USA

My first day I worked on emotions. Each student had a paper with photos of emotions with English words. We defined each word, and they wrote the translation to the word in Chinese. We practiced saying the words, and then played charades.

The other lesson I did was working with school vocabulary, such as teacher, desk, chair. I showed pictures and went over the words. Then they divided into groups and played concentration with picture cards.

We have our lunch in a room next to our office. They are trying to make it more American for us, which is kind of funny, but very nice of them. Yesterday we had these rice meatballs, soups, vegetables, and chicken legs. They even made us cookies and rolls. And there is plenty of fruit like melon and watermelon. They are treating us very well here.

Last night after work, while the rest of the group went back to the hotel, we walked to a massage place about 5 minutes away, for foot and neck massages. It cost 39 RMB, which is equivalent to about 6$, for an hour. First they soak your feet and give you a neck massage, Then they worked on our feet. It was wonderful! At the end they took this glass bottle and lit a fire in it and stuck it on the bottom of our feet. There would form a suction and the bottle would just sit there. I had never had this done before, and it was quite interesting.

We then walked about 10 minutes to a supermarket and picked up a few things. We then walked next door to a hotel and had them call a taxi for us, and paid the $3.50 to get back to the hotel, which is about a 20 minute drive.

This is my 4th summer trip to China to teach English. I must love China a lot to keep coming over and over!

I have been using Blogspot in past years, but it's blocked in China this year, so here goes a new blog!

July 3, 2011

Tonight we had our first dinner with the officials of the school. We went to a restaraunt about 5 minutes from campus. We took up 4 rooms. Each room sat about 8 people per table. There was the principal and assistant principal of the school, and other head officials, plus many different teachers, including one of the teachers that I will be working with my second week. There was beer, and more beer, and more beer. Thank goodness I don’t drink, cause they were doing toast after toast and saying bottoms up, and the teachers and officals would down the whole glass. I hear that the alchol content is not as great in their beer, but several people, including Sally’s 18 year old son, were getting pretty drunk.

There were a total o 18 different dishes. We started out with about 8 appetizers. We started with green tea, then there were vegetables and a pate, which I tried and almost gagged on, and thinly sliced meat of some type. Then came the main dishes, a huge fish, including the head, fried egg custard in batter dipped crust (yummy), fried beef, fried apples, 2 kinds of soup, broccoli which was plain...something really different, noodles, and one of the strangest dishes was pig ears! Yes, pig ears sliced thin and served with a bunch of vegetables.

We came back to the hotel about 20 minutes ago, and Susan is having a massage. A friend of Mr. Mao comes to our rooms and does a massage. Last night he told MaraBell that she had a lump in her breast, without even touching them, and she had recently been to the doctor and been told that. These doctors here can diagnose different diseases. It’s costing us 14$, but in the states would be at least 50$. I’m next. Hoping to get my arm to start working again. Susan is crying out in pain, hope I don’t do that!