English TA

     Today, well technically yesterday now, was my first time as a teaching assistant in China and as a whole. There was someone advertising for the position outside of the international dorms one day and I thought why not give it a try. It only takes an hour of my time every other week and pays more than minimum wage back home.

     The program is called English Mission Town, I am not sure of the significance of this title or if it is just a student organization or not; we weren't told very much about it. I also am not sure if the students in attendance are paying to be there or not, but it doesn't seem like it, I guess I will ask a few questions next time.

     Anyway there were 8 or 9 of us in the room, two of use from the US, a few from Denmark, some from Finland, one from Hong Kong, and I am not sure about the other ones. We spread around the room and the Chinese students grouped off with one of us. The first activity was supposed to be an ice breaker, but they really just wanted us to chat with the students and introduce ourselves and have them introduce themselves as well. Some in my group were pretty funny and outgoing and there was just one that seemed shy and quiet that I tried to get to talk when I could. Everyone spoke pretty decent English overall. I think many of them are doing this in order to help them pass English language certifications later on down the road.

     Each week seems like it will have a different theme in order to use different sets of vocabulary and so on. This week's theme was something or another about being creative. So for this we were all supposed to go around the group and describe something we find to be fascinating for the second activity. One of the students ranted on about Avatar for a while, not just for the special effects but talking about the message of the movie which was sort of entertaining to hear.

     Finally for the last activity we had to draw a logo that somehow represented out team, which turned out to be a much more strenuous task than expected. No one could come up with any ideas at first and then no one wanted to take the pen and just draw something. In the end we drew a half moon half sun type of thing and made something cheesy up about how it represented how although the US and China are in opposite time zones we can still come together as one.

     That was the end of that, I will not have another session until the 28th of March. Though, two students in my group asked for my e-mail address so I may spend time with them before then. Also while I was there, someone was looking for an English tutor from the United States to practice oral English with their friend's 7 year old child. I told them I was interested and am pretty likely to get the job, which would be once a week at the person's home. It totes a pretty nice pay rate for a simple enough job. I will report more on this later.

     After the TA session I went to dinner with some of my Scandinavian friends who also unexpectedly participated in the program. We went to a place where you pick out different types of meat, vegetables, and the like impaled on skewers which they then grill and add spices to. I have pictures of this type of food I got from a street vendor the past few days which I will add just for the sake of adding some images to this unexpected and unstimulating wall of text.

Some dumplings are in the pictures as well, consider it a bonus for your lustful eyes.

And a random image from walking around the city just to add a bit more meat that isn't actually meat. This is from People's Park, they were doing some planting it seems.

Excuse my wordiness on this entry. I suppose this is sort of serving as a type of travel log as well as a blog so some of the entries are as much for my benefit as yours my dear readers.

Until Next time then.