It's saturday morning, i'm sitting in the kitchen with my flatmate's laptop, eating jujube and lotus seed paste for breakfast while the rain keep pouring down outside. it has been raining for the whole night, non-stop, and it seems like it's not about to give up, either. Which is one more reason why i'm glad to have my first day off today. Talking about rain, by the way, a lot of the country has been hot by extremely heavy rains in the past week, flooding Beijing for a couple of days, and also bringing life in other cities to a hault. Maybe it will keep raining here in Jinan until monday morning, and the whole city will be flooded, so that i don't have to go to work...ehhh...
 
Work, then... Teaching itself isn't too bad, sometimes i even enjoy being in the classroom, making a total fool of myself in front of the kids and making them laugh, sometimes being the strict teacher and ordering kids around and just teaching this and that. But the job here is A LOT OF WORK. I was a little apprehensive about having to work 30 h/week, but i was not even including the extra 10 hours of lesson preparation and marking homework!!! And 10 hours is probably not even enough, as i'm teaching all the classes for the first time, so no using old lessons plans... For example yesterday I stayed at the school for 12 hours!!! 6 hours of it active teaching time and the rest preparation and marking and so on. ARGH.
 
I'm teaching 5 different levels of kids, starting from level 2 (who are just above beginners) up to level 6 (who are still doing pretty basic stuff also). In every class i have a Chinese teacher with me, who i can use to help with activities, do translations or whatever i need him/her for. Especially with the little ones it's helpful, as you can only explain so much using basic colours and numbers and 'sit down'. hmmm.

It just feels like i'm in a totally different world now. I can't write anymore about observations on the Chinese life that much, as i feel i'm not really seeing the Chinese life! Though i guess i'm just seeing a very different side of it... We'll see how it goes on and what i will be able to get out of it all.
 
But for now, the rain keeps falling and for me, it's finally the chance to grab a book and curl up on the sofa, or even watch some choice programming on CCTV9, the China Central Television international channel. Whoa!