School Bells a Clangin'

With 4 months of freedom year, sometimes it’s hard to remember that I came to China to do a job. But the school bells a ringin’ and class started up today. My schedule this year isn’t bad, I requested teaching multiple subjects with my favorite classes so I get to see them each twice a week for writing and history. And I get to teach my all-time favorite classes for the last time. They were my very first students when I first arrived in China, and now I get to teach them Newspaper Reading during their last semester in college. (Not such an exciting subject, but I’m hoping they will make it more fun.) In fact I am only teaching two classes of students I don’t know (for writing) so this is shaping up to be a pretty good semester. All together I have 16 hours of classes, plus a few extra a week for my office hours and special class.
I’ll also be hitting up some Chinese classes, about 8 hours a week, As a foreign teacher I am allowed to go to any Chinese class I want. My foreign classmates are all at level three, but unfortunately my English classes clash with theirs and so I will be attending level two classes again. But I can always improve my vocabulary and there is a lot of really difficult grammar that I have yet to master, so repeating the level will be okay.
Speaking of foreigners speaking Chinese the blog Confused Laowai had this video that I just had to share. It’s called The Hollywood Guide to Speaking Chinese and it is a compilation of some of the funniest scenes of actors speaking Chinese in movies. For the most part they are really terrible. For me, I found the blond woman to be the best speaker followed by….Keanu Reeves. Seriously, give the guy some props as I could actually understand what he was saying. It comes off slightly awkward and slow, but I believe he really learned it versus the others who just tried to memorize the sounds. Anyway, check it out yourself and see what you think. (VPN alert, this is a Youtube video.)

So it’s back to school for me. My sweat-soaked shirts are already covered with chalk dust and my voice is hoarse from speaking so loudly, but I’ve got a big smile on my face so it must mean I don’t mind it a bit. I think this might be the only job I’ve had in my whole life where I look forward to the workday.