Sino-psis

There have been quite a few things going on in my life of late, that and the internet has been off and on so when i did have the time to update this blog i was unable to. This week has been amazing and stressful. Started teaching classes on wed and had two classes yesterday. The sixth grade native english kids are great, willing to learn, talkative, energetic, boistrous even. the ninth grade non native class, however, is harder to handle. They are noncommunicative, not just in the fact that most of them don't speak english very well at all, but more so in the fact that they all are very shy and timid and lacking confidence when it comes to speaking. i feel their pain, which is why i'm prepared to take on this challenge. it's just going to be very, very, very hard.

i still have yet to teach all of my classes, that begins on monday, when i teach my first history class to non native seventh graders. then on tuesday i teach conversational english to a classroom of 45 students or so who are all chinese born. that should be quite interesting to say the very least. This coming friday there is a banquet being held in honor of all the teachers of the international division of shanghai zhongxue, so that will end the week and hopefully relax me after all the craziness i forsee coming soon. hopefully this semester won't be a vicious cycle of stress on the weekdays and destressing on the weekends. that can get boring in its predictability.

as soon as i get settled here, i'm going to start leaving this town on weekends. shanghai is amazing, yes, but there appears to be a whole country out there beyond its borders, and i want to explore. i'll keep this site updated as to all of the adventures.

went shopping today at an ikea in town, bought a lot of things to furnish my house, so i'm feeling very excited to finally have my place in order. i even have the tools with which to make food, if i ever buy any and put it in the fridge. i'll get there eventually. first order of business is to straighten out this whole school thing and become comfortable with that. then and only then do i get to feed myself.

no, nobody should be rushing to send me a care package filled with fudge rounds, i promise i'm getting nourishment of a kind. i'll be fine. this city was made for me to eat, plenty. and often. love this place, i really do.

that's all for now, more later.

e