Wo Xi Huan Wo De Xue Sheng

Next week marks the third and final week of model school! I'm sad that it's almost over. My students are hiliarious and want to discuss everything from the one-child policy to why they would rather be a Transformer than King Kong.

Me and my students

I'm really glad we have model school because it's given me the opportunity to test out a variety of activities to see which the students respond well to and which they don't. For example, on the one hand they love dissecting song lyrics for every fragment of meaning, but on the other hand they don't quite understand the idea of a "cocktail party" (a standard ESL teaching technique of having the students mingle and talk in English about a pre-set topic). Whenever I try to do this kinds of activities they just stare at me blankly. They're simply not used to classroom activities that involve so much participation on their part. If not for model school, I would have walked into my classroom totally clueless as to what Chinese students are used to. Considering that in a few short weeks I'll finally found out my two-year site placement this info is priceless.

Overall, I've been having a ridiculous amount of fun and can't believe that a whole month has already passed! If things continue at this rate, the next two years are going to soar by.

I hope you're all well. I've finally figured out how to mail letters (it's much more complicated than you'd expect), so I'll write and send things as soon as I have time.