The wonders of crayola

It's once again been awhile since I've posted...the blames is squarely on the fact that I do not have internet in my room and will not have internet there before I leave as the school has erased the operating system on my computer once already while trying to plug in high speed internet. I have decided not to take further chances with them messing up my computer and will settle for using a classroom computer for these last 12 weeks or so. Am I really down to that little time? It seem surreal. I'm just getting to the point where my students are really comfortable with me and they joke (usually appropriately) with me and the class periods go by rather quickly.

This past week has been fun at school because I have been teaching a lesson about monsters and using vocabulary that is new to them: eyebrows, eyelashes, spots, horns etc. and after week look at many powerpoints of monsters I break them into groups of 4 and give them paper and some crayons and they must draw a monster and then either answer questions about the monster or write a story, depending on the level of english in the class. I think the kids like the crayons the best, as they are from a box that I brought from the states, Crayola in fact. Crayons from the stationary shops here are much more waxy and don't have such brilliant colours. Some of the students are really very good artists, while others, not so much. I can't fault them though; in their 7am-6pm school day they don't have any art classes. In fact the one art classroom that I used to see students in at night doing still-life portraits and really enjoying themselves in, was turned into a book-storage room last week and so there is no more room for special art classes. I guess schools here and ones in the states have that in common, the arts programs are the first to be cut when budget-shaving occurs.

My class schedules of recent have been changing almost daily b/c of testing that is going on and mock-testing for the Junior 3's who will be taking their high school entrance exam on the 15th of June. I had to work on Sunday last week b/c apparently the J3's did so poorly on a full mock test the preceding week, that the school had a meeting about their terrible performance and deemed it necessary for them to re-take the same test on Friday, today. Thus, the Friday schedule was moved to sunday and instead of being able to visit my friends in a district north of here last weekend, I had to stick around and teach two classes beginning at 8am on Sunday. Fun.

It's also a bit ironic that their exam is on the exact day that my contract goes up. All the classrooms have a blackboard in the front and the back of class and the one in the back is keeping track of days left until the 'zhong kao' or 'middle exam' which means so much to them. Thus, in an inadvertant manner its a constant reminder of how much time I have left.....78 days, that's no time at all.

I haven't made any final plans about where I am going to travel during my 7 days off in May, but I am beginning to lean towards Japan b/c the tickets are cheap, even though travelling around there will not be so cheap.

The weather has been beautiful the last couple of days, which is nice b/c in recent weeks we have seen quite a substantial amount of rain that will put even the cheeriest of people into kind of a sullen stupor. I've had many near-falls on slippery pavement, but not wipeouts this month.

I am glad to have come to China and I am glad to have time left here, but I have also realized that I don't want to live alone in a foreign country in the future. It gets a bit lonely when there isn't another person to laugh with while killing swarms of mosquitos in your room, or washing your clothes in the shower b/c there isn't a washing machine.