1. One of my students breaking out into song randomly during a getting to know you activity. Apparently he told some girl he likes to sing, and then she asked him to demonstrate. This distracted the class for a good five minutes.
2. My freshmen's listening and speaking abilities are light years away from my sophomores. Where as my sophomores can have pretty eloquent debates, some of my freshmen had a hard time understanding and answering the question, "Do you have a brother?" This meant our first class lasted exactly half an hour of the hour and a half allotted because I did not have enough games that were easy enough for their abilities.
3. We didn't have enough chairs in either class because even though there are 25 people on the roster and 30 chairs, for some reason we had 34+ students.
On the plus side, as I had been hoping, many of my freshmen did not yet have English names. That means that one of my classes now has almost the entire cast of The Office, including Michael, Jim(my), Pam, Kelly, Erin, and two Angela's (because both girls wanted this name and neither wanted to be called Phyllis). Sadly, I could not convince anyone to be Dwight.
The other self-chosen names of my freshmen are certainly creative. Some of my favorites include: Butterfly, Seven, Milk, Museum, Zero, Prissy, Love, Tea, Dream, and Yoga. Oh, and I have a boy name Liberty who told me his hobbies are "watching politics programe about Taiwan news and reading books of freedom of published." Hmm, interesting...
On another note, Wednesday evening I had my school’s first English Corner. I was not quite sure what English Corner entailed because all I had been given about it was a sheet that had Wednesday’s topic: “What college students know about the current state of their major.” Since this was a very long, muddled description, the other American and I decided the whole thing would probably just be casual group conversations with interested English students.
We were, therefore, very surprised when we turned up and were greeted by an emcee, stereos, and a crowd of about fifty students, none of whom were actually English majors.
We were immediately accosted by another teacher who said we would start the opening ceremonies soon. Wait, what? Opening ceremonies? This was not the casual chatting we had prepared for. The first few acts included a student reciting one of President Obama's speeches, another singing My Heart Will Go On, and the last rapping Eminem. I suddenly had the inkling that I was going to be made to do something outrageous and/or embarrassing on stage.
I was a bit relieved when it was announced all of the English teachers would be giving speeches rather than singing or juggling. A speech at least I could BS. As my luck would have it, I was the first up of the two foreign teachers and two Chinese teachers on the bill to talk. Without the luxury of listening to the others to judge appropriate topic and length, my “speech” went something like this:
Hi. My name is Lindsey… and I am from Chicago. This is my first time in China… and my first English Corner, obviously. I like both so far… and I am impressed by the students here. I know today’s English Corner topic is majors… I think that you have all made a very good choice being English majors. English is very important… for the future and now. And you will get good jobs if you know English…. So… thank you for having me, it is nice to be here.
As I mentioned before, none present were actually English majors, making my speech totally irrelevant. But when Justin got up and pretty much repeated my speech verbatim because he didn’t know what else to say, I felt much better. Next weeks topic is “On Morals and Moral Degeneration”, and I’m hoping I don’t have to make another speech on that subject…
So between rowdy freshmen and impromptu speeches, I’m pretty glad this week is over. Next stop, Hong Kong!
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