Rainy Day in Beijing

Today was a normal long Saturday at work. Everyone is counting down the days until the summer course finishes next week.

I taught two small star classes this morning. Both of the classes were special "Life Club" classes where we spend the class period on one particular subject. Today's theme was "Under the Sea." I taught the students a lot of sea creatures' names and we made goggles to search under the water. It was pretty fun. I enjoyed wearing the goggles around the school.

This afternoon I had two course orientation sessions. These sessions occur when the class is promoted to the next "grade" level. Luckily, I co-teach the first afternoon class with Stephanie who was able to translate for me, which was wonderful. I always kind of feel like an idiot nodding along as everyone else around me is talking.

I taught the first hour of my second class to just the students. We created a classroom "constitution." The expectations they came up with were pretty fabulous and quickly vetoed. Most of the them involved them being able to arrive late and play video games. I appreciated the suggestions though. I teach this class by myself and was suppose to have one of the customer relations staff members help me out, but the student and parent pair thought they would be ok with the student translating for the mom. I sent home a lot of things home with the students that probably will never been seen by their parents.

Today was a rainy day in Beijing. It was a delightful change, and actually made me pretty happy and homesick at the same time. I wished I was home though sitting with some good friends at Papachino's watching the rain pour at moments today.