Week one of teaching

So I'm beginning to warm up to Fuxin, and getting less homesick. I realize that I have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to teach, learn, and grow - I need to not let being lonely get in the way! This is probably the only time in my life that I can teach without being responsible for formal assessments, paperwork, staying on the curriculum time line, or the "annoying" parts of my profession. I can teach however I want to teach! How awesome is that? I get the chance to try out different styles and activities to see what works best. I want to take full advantage of this experience.

My first week of teaching is over, and I must say that teaching the same lesson over and over again can kind-of get repetitive. Oh well. Once I get more comfortable, I may begin to create different lessons for the different age groups, but I don't want to get too ahead of myself just yet.

Tomorrow is National Women's Day, so all the women in the country get a half day! I only have one class to teach, which puts my Monday classes way behind. They rescheduled my two afternoon classes - one for Tuesday morning and one for Thursday morning. That means technically I should be teaching my visual intro lesson again on Thursday. However, I'm thinking that since my Monday classes are already behind, I'll shorten my visual intro lesson and condense the two weeks of material into one, so my week isn't all thrown off. I also asked what days we have off for my long-term planning, and I found out that its two Mondays. Sucks for the Monday classes :(

On a different note, we found an awesome place to go shopping for food, school supplies, and random other things - all in one place. We bought eggplant, green beans, mushrooms, and garlic all for a little over $1! So cheap! I like cooking in our kitchen better than going out, and Donna's a good cook! And everyone is totally ok with eating vegetarian for dinner, since the lunches at school we get do have meat options.

I've been avoiding taking my camera around town so I could get to know Fuxin with my own eyes first. But I'll start taking some more pictures and posting them soon.