Home Sweet Hua Qiao

At 3:30 this afternoon, our bus pulled back onto campus here at Hua Qiao. The streets and sidewalks were paved with white shirts and green pants – the school uniform. It lasted almost 23 seconds before Tannah spotted one of her students then all of the returning teachers were up and searching the masses for any of their students. One student was even hanging around the foreign teacher building to try to find Danielle and talk with her.

I saw my first student coming out of the dining hall tonight and she was really excited to see me… but her English hadn’t gotten much better and she hadn’t used it all summer.
“Abrrr!”
“Hey! How are you?”
“uh….mmm…. uh…. GOOD! Bye bye!”

And there was our conversation.

I had met another student named Christina in the school store who was excited to see me and had been practicing. She actually had worked with and taught English over the summer. “But I was very tiring. Now I know how being a teacher is tiring.” I just smiled and nodded and told her that I imagined her to be a really good teacher. She went on to inform me that they had two of my classes today but when I didn’t show up they guessed I wasn’t back yet.

Say what?! I’m supposed to find out tomorrow what classes we’re teaching and then pick. Apparently, they’ve chosen classes for us to teach and just assigned them. I don’t know what all that means. Monica also ran into students in 3 different departments that told her that she was their teacher. So we hold it all lightly. Apparently according to the students who have seen or texted me, I’m not teaching oral English. Instead I’m teaching a “Survey of English Speaking Countries”. If you don’t know what that means, then you’re in the same boat as I am. Apparently, I’m supposed to teach it, but what is it? I’m going to need some clarification if that’s what I end up doing.

Supposedly we’re not teaching until Sept 1. So we have a few days to get settled in and get things ready, I’m slightly expecting them to want us to teach tomorrow… I hope not. Now, I’ve got a lot of my things moved into my apartment, but time to rearrange, unload, and try to kill as much of the mold that’s started growing in my new bathroom as possible. Giddy up!

More adventures to come.