3rd Day of School

OK let me start first by saying what happened after my lesson yesterday. Well since I only had one lesson, I had plenty of free time in the afternoon. After I had my lunch I thought it would be nice to see if I could get a chance to play some Basketball. I went to the playground and watched as the students played, I thought to myself which group should I join. Then as I was standing there a few of the students said "...you want to play ball?", I was like sure why not. They gave me the ball first and gestured their hand as if to say "...please shoot the ball", I did as they asked and I shot.

Unfortunately my skills in basketball are not what they used to be. I missed about 9 of my 12 shots haha. Well it was after a few shots the students thought they would try their luck with me. The probably thought "...hey, hes black he must be good at B-ball" but they were sadly mistaken, yes this was/is my sport of choice but I am too out of practice to be considered any real challenge. The students came at me one-by-one and I had to go through them. I managed to succeed with a few plays but soon I began to tire due to lack of exercise and practice in Basketball. This soon became the students opportunity to go to town on me and brag to their friends they beat a black man at Basketball lol.

The students the decided to start a game of 5 on 5, half court. As we begun to play other students from the schools started to watch from their classroom window and gather around the court. This was not a surprising to me considering I still remember what happened when I played Badminton for a little while haha. Unfortunately some (well most) of the students went after a while due to them having lessons. I still stayed in the playground with a few of the other students. Supposedly these students don't like going to all their lessons or they had a free period, who knows lol. With them was one of the schools security guards. One of his duties I was told was to send students to their lessons, but it seemed he did not care as much as treated the students I was with more like friends. I didn't mind, gave me someone to play basketball with.

After a while even those students had to go so I went back to my office. After about 1 hour or so I went back out to the playground once I had seen the students playing again. I stayed out there for a few hours maybe 3 or so. Then like always many of the students had to go to their next lesson. But 3 students stayed outside with me (at this time it was after 7:00pm), I asked them why don't they have lessons as well, they simply said "....we do, but we are bad boys haha" I was like ok then. These 3 guys were pretty cool they stayed outside playing until maybe 8:30pm. It was so dark thought, I didn't even know why we were still playing lol. They also told me different things they like, such as wrestling, kung fu and hip-hop. I was like cool, they then asked me would I like to go to karaoke but I declined mainly due to me having lessons all day today. I told them maybe on the weekend, because I will be able to sleep all day the next day. They were like sure, ok then.

Well today was the day where I have 6 lessons, this is the most amount of lessons I have in one day each week. There were a total of 4 Senior Classes and only 2 Junior classes. This has been one of the best teaching days by far, mainly due to how responsive the students were to the lesson. It also helped that they seemed genuinely happy to meet me. Today however I had three different teachers helping me in 4 of my classes, this made a fresh change from having Mrs. D there helping me all the time.

I think these classes were normally taught English by these teachers and they felt it best for them to help their own class. Once I had finished my 3rd class and was waiting for my 4th to begin, many students from the 3rd class started to crowed around me as Mrs. D and I were waiting outside the class waiting for our lesson to start. I was a bit overwhelmed but the amount of students, however they were simply there to pratice their English and ask me some more questions. I of course was happy to help them.

The girls seemed to want my MSN and asked if I had this thing called QQ which is a Chinese MSN type thing. I gave them my hotmail address but told them I cant use MSN while I am here in China. But they didnt seem to mind, one girl even asked me to write my name on her arm haha. They are seriously acting like im some kind of superstar, but im really just me a normal guy ^_^.

Well since it is now the 3rd day I pretty much have my teaching method, so far it seems to be working well. First I introduce myself, then I ask the students to pratice and lastly I get the students to introduce themselves to me. Then near the end of the lesson I get the students to ask me any and as many questions as they can. After this has been done I then give out some sweets (the kids love them sweeties lol) to the students who I felt spoke English the clearest and the best. In the last Junior class it seemed as if many of the students knew what I was going to get out of my bag when I told them I was going to give out something haha. But I still only gave the sweets to the students who I thought were the best.

Well I have now run out of pot noodles, so I will have to start eating dinner at a restaurant or god forbid buy more pot noodles TT_TT. Well I think I will also buy some apples in a minute, they are quite nice here, very sweet. Well thats it for today will update soon, thanks for reading.