Nov. 5, 2016
9:00 pm
Beijing, China
大家好！
Let’s see… what story can I tell you today? Hmm. Oh, I know! How about I tell you about the exciting adventure of my first weekend work day. For those of you who are unaware, weekends at EF are the busiest day. We start work at 8:15 in the morning and have continuous classes until 6:30 at night. It’s pretty brutal.
At 8:45 this morning, I was supposed to be opening a new class with Gretchen. The class will be co-taught by myself and Ashley, but because I’m still training, Gretchen had to help me teach this first class. So I got there around 8:10 to finish up the lesson plan. Gretchen (who is never late) wasn’t there. We got to 8:20, and she still wasn’t there. At about 8:30 I start to get a little worried. So I start printing off her lesson plan and handouts and trying to figure out what exactly I need to do to teach this entire class by myself. I go into the room I’m supposed to be teaching in and find that the TAs have not set up the room (usually done 30-15 minutes before class) and there are no students (usually some start arriving about 15 minutes before class time). I inform my senior teacher, who is just completely lost. At about 8:40, he gets a call from Gretchen who way overslept and won’t be there for another hour. At 8:45 (the time class is supposed to start), we are finally informed by the TAs that the class is cancelled for the day because it needs one more student to join. So I went through about a half hour of worry and stress to not even have to be in class for the first hour of the day.
The rest of the day was spent observing and co-teaching classes. During this stage of training, I’ve finished all of my online work and am now working my way into actually teaching full classes. So this weekend, I’m teaching 5-20 minutes of every class that I observe. I will start teaching classes either Monday or Thursday. The only way I’d teach on Monday is if Gretchen has to take a sick day. Speaking of which, could you all please say a quick pr—er for her. She’s been battling pneumonia for over a month and the bad Beijing air is not helping.
Also, let’s talk for a minute about the air in Beijing. At some point I think I’ll actually do a full blog on this, but for now, you get a paragraph. Because of the sudden industrial boom in China years ago, pollution has become a really bad and unhealthy problem in Beijing. Additionally, the use of coal as a heat source means that the pollution is even worse during the winter. As such, you are advised to wear a mask in Beijing most days, which you’ve already seen me do in the vlogs from the other day. The past three days have been absolutely TERRIBLE! Last night, the air quality index (AQI) was over 300! For reference, New York City’s AQI for today is only in the 20s and the average AQI in Ohio is so low that it isn’t even recorded most days. Those pictures I’ve had as the headers for the past two days may look pretty, but the blur is actually the smog that covers Beijing. You can literally taste the pollution in the air.
Last thing I’m going to mention about the pollution. You can’t really see the sky here most days. Like today was a sunny day according to the weather, but the smog was so bad that you couldn’t tell. Also, there’s so much light pollution that stars are almost nonexistent. That’s why I thought I’d share the featured picture with you guys. This is the first time I’ve seen the moon since I’ve arrived in China. It was so small that I had to zoom in quite far and the smog was so dense that I’m surprised you can even tell it’s a moon. But I thought I’d share that.
Words to Remember: 1 Cor. 5:1-6
Challenge: What does this passage mean to you? Can you think of an instance where you’ve been infected by sin? Now think back to what we talked about yesterday. Abba loves you! No matter what! How do these two passages relate? What can you take with you?
Bless,
Kristen
