Week 1 Teaching

We have survived our first week and a half of teaching and it sure has been a steep learning curve. We spent the first few days teaching all the classes together. We created a presentation about America, California, and our lives back home with lots of pictures that everyone loved. Our schedule wasn’t completely set for the first few days and it was really nice having both of us in the first non-English major class we taught, which had about 200 people! I don’t think I have ever talked in front of 200 people and it was a little nerve racking. At the beginning of this week, our schedules changed because trying to teach 200 people who don’t speak English very well is a difficult thing to do. Luckily, the school was able to move things around and make the classes smaller, so we can give each student more attention.

I am teaching 5 English major classes and 3 non-English major classes, while George is teaching 8 non-English major classes. However, each class meets for more than one period. We are each teaching 21 hours a week. Between us, we probably have close to 1000 students.

It is very difficult to remember everyone’s name (especially their Chinese names!). On top of our teaching, we also lead “English Corner”, which meets for 1 hour on Tuesday and Thursday nights. This is a time for all the students, including the ones who aren’t in our classes, to ask us questions and practice their English. English Corner is fun, but I feel bad because not all students get a chance to talk with us. The students all use a program called QQ, which is the Chinese version of instant messenger. We created QQ accounts for them to talk to us on, which is a great way for the shy students to talk with us. Our goal is just to get everyone to practice their English as much as they can, with us and with each other.

The students are all so friendly and helpful. In every class, we get invited to their hometowns, out to lunch, to go on a class trip, go shopping with them in town, or play sports with them. We are very popular and we have to be prepared when going out because everyone says “Hello” to us or joins us when we are trying to run on the track. We have bought ping pong paddles and badminton rackets so we can play with the students. They are all much better than us, especially at ping pong!

We had a busy first weekend here. We spent Friday night at the “Dance Party” learning how to dance. They dance with specific dance steps and it is similar to ballroom dancing. They only have one CD so it just plays about 4 songs over and over which is funny. George and I are not very good dancers, but we are going to try and learn some steps to use at our wedding! Saturday we got up early and left for a BBQ at 8 in the morning. We went to the Stone Forest with a group of Tourist Management majors.

The Stone Forest is made of limestone rocks and is very impressive:


The students wouldn’t let us help prepare anything or clean anything up, they just wanted to feed us! Every student wanted to cook something for us, but that was ok because we wanted to try everything. They had corn, chicken wings, beef, meat balls, fish balls, hot dogs, tofu, eggplant, a leafy vegetable we had never seen before, among other things.

They coat everything with oil, BBQ sauce, and spices. The spices are great because while it tastes spicy, it doesn’t burn your mouth afterwards. If you know me, I hate spicy food because of the burning afterwards, so this spice is perfect for me! They did allow us to learn how to make dumplings and we are going to try making them ourselves at home.


We also played tag on the game field,
and taught the students how to play Go Fish and B.S.
By the end of the day, we were so full we just wanted to get home to go to sleep. On Sunday we went shopping with some of our English major students. It was our first time going out to eat with someone who knows what to order. It was nice to have a translator for the day.

This weekend we are taking it easy. Tonight we are going to try to find the one other foreigner in town. There is a man here who owns a bar called “The Western Cowboy”. He is from Tennessee, but married a Chinese woman and has settled down. We are looking forward to meeting him.

-Fiona