I got woken up by a text at 6.30am this morning asking if I can cover for one of the teachers that was off sick. I don’t usually get out of bed until 8am so it was a bit of a shock getting up at that time to be in work for 8am. It was the grade 1A teacher that was off so I already knew the kids which helped and I started off taking them to morning assembly and then teaching English. After lunch I had to take them to rehearse for the Christmas concert and get them used to walking onto the stage in the right order and actually getting them to stay still which is not easy with a class of 7 year olds! I then had my normal English lesson with grade 2C finishing their “all about me project” which most of them have very nearly finished, which is good as we only have another two lessons left to get it done. I then had a 10 minute break, just enough time to get my things together for the next lessons! I had maths with grade 1A where we were working on time and then the final lesson of the day was English writing where the children all made up a Christmas story about snowmen which was cute. By this point I was worn out, I had taught 6 lessons back to back and was ready for a sleep! I had a load of marking to do though and had about an hour to do it in as we had our staff xmas meal where we give our secret santa gifts and we were getting buses from the school at 5.20pm.
We got the buses to the restaurant that we were having our meal at and we all sat down to a big selection of Chinese dishes. The Chinese teachers were so excited and were going round to every table wishing everyone a Merry Christmas, apparently the restaurant we were at was quite expensive and one of the teachers said they look forward to the meal all year, which is paid for by the school. There were towers of mashed potatoes with whipped cream on top, chicken (plus chickens head), what looked like salami, snails, garlic vegetables, a weird meat that you put in tofu pancakes (I don’t think I want to know what that was), shrimp, pigs heart, chicken and peanuts, shredded lamb kebab, chicken curry, squid and king prawns, spicy minced meat rolls, green vegetables, fish soup (complete with fish tail), dumplings, mushroom and some sort of furry meat soup, rice and duck pancakes. After dinner (and endless speeches in Chinese then translated into English) we were each given a gift from the school, a scarf and pair of socks. Not just any scarf though, there were scarves with fur, lace, bows, netting, you name it, we had it! We each got photos with our scarves, I think I can safely say that most of them will not be worn in public. We then swapped our secret santa gifts and I was given chocolate and a moisturiser set by one of the Chinese teachers. We then had to all go into the room next door where there was a stage to have a staff photo (there were 75 of us, it took a while!) then at 8pm, straight after the photo, everyone left. Nothing like any staff meal I have ever been to, usually we all stay and dance to cheesy music! Quite an interesting day and it was nice to have a staff meal together and I got a pair of socks out of it!
See all pics here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/69851917@N06/sets/72157628401498071/
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