making a map!!

I have been busy busy busy trying to establish a little bit of a routine.

Also, I have been working on a map! (you should zoom in to see Beijing a little bit better. I couldn't figure out how to get it to stay zoomed in on my blog page!)


View Larger Map

you can get to it in the future and see updates by following this link

I am teaching for a primary school in the West of Beijing. It's called CuiWei, if you look at my map it's icon is green :) I teach here 4 days each week (every day but Wednesday). I am part of a foreign teachers program that is pretty well established there. I have two classes every day, each class is 40 minutes long and has 40 kids. So basically I'm in charge of 8o seven-year-old kids. Don't worry, I have a Chinese assistant! Her name is Daisy, I think she's about the same age as me, and she speaks english-- she's a university student. She helps me when the kids need a little bit of translating (which is hopefully not often). She also helps me translate parent letters and homework slips into Chinese. She is also very helpful in keeping the kids in the back from fighting. And poking, and singing, and drawing, and talking, and whatever else you can imagine them doing. Yes, they stick things up their noses all day long too. I like to call on them when they have something in their nose because then they get really embarassed. Sometimes their head teacher, their normal chinese teacher, is in the classroom. The head teacher for one of my classes has already invited Daisy and me to her house to eat noodles at the end of the semester. I'm definitely excited about that!

Aside from this teaching job, I am also tutoring two children in the north west of the city. I tutor them once a week, on Tuesday nights. They are two 12-year old kids, one named jenny and one named jerry. I will take a picture of them next week when I tutor them. I go to Jenny's house and teach them. Jenny's mom doesn't speak English, but she's really nice to me. Jenny translates for her and I try to speak Chinese a little bit. I definitely like teaching my big classes, but I think I like tutoring these two kids a little bit more.

In addition to teaching, I have Chinese class three times per week. Each class is about two hours. I like Chinese class a lot. It's slow going but I am definitely making progress!! I have done some more things in Chinese now (in addition to talking to taxi drivers and ordering food). For example, the other day I changed money at the bank in Chinese. I also added more money to my transportation card (the card you use for the subways and busses). I even ordered a pineapple off of the street! Pretty sweet.