Mike In China

Before I go on about my trip I will give a quick update about my life in China. I am pretty sure that I announced that I will be coming home on July 19th. However, the ever so difficult airlines made it so that I could only fly back on the 18th (and could not fly out of Shanghai, but will have to get a separate flight down to Hong Kong to fly home). So I am coming home one day earlier than planned. Classes have been ok. The kids have been misbehaving a lot lately which is very frustrating. And what is more frustrating is that when they misbehave they don't learn as much, and then when your boss comes and they don't know as much you get yelled at which is EXTREMELY frustrating when you are already upset from having to yell at the kids all the time and then you get told you are doing a bad job on top of that. Not cool. But so is life. Take a power walk around the block during lunch time to cool off, come back a little more relaxed, and get back to work. Sometimes I wish the kids weren't so darn cute because then I could just flat out declare war on them and be evil and not care. List of things I still can't quite get over about China: 1) General rudeness and pushy-ness involved with subway system and any kind of line waiting 2) Constant spitting, and not just a little spit here and there into the grass. I am talking major lugy hacking, inside and outside, and including full volume sound effects 3) Children who, with the aid of their parents, pull down their pants in broad daylight, in the middle of the sidewalk and pee. Yup, I think that's the big three. Lastly, I will leave you with some new videos. The first is of one of my first grade classes doing their daily classroom exercises that happen to last five minutes and fall in the middle of my lesson for some reason....
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The next is of my second graders doing their five minutes of daily eye exercises which is basically just rubbing their eyes for five minutes (the point of this one is beyond me)....
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The third video is simply just some of my first grade students (Richard, Wendy, Baker and Jack) at another school. They come to class a few minutes early every day so we talk and play around a little. Enjoy!
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