We're both beginning to settle into our new routines here. I'm out the door early in the morning to learn The People's Tongue at uni, allowing Natalie a nice sleep-in before her midday start at Pu Ming Primary.
My classmates are an amiable bunch, and I'm glad I ended up with an enthusiastic text teacher (laoshi) to boot. We call her Yuan Laoshi, and she attacks each obscure grammatical conundrum we throw her way with great skill and relish. She also thinks the Beijing accent is a load of old twaddle, and drops in snarky comments about it. Rather a contrast to our speech laoshi, an undergrad who toes the official line with disconcerting precision.
The class is small and highly varied in background, as Nat has mentioned. Nuir is Bangladeshi and has been helping me with some tricky words. Tobias is a chatty german fella who is very proud of the work group he has assembled - a bright Japanese lass, a sultry Italian and himself. He calls it the Axis of Evil.
The few Australians have clumped together. I've been chatting with a guy called Scott who is teaching English to kids after class and looking forward to becoming an expat very soon. He said he'd like to stay in China forever, even though the kids at his school call him pigu laoshi (arse teacher).
2 comments:
Sounds great fun Jim!
How is Nat going with the little ones?
Keep the stories coming.
It's great to read the posts from you and from Nat. I'm very glad that you both seem to be settling in well.
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