Lorena in China

So after having a fun week in Suzhou it was time for me to leave and go to Beijing to move in with my host family and start working at my Kindergarten. I got the bullet train from Suzhou to Beijing taking around 5 hours and hitting up to speeds of 303 km, very fast!!! It didn’t feel like it was going this fast until you went under tunnels or went along side other trains.

When I arrived in Beijing I met Chris who works for ACIC, we got a taxi to my host family’s house. The apartment is on the ground floor and has a large dinning and lounge area where they have a huge television, the kitchen area is quite small, Elena’s room is gorgeous with a piano in it, a double bed with pink netting around it! I met my host mum, Cindy and my host dad Michael. I was shown to my room and started to unpack! Once I had unpacked my things, I felt a little lost and unsure of what to do as I haven’t been in this situation before, I Skyped my mum which definitely made me feel better!

When Elena, my host sister came home from school she came into my room and made me feel very welcome she seemed so excited for me to be there, we had dinner together she showed me her room, we put temporary tattoos on and played some games. Cindy was so welcoming and kind, she was really trying to speak English too! I went to bed early as I was feeling quite tired from my long trip and needed to wake up early ready for my first day at the Kindergarten!

What better than a nice calm relaxing massage after a crazy busy week..or so we thought! We decided to get a traditional Chinese massage, I went for a back massage with essence oil and Amy went for a full body massage.

As we sat and waited we were given comfy massage beds to lounge on and hot green tea, it felt very calm and relaxed, then the massage began, I mean I like a strong massage but this was something else, as you started to tense up to try and relive some of the pain they seemed to think this was an indication to do it harder, if I go again I need to learn gentle in Chinese! I have bruises from where I got the massage and my back was swore to lie on, this was definitely a different experience of a massage! haha!

Everyone just stares all the time at us…like ALL the time. In England if you look at someone and catch eyes with them its awkward and people tend to look away, here you look at them and they continue to look and look and look. I think i’ve started to get used to it as I actually think I look for it now and just smile back to them. Everyone seems to be so friendly and just be curious about us! Whenever they can say “hello” to us they seemed to be pleased. (but they could be saying anything about us for all we know!)

Yesterday we had a strange experience, we were at the Dragon boat festival and children came up to us being encouraged to do so by the parents, then they started to take photos of them with us, the mother then came over and wanted pictures with us too! I definitely felt like some sort of celb haha!

Another example of this was when we were at the light show a man was staring at us so much that he was being pulled away by what seemed to be his wife haa!!!

This is what I woke up to this morning..looks like Iv’e been beaten up!!!!!!

On our second day we went to Maron Kindergarten for our orientation. We met a lady called Wendy who was going to be training us both she has already been in China 6 weeks, we met her international class, they were all so cute! I noticed that the children all seem to be really keen to speak English and when they could tell you a word they were very happy! Being in a school and seeing what it was like already made me feel better than the day before, it was nice to see what we would be doing as I felt like I had no clue before hand.

We sat down with Wendy and she explained so much to us over the week, giving us ideas, showing us her teaching and letting us teach some of our own lessons! She gave us a great indication of what to expect.

We then met her other class which is called a hop class (this is where you have a short 30 mins – 45 min lesson to teach the children un-play based) this proved to be more difficult as you only have a short amount of time and the children didn’t seem as engaged as her international class that she has for 3 hours each day. When we taught this lesson we used role-play through a story, songs, actions and recapping words. This type of class is less expensive than an international class and focuses more on getting the children to say as many English words as possible even if they might not be able to actually understand them.

Each morning all the children do their exercises outside, the children seemed to really enjoy this and all joined in. The children all do the same exercises then split off and do their own thing for example races or playing with big bouncy balls!

The children are given English names at around the age of 2, there was a range of different names at the Kindergarten including: Gerry, Rain, Cici, Sun, Hero, Linda, Alice, Justin, Bill and Bob.

Schools in China are VERY different from schools back home. The children are expected to do a lot more than the children back home, Wendy was explaining to me that children can be taken out of class and lined up for 45 minutes to be tested (this is at the age of just 3!!!!!!!). At the end of the day the children are expected to line up and wait this can vary from 20 minutes up to an hour an a half for their parents to arrive to pick them up, if they aren’t quite and move about to much they are told off – they are only between 3 and 5!

Wendy has warned me as I am moving to Beijing on Monday that schools will be different to here as children are more conditioned and the behaviour management is stricter including hitting and kicking the children (I’m not sure how I’m going to actually cope with that). I will be teaching 6, half an hour classes within 3 hours!!!!!!…it’s going to be crazy!

I have really enjoyed working in Maron Kindergarten, I felt like it has helped me to prepare a lot more and understand what the expectations are. I have been able to come up with some ideas that I will be able to take with me to my own classes.

Where do I start…We arrived at Heathrow airport boarded our plane to Shanghai, we were then delayed 2 and a half hours because of undesirable baggage on board so this obviously had to be removed before we could set off. After around a 13 hour flight we ARRIVED! We met Sally from ACIC at the airport, we then got a intercity bus to Suzhou which took about 2 hours. By this time I was shattered! We got to the hotel and rested for about an hour then we went out for some food (the Chinese food is very different from Chinese food at home!) I had watery soup with noodles and some veg in it and I ate them with chopsticks which proved to be difficult as the noodles kept slipping making the soup splash onto my face! After we had finished eating we went back to the hotel. Once I got into bed the culture shock hit me I felt very lost, scared and realised how different it was from home..

All packed and ready to go! Leaving for the airport today!!!

Only 15 days to go, feeling nervous!

Flights booked, 1 more injection to go, visa arrived..better get packing!