Today is the 17th of September in China. Exactly a month ago from this moment, I was going through security at Newark Airport, embarking on a journey, completely unaware of what was ahead of me. I remember that the night before I left, I saw a beautiful, clear, full moon... the same moon I see tonight.
Not that a whole lot has changed (I'm not even completely settled yet), but thinking back a month to New York feels like a lifetime ago. The people I know now, I feel as if I've known forever. My day-to-day routines are feeling more set and I feel more relaxed in my surroundings. I guess I can say I am feeling like less of an outsider.
I haven't blogged in a long time and people keep wondering what is going on with me. Basically, I have been consumed with planning for school and continuing to prep my room. School in a nutshell: It's an enormous school! I feel like I am on the campus of a small college. Everybody new keeps getting lost. All of the new teachers are really great and we've all bonded very quickly.
I have 17 kids (9 girls, 8 boys) Of those, I have 7 Koreans, believe it or not, 3 Taiwanese, 1 Singaporean, 1 Iranian, 1 Indian, 1 Swedish, 2 Finnish and 1 Brazilian. A few don't speak English and a few more speak limited English. There is an ESL teacher who works with me and two other classes.
Each grade has a staff of Chinese women that function like a Kinko's! They are super efficient and helpful. They photocopy, laminate, spiral-bind books, put up bulletin paper or other crafty jobs you might need. It's like magic - you just paperclip a request to what you want and it just comes back. A cleaning staff is constantly around, taking out trash all day and wiping down surfaces all the time. We do not have to do snack, lunch and recess. Every "duty" we American teachers know of like lunch, recess, bus is done on a shared basis by all teachers. They have a big schedule of all of these duties and we sign up for 60 minutes of it. So I have two 30-minute duties a week (one is recess and one is lunch) whereas some people do bus duty every day for 15 minutes.
We had Monday off for the Mid-Autumn Festival. So right now we are in a four day week, and then we have a week off from the 27th until the 6th of October for a national holiday. Nice, right?
I miss everyone terribly... I will try to write more frequently so there is less to update on! Write to me!
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