1st Week

I'm halfway through my first week of teaching alone already! My first day was a bit shaky, I have a class that makes my satan spawn look like angels and they did not respond to me one bit. I'm actually quite fond of my afternoon class now hehe! By the third lesson on Monday I was ready to give up, but the teacher in that class is great and helped me a lot. The theme this week was Birthdays so I used a shoebox as a present and got the kids to open it. It's a good lesson, lots of things to talk about but I still finished 10 minutes early! By yesterday afternoon I could fill the time completely but today we moved onto the story book which only takes 10 mins when I stretch it out to the max. Grr! The kids are getting to know me now and on Friday, when I finished at lunchtime, some of them saw me on the train and they were all shouting "Hello Miss Jenny!"

I teach a K1 class (3-4yr olds) twice a week in the afternoons, and the first lesson I did with them was awful. None of them have English names so that was my first activity down the pan (My name is...). Ms. Wendy the other K1 English teacher said that I could teach them the alphabet song and we'll probably only get as far as "E" when teaching the actions- but they managed to pick it up after me only doing it once :/ After exhausting that I still had 15 mins to go...Luckily the main teacher took over for a bit and we sang "If you're happy" until the time was up. I'm not looking forward to this afternoons class with them. They just sit and stare at you. I've only had one girl cry so far though, so it could be worse.

On Friday's I will be helping the teachers with the maths lessons. When Ms. Wendy went in last Friday though they were expecting her to teach it! I'm going to play dumb, because shouldn't they be learning maths in Cantonese?! I'll just have to see what happens I guess.

Oooh- I'll tell you about the food! I love food here, so far everything I've had has been really good. I've started having cooked lunches from school since it's only $7 and means I don't have to make manky sandwiches. I don't know what I'm eating half the time but it's nice. Yesterday I had pork in a nice pepper sauce and there was also fish and cubed chicken. Today I had scrambled egg with tomatoes, fish, and beef with peppers. All with rice. I've just about got the knack of eating rice with chopsticks- noodles are still a challenge though! Me and Jo went to a restaurant at Ferry Pier the other night and had steamed crab, prawnballs in sweet and sour sauce, and pork ribs in orange sauce. It was all so delicious! Eating the crab was a task though, couldn't get at the meat! It was probably one of the more costlier restaurants but it had an English menu. Didn't matter about anything else as long as we knew what we were ordering! Cooking at home has been fun too. It's mostly spaghetti bolognese, or sweet and sour chicken. Whatever sauces we can buy at the Parknshop we try! My favourite so far is terriaki chicken. I saw steak in the supermarket the other day for $22 each so I'm hoping we'll have that maybe on payday?! Even though $22 works out at less than 1.50 in British money, it's starting to feel extravagant.

I've got to dash to my lesson now. Wish me luck!