Yesterday was our first day of teaching! The day started out with an opening ceremony that included two faculty members from Dongguan University of Technology speaking, as well as our camp director, Yana Cornish. Yana and the Vice President of the University exchanged school flags, then the 10 of us teachers did a half-hour performance of fun songs and skits. Ceremonies are very popular in China, so we will also have a closing ceremony to end the camp.

            The students know English pretty well. Speaking it is the hardest part for most of them and pronunciation is pretty awful. The letter “r” sound and the “th” sound are very foreign to them. My students like to repeat words a lot after I say them, especially words with the letter “r” in the middle. Most are very shy to speak out loud, so I have had to make it clear that the only way they will learn is to continuously speak English aloud.

            I have 16 students in my class. 5 girls and 11 boys. All of our classrooms are in the same building in the same hallway. My class joins with another class for the first hour of every day to review what we learned the day before and then I teach solo for the rest of the day. The day went by fast, but we will see once I get through a whole day of teaching!

            The schedule for each day is about the same. We have class from 8:30-11:20, lunch/siesta from 11:30-2:30, class from 2:40-4:30, an afternoon activity from 4:50-5:50, and an evening activity from 7-8:30 everyday. We are not required to go to the evening activity, but last night’s was a lot of fun, so most of us teachers will probably end up going to them anyway.

            Our meals are still good. We do not get much meat, but when we do it’s usually pretty spicy. Not much rice or noodles (even though we would love to eat them) and a lot of bread. The Chinese do not have different foods for breakfast and the other meals. We have chicken nuggets almost every morning for breakfast along with Coca Cola. They only have small packets of instant coffee, but tea is more common.

            Hope all is well at home!