Soon we’ll own you all

“The EALD teacher is really kind and handsome, thus we have no excuse to get bad grades in his class.”  This is just one example of the outstandingly high standard of English in my classes.  The sentence is explaining the meaning of the word “thus” and as their EALD teacher I can find no finer example of perfect sentence formation, not to mention blindingly perceptive observation.

What are the young people of China in to these days?

The problem with having 4 reasonable classes who are inclined to do their work is that I’ve more correcting to do and hence no time to focus on the important stuff like chatting up those lovely Chinese teachers, surfing the web, and keeping VB ticking along.  The first major written work for the students was to write a diary for 4 days and then I had to correct 95 (yes, every bleedin’ one of my students handed in their work!) of those blessed documents.

Just because

So it seems that Jay Chou (?) is very popular among the ladies.  They all want to realise their dreams in their hearts.  A lot of girls fell out with their friends.  There are things that I now know about my students that I would prefer never to have known, and one student appears to have two fathers, in a confused rather than ultra-modern liberal way.  And of course there’s the native English speaker who was born in Canada, raised in LA, and whose mother is an Olympic diving champion.  In his diary he talked about dissing his girlfriend, beating up some guy, and meeting a new drinking buddy.  The guy is 15 and looks about 12 and I can’t help feeling he’s been heavily influenced by Ross O’Carroll Kelly’s son.  And then there was Eva who decided to copy 4 random diary-type pieces from the internet and who has sulked ever since, giving me the silent treatment, just because I gave her zero.

next week I’ll be collecting a potential 95 essays which I’ll have to spend every waking moment marking.  I’m encouraging them like mad to have these essays done in time when really I should be saying, “you’re young and you’re rich, why bother?”

They’re watching you

After well over a year with nobody actually witnessing me teaching (besides the students who have little idea what I’m going on about anyway) the day finally arrived when the head of English went to see what I had to offer.  Frankly I was a little bit nervous that my complete inadequacy was about to be exposed.  At least he didn’t fall asleep or spend the class on his mobile phone, though maybe I should have bribed the class beforehand to make me look good.

An end to cynicism

No more Billy-no-mates

I’m beginning to look back fondly to last term when I had all the rubbish classes; I attended 2 parents meetings and met 1 parent.  Now we’ve just had another parents meeting and there was practically a riot as they battled to speak to me about their child.  So I promised every parent that I’d pay extra attention to their offspring, even if I’d no idea what student we were talking about and obviously I’ve completely failed to deliver on these rash promises.

The pressure keeps piling up.  Ah, how I pine for those halcyon days planning how to spend a client’s millions that would make or break their future, wondering if anybody was going to see the spot I’d booked for 23.37 and deciding that it was obviously the flawed creative execution that made the whole thing crash and burn because it certainly wasn’t my fault.

Just say no

Sports day arrived again and we got to don our shiny new tracksuits which I wore in public for the first, and last, time.  All the teachers were to do a dance with flowers for the opening ceremony.  I stood my ground and said no, maintaining my perfect non-singing, non-dancing record in China for 14 months and thus keeping my dignity for just a little bit longer.  This could have been me….

Not for me

But at least they didn’t have to do this, unlike the poor English chap (on the left, below) who surely never expected to look like this in his first week in school.

Eat your heart out X-Factor

Food news

Hot Pot:  I’ve given it several chances now and it’s still the worst thing ever.  Honestly, fondue was way better.  Hot Pot is just completely unsatisfactory, and probably harmful.  Twice in a weekend is twice as wrong.  And to cap it all off, Dim Sum is almost as bad as Hot Pot and to have both on the same day is what living nightmares are made of.  November 6th will remain a dark dark day in my soul.

Meanwhile the canteen continues to amaze as it sets lower and lower standards every day.  The few reasonable dishes seem to have gone for good.  You go have your lunch and you think, this is it,  this is the worst ever, surely tomorrow can only be better.  But they keep digging that hole and ever if they get all the way to the other side of the world they’ll somehow find somewhere else they can dig just so they can go even lower.

World news

The tragedy of China’s embrace of capitalism in all its sorry forms is that kids have decided that American “culture” is all that matters so they’ve chosen Taylor Swift, Linkin Park, Justin Bieber, Beyonce, Lady Gaga, Michael Jackson, Steve Jobs, and the NBA as their idols.  It makes Australia look like a cultural nirvana.

America may be winning the “cultural” battle but, on the other hand, with China already owning America and about to own Europe I guess China is winning the overall battle for world supremacy and is willing to take the hit on “culture”.  Anyway, it’s nice to be on the winning side for once.  I wonder how things will go in the January transfer window.

How’s that smoking ban working then?

It reminds me of the good old days before the smoking ban in Ireland when you’d arrive home after a night out and all your clothes would be reeking of stale cigarettes.  So I wouldn’t say it’s working too well then.

The nature photo

By the way…

WordPress has been blocked here for a while now so I’m not sure if VB is looking as well as it should, and naturally I’m risking life and limb just to get these few meandering thoughts to you.   It’s because I care.

Just turn it on now and stop your messing

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