It decided to rain all day Thursday, but that didn’t stop us from exploring our campus!
Pete offered to show us around campus on Thursday afternoon, so we went by his apartment and discovered he had a cute little dog! He told us a little about himself while we walked around – he had a tech job in Ireland but got bored and wanted to do something else, so he did an internship program with other people from the UK here in China teaching middle schoolers. He decided to stay longer and moved to Hengyang last winter, so it’s his second semester.
He told us teaching university students has been so much easier than teaching middle schoolers, and that our nerves will melt away in the classroom once we start teaching. It was exciting seeing some students and look at the buildings we would be teaching in. Our classrooms have chalkboards in them, and they also have a computer and a projector.
After walking around campus we decided to have a lesson planning party, and went through our books for a few hours trying to decide the best way to teach the teachers and learn more about the test they have to take. We had Chinese ramen (which is much spicier) and a movie night after that. We put Pride and Prejudice in, discovered it was all in Chinese, then finally found the English option.
Brittany, Lauren, and Drew all went to teach on the next Monday and I laughed at them (just kidding). We met up after their classes and they discussed how it went, and we also tried our school’s canteen (cafeteria) They had a section where you could choose food, or you could ask them to make a certain thing for you. For 10 RMB ($1.57) we got rice and two kinds of chicken (popcorn chicken! What!?) Take that Harding $8.75 cafeteria swipes.
I’m not sure how often I want to post right now – I may do shorter daily posts or weekly updates once teaching starts, we’ll see! If you want to receive updates via email when I post a new blog there is an option at the very bottom of my website!
Rachel Meets China 