following day. I need to buy a bag that I can carry things in easily between classes and the office. I don’t think a backpack is ideal for it.

Tomorrow night is our official welcoming dinner from the school. We are going to the Metro Hotel for dinner, which I am told is a mixture of Chinese and Western but pretty good. Then we are off until 7 am Monday morning when we have to be dressed in our Sunday best at the flag poles for the opening flag raising ceremony and our official introduction to the school. Because we don’t have suits yet and I have no way of blending in with the crowd (we all know I like to stand out with my shirts) we are all going (by all I mean the girls anyways) to this underground market to see if we can find clothes for all of us that will make us look a little less obvious. Those that have suits will be in their suits, so we need white polos or white blouses of some sort. I am not holding my breath, but we will see what we can find. There are bigger people in China; they have to buy their clothes somewhere! If we don’t find something… maybe my new yellow CNC shirt will be the next best thing… *sigh*

I think we are all hanging low this weekend. Maybe we will hit the hot springs, but we aren’t going away.

Hope all is well with you! Much love from China!