Monday 5th September

Still don’t have my address (well I do, it’s written in Chinese though so I don’t have a clue what it says, although taxi drivers seem to get me back to my apartment ok with it so it must be right) and after further inspection I don’t actually have a letter box or mail box at the apartment. After speaking to the school they have said that it is ok to post letters to the school for me, although make sure that it is recorded and you can track it as apparently anything with English writing on get’s stolen. So the address is: Miss Pippa Wilkinson, Grade 1 Office, Beijing International Bilingual Academy, Monet Garden, No. 5 Yumin Road, Houshayu, Shunyi, Beijing, 101300.

I have been looking out for postcards since I got here but no where sells them which is disappointing. Mail takes roughly 10 days to get here.

So today was the first proper day of my new timetable and I did baseline assessments with grade 1A in the morning and then a spelling test (this is a standard test that every grade 1 class had to take, there are 15 words and after the first 5 we decided that it was just too hard and stopped. Lunch was a mountain of rice (every single meal has boiled rice, I am so bored of bland food) only 1 small chicken wing and 3 small spring rolls. Not really getting my fill of vegetables, in fact other than in western restaurants I have not seen anywhere that has salad and in this heat that’s all I want! With air conditioning on it has been 29 degrees, outside it’s obviously a lot hotter and really humid.

In the afternoon I was back with grade 2C doing more assessments (there are so many start of year assessments to get through it’s unbelievable) Then I was back with grade 1A to finish the maths test that we started on Friday and then trying to get the children to write “I like .....” sentences to work on their writing skills.

At the end of school I took Analisa to the Pinnacle Plaza so we could buy a wireless internet router and then try and find somewhere to get another set of keys made for the apartment which was unsuccessful.

Images: View from my balcony and my timetable.