My new Place / Busy Days

So I finally saw my real school and my real apartment in Shunde, and it’s totally awesome!

There is so much more stuff around Shunde, and after being at Nanhai which is very secluded it is a very welcome change. I’m super excited about it, heres some pictures of the Plaza my appartment and school is in!

The entire plaza is snoopy themed! Theres even a half built snoopy theme park 5 minutes away. It's quite weird!

So far I havent seen anyone shopping in the snoopy gift shop.

Things get a little bright at nighttime.

Here's a cool bakery that opened recently, its the first time I've seen a loaf of bread in China!

I bought one and some peanut butter, I might start eating breakfast again!

Who wouldnt want to go to a spa endoursed by Clive Owen? I actually checked out the price of a massage here and the equivilent of its cost in Chinese money was about 1 Million Dollars.

I managed to find the arcade inside the mall! Awesome.

I was really excited about it but then I found out its almost all ticket games... Like you win tickets and get the little toys, it was quite dissapointing. I was hoping for some asian street fighter battles.

But they did have dance dance revolution! "Hey You! Dance!! It's a revolution!!"

Hmmm now do I want Optimus Prime or Megatron to clean my pores?

Obviously I want megatron.

These are most likely regular sized back home.

Typical Drink counter... You never quite know what your buying...

Some places are still under construction.... so please... Stay Tunde...

Fresh Fish anyone?

This was just awesome.

My friend Steven Yee would be in heaven here!

Heres what the entrance to my little school looks like:

Heres my classroom!

and the teachers lounge / office (the couches are so comfy)

I mean... not all english schools have good english right?

(dont tell the parents)

I'll post pictures of my appartment in a bit!

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It’s been a busy couple of days. With the new semester starting there’s a bunch to do. For the other new teachers and myself we had to make a demonstration lesson. It’s like a real class but only 20 minutes in length instead of 2 hours and we teach the TA’s and staff instead of students. We chose a topic and made some games and lessons to teach the class.

My topic/vocab was First, Second, Third, Forth, Fifth, Sixth.

After an active warmup, where I got everyone up and energized I had 6 volunteers come up to help me teach the 6 words. With a bit of dramatization I explained each word with reference to a race. With the help of flash cards, I had the “first” student act really fast then showed the first place flashcard and had the students practice saying the word repeatedly. I did the same with each runner getting slower and slower with the sixth place finisher barely crawling across the line.

After that we had some real races! I had the students run back and forth between the walls, when they finished the race they had to say “I finished in _____ place” It was pretty fun.

Next we played another game this time I explained First – Sixth using floors of a building. I split the class into two teams and put a picture of a tall building on the board. Each team had a little cut out man as well. The teams lined up and then played Rock – Paper – Scissors. If their team one the match they would move up two floors and if they lost they would move down 1. After each match they had to say which floor their team was on for extra practice.

That was it for my 20 minute class, I have to say it went pretty well. I think I kept up with all the other new teachers pretty well and they all have real teaching experience so I was happy with myself, I have to bet I was a bit more nervous than they were though! It’s very cool that we are encouraged to teach through fun games, it really makes the job feel more like play than work and the students have a much better time and learn more!

I did the demo class twice, the first I got suggestions on how to make it better and the second time was in front of all the teachers and the people who run each school, they evaluated us on our skills and they seemed to like all of our lessons.

Next we have the real demonstrations for the real students and parents!