First Week of Classes are Finished

So it is Friday evening about 9:30 pm. The weekend is upon us and our first week of classes are over. I made it through the first week!

It has been a good week. There have been some hiccups, but overall it was a pretty good week. My classes were fun. I have most of the same students and classes I had last semester. They are a great bunch of people. We just started where we left off. They got involved. We laughed and joked and even spoke English. They were not as nervous to speak English which was good. This week we talked about traveling, vacations and the just ended Spring Festival Vacation. 

When you ask students who traveled over the vacation period, not many raise their hands. They have been taught that when they hear the world travel it means sightseeing. Many Americans think of traveling that way, but we also think of traveling as going from one place to another. I used to travel from Layton to Murray for work, as an example. We usually call it vacation when we go sightseeing. Anyway, I had to explain this to the students. I asked them if they went from Qingdao to their hometown on a plane, train, bus or in a car. Then they all raised their hands. I told them they all traveled to their hometown. They may not have traveled to go sightseeing. They thought that was pretty interesting. It was something new to them.

I showed them pictures of what Gary and I did over the vacation time. Of course, my friend who read my blog got to see more pictures than my students. Then I divided the students into groups which became their family. They had to decide where the family was going to go for the next Spring Festival time. It was very interesting. Each family had a mother (who wanted to go to the beach in Sanya), a father (who wanted to go to Harbin to ski where it is very, very cold), a 20-year-old child (who wanted to go shopping in Shanghai), a 15-year-old child (who wanted to stay home with her friends and not go with the family), and 70 or 75-year-old grandparents (who wanted to be with the family, but did not like the heat of the beach, cold of the snow or traffic in Shanghai). Each family had to discuss or argue and compromise to decide where they would go. It was interesting to see the choices they made, who had the final say, and how often they wanted to make the grandparents happy. Many families chose to stay home in Qingdao. The students were very creative in their ideas. It was fun!

There were a few hiccups though. One day Gary could not find his class because they had changed the room on him. His Chinese co-teachers did not even know. Finally he found the room in another building. 

Today was my day for hiccups. So I am supposed to have a class on Friday mornings at 8 am. I got up and got ready and went to the classroom, number 607. Well the door was not open, and there were a few students around the hallway. I went down to the first floor to get the key and came back up to open the door. By that time, there were no students in the hall. I opened the door and waited for a bit, but no students showed up. I called my co-teacher, Linda, to see if I was in the right place. They put a schedule next to the door of the room and my name and the class were on it. Well after checking the rooms on all the floors to see if there was a class without a teacher, and Linda calling the post-graduate department, we found out that I actually do not have a class on Friday mornings at 8 am. This particular group of students only has writing and reading English, but not listening and speaking. I was okay with that because it means I get to sleep in on Fridays. I was happy because that would mean I only have to teach 7 classes.

So I went back to my apartment to wait for my 10:10 class which turned out to be really fun. During my tutoring time (which I do everyday from 1:30-3:30) I walked over to the English office with my tutoring student (we needed to get out) to drop off my syllabus. On the way back, we happen to meet 5 of my undergraduate students from last term. We talked and one of them told me that they were supposed to be in English class, but the foreign teacher did not know he or she was supposed to teach them. They were able to get out of class today. I told them I thought that was very weird, but thought nothing of it.

Well, not 10 minutes after I got back to my apartment, I got a WeChat message from my co-teacher Linda. She said our boss, Mr Tang had gotten a message from the undergraduate department that said I was supposed to teach a Friday afternoon English speaking class. Yes, you guessed it. The teacher who did not know they were supposed to be teaching was me. I laughed. I thought how funny it was that I had just met the students from that class. What is even more funny is that I had asked Mr. Tang at a meeting in the middle of February whether I would be teaching the undergraduate class again. He said no because the undergraduate department had not contacted him. Well, I am going to continue to teach the undergraduate class, just not this week. So funny. I still laugh when I think about it. What a coincidence that I would meet those students. Actually I think it was the Lord preparing me. 

I am excited that I don't have to teach 3 classes on Fridays. I had to last term and I was always dead tired by the time 3:30 came on Fridays. 

Well those are my adventures for the first week of class. Now all I have to do is prepare for next week and the next week and the next week.