everyday life.

After about 3 weeks in Shenzhen, I am finally beginning to feel like an actual resident. I call my apartment "home," I have a gym membership that I use daily, I know where I can get the best dumplings/noodles/sweet & sour pork, I have finally solved the mystery of my stone-age washing machine... and most importantly, as of today I have a permanent (knock on wood) teaching schedule and have sat in on or co-taught each of the classes that I will be responsible for.

Weekly Schedule
	Mon	Tues	Wed	Thurs	Fri
Period 1	10/11 B-level			4/5/6 A-level	Year 5 POI
Period 2		4/5/6 A-level	10/11 B-level
Period 3			Year 5 POI		Year 2 POI
Period 4
LUNCH
Period 5		Year 2 POI		Chinese lessons	Teachers A-level
Period 6	Year 2 POI	Year 5 POI	Year 1	Year 1
Period 7	English Corner	English Corner

To explain a bit more about the classes:

• My 10/11 B-level class is a "listening" class for high school students at a medium level of English. The kids are well-behaved but quite disinterested in English... No wonder, because the textbook is terrible; the class consists mostly of dictation. I have already planned my first lesson on numbers, though, and intend to illustrate mileage using a world map, discuss currency by bringing in actual American coins, etc. It should be a very basic class to teach, but if I have any desire to keep the kids engaged I will have to do some serious additional lesson planning.
• My POI classes (Year 2 and Year 5) are for kids who have relatively advanced English skills and are not technically English classes at all - instead, I teach basic science/math/history/social studies, depending on the theme, so the kids familiarize themselves with the English vocabulary of real topics. I co-taught the Year 5 class today and was shocked by how well the students speak English; in fact, some of the kids were actually raised in Canada and are totally fluent. Thus when Dave (the current teacher) allowed the kids to ask me some questions, in addition to the usual "do you like China?" and "how old are you?" I got complex and entertaining ones like: "Do you know anything about the political situation in Zimbabwe?" and "Why are your eyes so big? Does it help you wear contact lenses?"
• The 4/5/6 A-level includes many of the same kids as my Year 5 POI; it's basically an English class for the most advanced 4th-6th grade students.
• My Year 1 class. Oh my goodness. I can't believe my good fortune at getting handed this one. There are only two Year 1 students, Ben and Coco, and they are completely adorable and also very smart. I've been warned that teaching two kids can actually be more difficult than having a full classroom, but if you could see how incredibly cute these kids are, you would probably quit your day jobs and move to China. I'll snap a picture next week and post it ASAP for your enjoyment.
• English Corner with 7th, 8th, and 9th graders: This is already my least favorite class. It's really a fluff class: ungraded and unrelated to any of the other coursework the kids are doing. It's supposed to reinforce the English they've been working on, but really it seems to be more of a pop-in-a-movie-and-half-assedly-discuss-it-later type class. The middle school group is already super unmotivated, so this informal class is an unproductive disaster.
• In my Teachers A-level class on Friday afternoons, I'll be leading the course I watched last week, teaching English to the most advanced Chinese teachers. It seems ironic that little unqualified me will be leading a class full of math, science, and business teachers (with actual teaching degrees, no less!) each week. But in a way I am most comfortable doing this, since they are most similar in age to the ESL students I worked with in Madison.

Time to go out for dinner... Again. I guess that's what you do when a meal at a restaurant is cheaper than a peanut butter and jelly sandwich!