Whew... What a week!

Well this past week has been quite a week… that is for sure.
To begin we were visited by DanDan last week. She flew into Guangzhou on Wednesday and began working on Thursday. She was out to Chashan to my school to observe me teach on Thursday afternoon. Along with her she brought Mallory, Han (one of our friends from the first 2 weeks; also a PhD student at SCNU), and Liu Zhe (another student at SCNU) who will be out to observe me in the future as part of her research for her school work. It was so nice to see some familiar faces!

So these four, plus my teacher and supervisor at my school, all sat in to observe me. The lesson went well. They sat in on my 11th grade math class which is always a really great group anyway. It’s a small class, only about 9, in which they are preparing to take the British O-Levels Exam. On this particular day we were studying trigonometry. So for the class activity we used hypsometers and we went outside to use angles and trig to measure the height of the school building. It started to rain on us, but we got it all worked out and it went well.

After the teacher we had a meeting to discuss my progress and my teaching in general. Then the school administration treated us to a big dinner in town, which was quite an experience in itself. This restaurant was huge! Plus, to pick dinner you got to walk around and look at various tanks to see what little critters you wanted for dinner! So we were strolling through looking and there was quite a selection. There was a multitude of fish, some frogs, turtles, stingrays, snakes, eels, clams, shrimp, lobster, crabs, oysters, many other things which I had no clue as to what it was, and even a duck swimming around in a little pool! Then there were big barrels of rice and noodles and various vegetables as well as big pictures of all sorts of other dishes up on the walls. An interesting way to make dinner selections to say the least.

After dinner DanDan was able to steal me away from my school that night (getting me out of teaching on Friday) so I could go into Guangzhou and go see Mallory teach the following day. So DanDan, Mallory, Han, Liu, and myself took off for the train station after dinner to head for Guangzhou.

The next day I went to Mallory’s school to sit with all of her school faculty and DanDan to observe her lesson. Afterwards we had a meeting and then we were again treated to a huge, fancy meal. Little did we know these were only the beginning of our many meetings and huge, fancy meals during the weekend. We decided that they roll out the red carpet when DanDan is in town!

So for the rest of the day Friday, all day Saturday and Sunday morning we accompanied DanDan to various schools, meetings, and meals. It made for some long days but we sure had fun. Mallory and I even ended up staying with DanDan in her rather fancy hotel for most of the weekend! Also, Mallory and I even got several job offers to come back and teach in China throughout the weekend! 

But now things have started to settle down, but only a little. I got back to my school on Sunday evening and began preparing lessons. First thing Monday morning my teaching schedule was changed AGAIN. So that was hectic trying to prepare for classes at the last minute.

Then, today some good news: I got a washing machine! This is the first time I’ve been able to wash my clothes in an actual washing machine since I’ve been here in China! Before that it’s been good ol’ hand-washing! Ha ha! So, needless to say, that was exciting. There was a minor incident which involved my door getting broken during the process of hooking up the washer, but all is well now and I have already washed my clothes!

So now, with clean clothes and a somewhat new teaching schedule, this week is almost done! The time sure is going by fast!

Also, I added some new pictures to my flickr site of my teaching, my students, and my school.

Click Here to see my pics!

or go to this site:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/23953328@N03