Yup. I'm the Booby.

I really hope that Yan Qing will be good. I really, really do. I know that your shouldn't judge something on the first impression, but, ooo-ooo-wee!

Okay, I should just start from the beginning.

So, I was given the Yan Qing teaching assignment. I had some reservations - was warned about the extra time it would take to do the classes and the low language level of the students. But I was pretty okay with it as long as I would be compensated for the extra time it would take to teach those classes - it takes a little over an hour to get out to the school and then there is the ride back. So, although I am only teaching 4 hours the whole ordeal takes the entire day.

I had some questions about all of this, so I went to our waiban. I admit, I was still suspicious about the whole 10 vs 12 hours of agreed to contracted hours, but wanted to know about the teaching gig. So, after a couple of rounds of time vs money compensation she tried the "I'll just butter you up" strategy and was told that they select a very special teacher to go out to teach these kids who may be from the countryside and were not able to have as good as an education as some of the other kids (thus they scored lower on their entrance exams).

So, with not everything smoothed over, I leave with the general feeling of being lied to again.

The other night Matt and I met one of the former English teachers at the University. We all went to Mr. Pizza. Frank, who is an old friend of Adam's (our neighbor). I told him that I had the Yan Qing thing. His response? "Oh, so you got stuck with Yan Qing, huh?" followed by and a little laughing. Great.

So, Monday. THE day. I was told that the bus to Yan Qing will leave the school at 7:30 AM and that I should try to be a little early. So, I drag my groggy ass out of bed really early for me and make it out to the bus meeting place under a huge statue of Mao by 7:15 AM. Anyone there? Nope. 7:30 AM? Nope. 7:45 AM? Nope. I worry that I missed the bus or that they changed the time and didn't tell me. So I called the scheduling office. They sent someone down to hang with me and Mao. At 8:00 AM some people start to show up. I asked them what time the bus was to leave, they all said 8:15 AM. No one knew of the 7:30 AM time that I was informed of. Gee, thanks Gloria. I wouldn't have been nearly as bitter if I would have been able to get that extra precious hour of sleep.

So, now the ride out to Yan Qing. The ride was quite nice. I was able to see some of the Great Wall on the way and the hills/mountains were quite nice. Blue sky too - bonus! Right as we got to an interesting section of the wall the lady in front of me whisked down the curtain and bopped me in the head. I tried to pull it up just a little so I could see out. No dice. Stare of ice from that lady. So, I was forced to sneak peaks out at the scenery from two windows up when the wind would blow the curtain out a little bit. What is up with the mobile window treatment Nazis?

So, we arrived at the school and I was given the key to my "office". It was actually better than I had pictured. It is basically a little hotel room. I have 2 beds, 2 desks a wardrobe and my own bathroom. I didn't really have time to relax because I had to run off to class. I got lost. No one really knew where I was supposed to go. So I just wandered around the teaching buildings for about 10 minutes before a student found me and asked if I was the Chinese-looking foreigner. She said to follow her and I made it to my class just as the bell rang.

The students will hopefully be better than the first impression I have of them. From the way things sound, half of them didn't really want to work very hard in high school, so they placed low on the university lists and could not get into one of the top universities in Beijing. The other half are from the countryside and didn't have access to some of the educational advantages that their other classmates had and they are there to work, but their English level is pretty poor as usually they didn't really have an actual English teacher, just a Chinese teacher trying to teach them about English. I have two classes. One is for English teaching majors the other for Commercial English majors. I have to tell ya, I truly believe that my Senior 1 students at Guyuan had better English overall. Shoot, for that matter, my Juniors had better English. Many of these university students could not answer questions my 11 year olds could by the end of the year.

The class is supposed to be lecture style. Two L O N G hours of lecture. Four in total. I don't want to talk that long and being that their English level is so low, I don't think that they would be able to understand (nor sit through)what I am talking about the majority of the time. So, I think that will be the first change I make, more activities and less teacher talking time. But the students, oh I don't know. I just hope that my impression of them is incorrect.

For lunch I went to a restaurant. Went being the word to focus on. Note that I didn't say "eat". We caught a bicycle thing out to a restaurant on the other side of town (not a rickshaw dealy, but a bike with a padded skid attached to the back which people sit on). By the time we got out there and the food came, I had to go back for my afternoon class. I got about 3 minutes to shovel some potatoes in my feed hole before catching the bike thing back to campus.

Back at campus had some more difficulty finding my classes - nothing is labeled which makes it difficult for me as all of the buildings kinda look the same and all of the classrooms really look similar. So, lost laowai again.

So, finally, I get to go home! Hooray!

I find the car that is going back and hop in and we head back to Beijing. We get back about at 4:30 PM. A whole day wasted for four hours of teaching and I haven't heard what the "fair compensation" is yet from the people who were supposed to get right back to me.

Crap.

I'm tired.