Yantai, China: July 12, 2008

Today was interesting and vaguely stressful…but first, the weekdays!

Gamble and I figured out what to do about the mosquitoes. We grabbed our shoes (I grabbed her sandals and she had her slippers-why would I want dead bug guts on my shoes?) and went on a room raid. The first time we seriously killed about 20 mosquitoes without any exaggeration at all. It took us a while to do since they would fly up and sit on the ceiling and we’d have to try to get them down. There’s also a bunch of footprints on our walls and bathroom door. I can only imagine what the cleaning ladies think we were doing. Now it’s more manageable with us only having to kill about five a night.

Thursday night we had to study for our big Friday test, which we did like good dutiful students. We had an odd study break though in our room. Gamble’s friend had told her a few minutes earlier over IM that he found “stately knees” attractive and sexy. We wanted to know what a stately knee was and if we had them, so we took my camera and shot about 37 pictures of our knees at various angles and with various props. I have to admit that was one of the strangest study breaks I think I’ll ever had. If you haven’t ever really considered your knees before, let me tell you-they’re an ugly necessity of our body. They just never look good in pictures. EVER. But apparently we had stately knees.

Yesterday we went out to a bar, then a dance club. Most bars basically consist of plastic tables under a cheap umbrella, but the dance club was pretty fun again. I didn’t dance much since I just wanted to watch. Chinese clubs overall are pretty dull compared to the European and American scene. Clubs close at like 1am or 1:30. Strange.

Today I slept in and didn’t do much until about 5:30pm when Gamble, Natalie (another classmate), and I went to go do a practical interview for teaching 6 and 7 year olds English. We didn’t know that it basically involved teaching the class right then and there. I was first, which was terrible since we didn’t know how old they’d be, how much English they already knew or anything. So I winged it and started with the Alphabet, colors, shapes, and numbers. Didn’t do too badly but since I had no idea what else I was supposed to do it was kinda eh ah. Gamble got it and we found out she’ll be teaching them everyday for an hour. Makes me a little glad I didn’t get it. I liked teaching it, but I’d definitely need a little more practice and I also think I’d like doing it at a higher level, maybe high school. It didn’t help that there was the judge guy in the background, I was clueless, and all their parents were there too. What a scene to have seen. I fully appreciate anyone who teaches well much more right now. And parent day should be abolished in schools altogether.

The kids were really cute because they did know some of the stuff already and some were really enthusiastic to show off their skills. We also had them learn the “Head, shoulders, knees, and toes” song and let them come to the front of the classroom and perform. It was like a mini recital. Very cute.

I also ate some squid on a stick today (not too good, but not bad either) and played badminton with some Korean students. I’m really bad, and not in a good way.

In the upcoming days I’ll be studying and studying. Useful, if not always exciting.