February 9, 2017
11:15 pm
Beijing, China
Ugh, today felt so long. Although my hours today were normal, I went in a couple of hours early so I could get a head start on planning for the rest of the week. While I did get a lot of work done, the day just seemed to go on forever. It was one of those days where I was actually super productive, but didn’t feel like I was getting anything done. Ever had one of those?
Aside from my usual Thursday class, I had a new Small Star Blue class. This is the three-year-old age group and, in my opinion, is extremely young for children to be starting school. Because they’re still just babies, it’s not unusual for the first few classes to be mostly occupied with crying children or students who don’t want to talk. There’s also a lot of behavior management that needs to occur because (1) they’ve never been in class before and (2) they don’t really understand what rules are, even in their native language. While these little kids are cute and fun to play with, teaching these classes can actually be really draining. The students in this new class were actually decently behaved and weren’t hysterical criers, so I actually ran out of lesson plan and had to improvise for a bit. While they were relatively well behaved, we did have a couple of problems. I had a few kids who didn’t want to talk and I had another who was apparently so distraught at being in class that he actually had an accident in his seat. I felt so sorry for him, but, at the same time, I had to hide a laugh. I’ll say one thing about working with kids, it’s never boring.
Also, guess what I did today! I actually made my own coffee in my apartment before I left for work. I bought some coffee at the international market yesterday so I could finally use my coffee maker. I also purchased some hot chocolate mix, so guess what I used to sweeten it up. It was so nice to have a cup of coffee that didn’t cost me a ton of money and wasn’t pure espresso, which is about all that Chinese markets have (along with instant). This led to me finally using my Christmas gift from the Faggs, hence the featured picture.
That was my day. Tomorrow I get free lunch at EF. Woot woot!
Night,
Kristen
