Thursday, June 6, 2019

FOUR MONTH UPDATE

Haven’t done one of these in a while. Thought I would pop in to update how teaching and living in China is going after being here for just under 4 months.  



I am still completely in love with teaching! The fascination of the students having a foreign teacher from London still has not worn off, and I am greeted (no word of a lie) about 100 times a day! I spend my lessons teaching the students basic grammar on different topics, but they only care about the games I play with them! Because the teaching days are so long, the lunch breaks are too, about 2 and a half hours. These are spent playing badminton and ping-pong with my younger students and sometimes having the older students teach me how to play basketball! 

The weather over the last few weeks has changed drastically here in Chengdu. This part of China has a very different climate to that of England. This week is the second/third week of summer and temperatures have already hit 33/34 degrees. This has made teaching and keeping the students concentration levels high very hard work! But the great weather has also made for some very enjoyable days at school. At the end of May, we celebrated Children’s Day where the students decorated their classrooms, performed dance and singing shows, as well as eating A LOT of food! I was lucky to be invited to my school to celebrate with the students. 

As summer approaches, as does the summer vacation. I have almost two and a half months for summer, which will be plenty of time to relax, but this also means that I will miss my students a lot! 

Now that I have been living here for about 4 months, I am definitely settled in. Previous tasks that would be quite daunting for me, like going somewhere new, or having to converse with people who do not speak English, are now easy and no longer fill me with dread. Whenever I have time to do so, I am trying new food, going to new places and always trying to step out of my comfort zone. I am no longer experiencing cultural fatigue and I am not frustrated with the difference in culture anymore. Instead, I am focusing on my future travel plans over my long summer break and how I can improve my lessons for the start of the new semester in September. 

I am still missing my family and friends. I try to communicate with them as much as I possibly can. The one thing that has been frustrating me is how awkward it can be to get in touch with people at home. In China, social media websites that we all use on a daily basis (such as Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, Twitter etc.) are all blocked, so I used a VPN to connect me to these sites. However, sometimes it is very slow, or simply does not work (this is also why some of my posts are uploaded at random times during the week). But it is all part of the experience and I am trying to take it in my stride, I have coped well this far, not much longer to go! 

I am so shocked that I have been here for almost half a year! Time flies by and before I know it, I will be at Heathrow with all of these adventures and experiences behind me. 

Thank you all for sticking with me for the last 4 months!

B x 
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