As the foreign teacher, it is my job to stand at the gate every morning at eight o'clock and greet the children and their parents. Having a foreign teacher looks very good for a Chinese school, so they make me as visible as possible. I am accompanied by a different teacher each day of the week.
I teach four lessons in the morning, 20-30 minutes each. I travel from class to class and the students sit in a circle. I practice pronunciation with them and we play games. The Chinese teachers expect me to have a million games and songs up my sleeve for the given topic and they change plans a lot; it keeps me on my toes.
Lunch is at 11:30. Then, the children have naptime until 2:30. I use this time to walk around, work on homestudy seminary and plan lessons. After naps I watch/play with the children at recess, and play more vocabulary games.
Last night I played badminton with two other teachers. It was fun! I got off one bus stop before Tracy, my liason, to walk the two blocks back to school, and promptly got extremely lost. It was dark, and I didn't even know the name of the school to ask for directions. I was really scared and I walked around for about 45 minutes, praying. Finally I found a girl and her mother who were walking their dog. They were so kind to me and went to a whole lot of trouble calling teachers and friends to find out where my school was. They took me home in a taxi and I was so grateful for them, the good Samaritans. Thanks to prayer, I got home safely, had a good cry, and then went to bed. Today I had Tracy write out the address of the kindergarten and I am not going out tonight! :)
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