Three Cheers for Blaggin'!

Another day, another dollar. Wrapped up my EF 7 class on Friday (picture up on Flickr, along with ones I thought I'd uploaded), and took over a regular class today. By regular I mean not a summer intensive course. It's the same age, approx, as my class of 12/13 year olds, but slightly less ability. Also, all female it seems. There's one boy listed on the attendance, but I don't think he's been around. I don't blame him... 6 girls, 1 boy... ouch.

Oh, and this new course is using a different course book (woot!) and is only 2 hours long instead of 3. Unfortunately... I thought I had a former teacher's old lesson plan for this class. Turns out, he used it last time, so I walked in sans plan. "Jus' blag it, mate" Alistair or Nick would say. Heard the word 'blag' for the first time last week. Basically means to shoot the shit and stretch 5 minutes into 30. Nick's a master of it.

I am now done for two days. It's my "weekend". A few teachers are heading to Beijing on Tuesday to provide English escort for 43 students out on a day trip. I opted not to go simply because I need Tuesday to plan, and tomorrow I'm doing nothing. Blessed nothingness. Two or three teachers are also going to Beijing tonight on their own initiative and with their own agendas, coming back tomorrow evening. Again, I opted out because this past week has been mentally wearying, and I'm not in a great frame of mind to fully appreciate it the way I want to. When I go, I want to be able to devote my emotion in a mostly-positive direction. At the moment, I'm just zonked, and I know I'd be thinking about this upcoming week too much to fully devote my attentions to the splendor of the ancient downtown core of Beijing.

That's it for now. Maybe this weekend I'll have the rare opportunity to photograph the KFC Dance. I shit thee not... a KFC manager and kids do this weird dance at the top of the stairs outside one of the restaurants and people actually watch. I swear, the Chinese would watch paint dry so long as three or four people were already doing so. Within five minutes, there'd be a crowd, everyone jostling for a good paint-watching vantage.