Hello hello!  Been having some technical troubles over in China so I hope this posts.  Much has been happening.  All this week, Monday - Saturday, we have been working hard.  We wake up for Chinese class at 8:30, have lunch, then have our teaching practicums (teaching local kids in an English summer camp) from 2:00 - 6:00pm.  After dinner we have to study Chinese and plan our teaching lessons for the next day.  All in all we have about 2 free hours a day.  But in 4 and a half hours that's all over with (its lunch on Saturday right now)!  Next week we do some winding down activites, learn some more Chinese and do some shopping.  Next Thursday my school will bus me and my partner Michelle down to Zhuzhou (Jew-Joe), and I start teaching the following Monday.  
 
Teaching has gone very well.  A group of four of us are teaching 28 students entering junior one (7th grade).  Their English levels vary, but I would say its equivilant to a years worth of a language in high school.  Of course they have been studying English for much longer (some as much as 6 years) but they are younger and Enligsh is much more removed from Chinese than say German is from English.  My goodness the grammer structure seems so foreign!  Anyways, I feel I have fallen into the teaching role quite well. learning to improvise to adjust the difficulty level, incorporating humor, making interesting exercises, etc.  I think most of us have (there is one girl in my group who frankly is just bad.  She has the  incredible ability to both patronise the kids and go over their head at the same time.)  We rotate, giving three lessons and one fun period of either sports or games.  I've taught them sports words, past/present/future tense, action verbs, and freeze tag.  The kids are so
 cute and eager to learn.
 
Chinese class is less fun.  We are being taught by Chinese English teachers who have no particular experience teaching foriegners.  The Chinese are big into memorization, which I don't like.  Secondarily, as this is a 'crash course', we're skipping some of the grammer and word details and going right into phrases, which I really don't like.  But I figure I will learn more when I get out into my school and get a private tutor.
 
My sickness has passed and it feels SO nice to be able to eat normally.  Some people still have lingering stomach problems and that is unfortunate.
 
Random Observations-
Riding in cabs in awesome!  They drive insanely, unlike anything in American city driving.  It seems to me Chinese has less perspective of the subjectivity of their culture than Westerners.  For example, they have this way of counting on one hand- one through five are the same as in America, six is the thumb and pinky, or 'hang ten' sign, sever is bending your index finger, eight is extending your thumb and index finger, nine is beding your index finger more (very confusing) and ten is making a 't' with index fingers from both hands.  Now, this is a fine system, but by no means universal.  The Chinese don't seem to recognize this.  When I go to buy something in a store, they say the price (usually to fast for me to get the first time) and use these hand signals to "clarify".  When you fail to understand the hand singals they act as if you actually lack the capacity for intellegence.
 
Got to get back to class
 
-the Wandering Norseman-