Archive for the ‘ESL’ Category

• Catch up on Recent Events

  Wednesday, October 14th, 2009

  I’ve taken inspiration from the latest Star Trek - Enterprise (and the letters that Dr Flox dictates) and decided on catching you all up on recent events in rough date order.
  Semester 2 (Mar-June 2009)
  The semester ended fairly smoothly. We ditched previous ideas of our curriculum and were inspired by getting our army of kids translating […]

• Back in Jiaxing

  Saturday, February 23rd, 2008

  We’re back, safe and well in Jiaxing (and what a few months!).
  Poor Bazz’s a-cold.
  The sun’s out now; hiding behind fog all morning.
  Skin’s drying already; lips chapped.
  My vege lady at the market has cold burns on both her hands. They’re pink and swollen with small blisters and ulcers. She didn’t make it out of town for […]

• Well… Happy New Year n all

  Monday, December 31st, 2007

  My, hasn’t time flown by. The year that was 2007… let’s see… there’s teaching at Ben 2 with it’s recalcitrant teenagers,

  Teaching tinsy-whinsy primary students in rural Thailand,

  Teaching newbie English teachers on Koh Samui,

  Back to Oz for a whirlwind visit,

   
  And back to China and university age students.

  That’s a big year!

• English Corners

  Saturday, November 24th, 2007

  As part of the contract we must run about 3 English corners per semester. These are on Thursday night straight after teaching (and shoving some food down) for 2 hours. The initial ones were “ask the foreigner a million mostly repeated questions” style. Then Barry & I got to run one ourselves on a cold […]

• Rule 1 for Overseas Living

  Sunday, November 11th, 2007

  2 months down (half a semester) and life has kinda settled into some form of normality - teaching, hospital trips for Barry’s foot, shopping trips, internet, DVDs and Dr Who (2007!). This is all diced up and sprinkled with CCTV 9 (which can’t only be tolerated for about 1/2-1 hour at a time).
  We have bought […]