TV & KTV

Hi all! Another interesting yet bizarre week in China has passed and it has to be said that you just never know what is going to happen here. In the past month or so we have had quite a few holidays. A bit of time off is always quite nice, however, as I’ve mentioned before there is no forward planning in China! I found out that I had a week holiday on a Friday night. This meant that it was too late to book a long-distance trip for the week so instead I took a boat over to Zhuhai, a small city across the bay. Zhuhai was really nice. It has a great waterfront where all the people go for tandem bike rides and long walks. Many of the Chinese people put on their best clobber and head down here for a bit of a photo shoot. It makes for great people watching!

Once back at school, two of the other interns and I were asked to be in a TV advert for the school.  A film crew from Shenzhen TV turned up and we all had out make up done (including the guys!) and had to stand around a huge globe on the school grounds, looking happy. There were several students with us and I think everybody found the whole thing massively awkward yet completely hilarious! Being asked to be on TV is not completely unusual here. One of the people I  met in Beijing is currently filming an advert for a hotel. He has to go to a BBQ and look like he’s enjoying himself. I’m sure he won’t find it that hard! Several other people have also been on TV and a few have been in the local papers, simply for being a Westerner in China! It’s all very surreal!

This week I have been teaching physical characteristics to my grade 4 and 5 classes using pictures of my family. I think this has been the funniest lesson I have done so far. The kids were really interested to see what my family are like and came up with some brilliant descriptions of them! Some classes mistook my mother for my sister and when I showed one class a picture of my brother, in which he was waving, one student shouted out ‘he is practising kung fu!’. Brilliant!

The students love to give me presents at the end of lessons. I’ve had all sorts of stationery, lots of different fruits, many different origami pieces and a good old boiled egg.  One of my grade 5 students gave me a note with a little quiz question on it; ‘which city had the first subway?’ with a choice of 3 cities. The English on it was perfect and he’d even drawn a picture of me with some students. It was the sweetest thing! He is a very good student and puts a lot of work into his lessons. In fact, many of the students do. It’s impressive how motivated they are considering that they start school at around 7, have a couple of hours off for lunch and are then back in the classroom until 9pm. If they tried to get the kids back home to put in hours like that all hell would break loose! They also work on Sunday nights too. Poor kids! We have it very easy as kids in the U.K!

I currently have a 3 day weekend (that I obviously found out about at the last minute!) so I’m mainly chilling out. Yesterday I went up the mountain and today my legs are absolutely killing! On Friday we had some impromptu drinks with some Chinese people that one of the guys here had met playing golf. The night ended up with us all having a good old sing-song at KTV; the Chinese equivalent of karaoke. They love it! You hire out a really posh room and they bring you fruit and beers as you sing the night away. Always good for a laugh!

This week we have Parent’s day. This means that the kid’s parents will be in the school and watching their lessons. Rather nerve-wracking! It will be nice to meet the parents of some of my students though. Wish me luck! I shall let you know how it goes!

• China
• China 2011 internship