Into the Hallucination Called Work

I heard its bad etiquette to apologize about not blogging for a long time. And fuck it's only been one wk, so lay off wny don'tcha? Shee whiz! As you may have guessed, i've been pretty inundated w/ school stuffs, which are all going ok, despite my present cranky mood and disenchantment w/ one grade 7 class in particular. But who can blame them for acting up when this dude keeps talking to them in English and they can't read or anything? But then again he did just waste 15 minutes going over a sheet of classroom vocab which hosted priceless gems such as "I don't understand" and "This is too hard!"



-Ok, that was yesterday, and now is today. After not enough sleep and my worst day yet w/ the 7s, today i had a good sleep and my best day yet w/ the 7s. Such is life.

Anyhow, here's the present lowdown on the school scene. Heza carried me thru my 1st wk w/ grade 1 thank god, and that class is great. "Apple! Living! Rock! Non-living!" The kids are super nice and they really dig both of us. We teach them on alternating days. (lucky kids!)

Gr 7 is up and dn. i spent the 1st wk or so lowering and lowering and lowering the level i thought they were at. How do you explain "forget" ie. "Do not forget" to someone who doesn't even know "remember"? And you wanna figure out why Tim was punching Liu before class started? Not a chance.

The advanced 7 esl'ers are great. they do a good job, and usually can figure out what they're supposed to do. They're also quite... controlled and respectful! How weird to have students who always start and end w/ "Hello, Mr Wang, goodbye Mr Wang." and who bring you flowers and presents on Teachers Day. Seriously.

And i've also got a whopping class of three EFL'ers, kids from Canada and the states. they're also rad. i'm doing this wonky course w/ them called Explorations, which doesn't actually exist except for what i wanna throw together, so we started off w/ the China Toxic Toy Crisis, leading into Walmart: The High Price of Low Cost, and starting yoga on Friday. Later on we hope to do volunteerism, drama, writing, and music (we have a singer, a drummer, and a guitarist/violinist plus me. And the school has sound-recording studio spaces! Score!)

So school is mostly good. Sure there's been staff members crying here and there, but mostly life is good. Sure there's lots to bitch about too in a school which is brand new, lacking in resources, computers, infrastructure yadda yadda, and sure all of us teachers found out our classes days before we started teaching them. And yes it sucks when you teach to day by day since noone's figured out what their year plans are gonna look like (a major task which needs to be handled asap)... but i guess such is life in this crazy new hi-end school which is crazy nice in so many other ways.

Oh, and the apartment they've stuck us in! The conditions we're expected to deal with! Ok, i admit it's convenient being just 2 minutes walk from the school, and yes it's WAY more spacious than anything i'd expected. And yes it's in brand new condition. And yes it's styley to boot. And yes it has mirrory polished stone and hardwood floors. But still, still... uh where was i going with that one? Well let's just say that us staffers keep the conditions here hush hush lest our sister school staff find out, thus causing great upheaval.

Ok. Enough school for now. this blog is, of course, procrastination.