Adverts

This past week I had the students create their own commercial. Their only goal was to try and sell the audience something they thought was needed. It had to have been one of the best assignments I have done because it was asking them to be creative. You can tell they LOVE this kind of stuff...probably because they do not get to be imaginative in their other classes. The products ranged from miracle weight loss to being able to eat your books and that is how you would learn the material. I loved what they had to show me and I am definitely doing something like this again next term (maybe have them script out their own comedy??).

Exploring Tianjin

Well, 2 weeks ago I started to feel a bit homesick. This was mainly because of some issues with the foreign language department that made me angry. How they deal with things over here is SO different then how things are done in the States that it can be very frustrating- 3 hour lunch breaks, issues not dealt with quickly enough (from my perspective) or brushed aside, etc. This all just puts you in a negative frame of mind which definitely is NOT they way to live in a foreign country because you start looking at everything negatively. At this point, I stumbled across a book, "Survival Kit for Overseas Living", in our office (which is currently 'under construction'...one of those previously mentioned issues haha). The book looks horribly outdated and full of pointless graphs. However, it did have some useful advice for getting through those bouts of homesickness.
Told you the book looked ugly haha Random find in our torn up office:


One of the suggestions in the book, was exploring your environment. Yes, I have lived in Tianjin for over 3 months, but a lot of it I have yet to see. One of the main tourist attractions is Ancient Culture street and I have never even been there. It is a shopping area filled with the typical chinese goods from all different types of minority groups. I went here with one of my students, who is pretty good with her oral english so it is easy to carry on a conversation with her (it is nice to actually be able to joke with a chinese person and they understand your sense of humor etc). We were able to do a bit of holiday shopping and Rosa was incredibly helpful because she was able to bargain with the shop keepers (whitey alert: raise the prices!). Therefore, I was not totally ripped off thankfully. It truly was a wonderful shopping day and totally helped me get over my little bit of homesickness (darn holiday season gets you every time).
Me throwing up the "V for Victor" sign like all my students do haha

My student, Rosa, rubbing the foot which brings 'good fortune'

Halloween = a big "HUH?!"

It is interesting being the ambassador for something as awesome as Halloween. Trying to teach my students about the importance of a holiday- where girls have an excuse to dress up in skimpy outfits, you get to demand candy or else foul play will be involved, and general weirdness is acceptable- is hard work.

I started by teaching them Halloween vocab such as Vampire, Goblin, Jack-a-Latern etc. This led to one of my students asking why I was teaching them something that they do not know about. It was so hard for me to not go- "Duh?! Isn't teaching you NEW things what a Teacher is supposed to do?" However, I refrained and explained the cultural importance of Halloween, its history, economic impact etc. Once I pointed out that everything you get for Halloween is 'made in china' and that if the west stopped celebrating this weird holiday then china would loose a lot of money, they finally understood its importance.

I also subjected myself to watching "Hocus Pocus" 10 times and now have that movie completely memorized. This was a children's movie, yet they still found it difficult to follow the plot line and I had to do a summary of events haha It did manage to frighten a few students (especially when SJP jumps out from under the bed). When my English classes were leaving, I made them say "trick-or-treat" if they wanted to get the candy I brought with me to hand out. I told them that they had to say the magic words and their response was 'teacher can I please have candy' after I told them like 7 times that the magic words were 'trick-or-treat'... I do not think they really listen to me hahah oh well

For my non-major students, I joined with another foreign teacher and created a mini haunted house. I blacked out all the windows, had toilet paper draped over the doors and walls, tea lights lite up around on tables, and a fog machine going. It was pretty awesome room considering what we had to work with and not being able to find Halloween stuff in China. (You might be wondering where the fog machine came from but that was a random find in one of the offices that I had made. Apparently a past foreign teacher also taught Halloween because we also found a huge bag of costumes and a big hairy spider to put on the wall) We bought apples and I made caramel sauce for the students to eat. I also made 'sensory boxes'- you take a shoe box and put something in it and without looking the student has to feel what is in there. I had brains (noodles) and eyeballs (grapes) which freaked out the students sufficiently.

We also made the students play the "Mummy Wrap" game. I divided them up into teams and handed them each a roll of toilet paper. Before I even explained the rules of the game, they were already cheating and wrapping up their person. I told them to stop and roll the paper back up because we were all going to start at the same time, but they would not listen. Jim (the other teacher) and I had to go around to each group and roll the paper back up and tell them DO NOT START UNTIL I SAY TO. It was so funny though because once they started they really got into it.

Of course, after this was all over everyone wanted their pictures taken with the witch (that is me hah). I posed for 20 mins taking pictures with my students. They found the whole thing pretty cool even if they had a big 'huh?!' face the entire time... perhaps that was their attempt at a costume ?!?