Ming Tomb, More First Day Jitters, and Breakfast for Dinner!

So with our first and only day off in 10 days, we decided to check out some of the Ming Tombs as they were pretty much the last possible tourist attraction for us to go see in Beijing. They actually were pretty cool, maybe slightly underwhelming but all in all a pretty sweet thing to go see. We spent the day with one of the Chinese teachers and her husband. I think she was good intentioned, but she drove all of us nuts! We felt like babies when we were with her and she was genuinely shocked every time we did something on our own. Also we were supposed to learn Kung Fu that night but it fell threw, so our one day off was a little less cool.

Then the next day we began our first day with the second group of kids from Shunyi No. 1 Middle School's Grade 6 class. The kids were a year younger than the group of kids we had previously finished teaching and thus knew slightly less english and were slightly more shy and nervous the first few days. So needless to day my warm-up group activity went to shambles because everyone was too scared to participate and they were to shy to answer any of my questions, so I was struggling. Things did fortunately get a lot better over the next few days. As I started introducing American games and making the lessons more interesting the kids started participating a lot more and became less and less shy so that was nice.

Classes continue to get better, and after about the 4th day we had dinner at Hilary (our boss)'s house, it was really good! Home cooked Chinese food is the best. She showed us how to make caramelized potatoes and some other things.

Then 2 days later, had dinner at Rick's house again...his family is awesome! they invited us over and surprised us with a breakfast for dinner night! This couldn't have been more amazing considering we've been craving normal breakfasts the entire trip...Chinese breakfast just isn't the same... So ya, dinner was amazing, we even got to play some Xbox 360 at their house against one of the owners of the company, Caterpillar

China continues to be awesome...more to come soon!

McDonalds, Shopping, Hilarious Hilary, and the Performance of a Lifetime...

So have you ever wondered what McDonalds tastes like in China? if you are like me then the answer is yep. Even though I really cant stand eating fast food and would avoid McD's at all times in the states, I figured I had to have a go at it in another country...because surely it is a little different right? wrong. it tastes the exact same. more or less a let-down except for the fact the burger cost me an even $5yuan which converts to somewhere around $0.60 cents US. not bad...but not really worth it either, my stomach hurt for the rest of the night.



Im not sure if Ive mentioned it already or not, but Pat's family friend Rick who lives in Beijing with his family is awesome. (he took us to see the great wall) And once again he has come through as an amazing host. His family and the three of us guys hit one of the local shopping malls in Beijing that was packed wall-to-wall with knock-off designer brands and cheap clothing. So ya, we did a bit of shopping..beijing style...haggling down the price nearly 90% off what they start at...because thats just what you have to do here...very fun but very exhausting as they can be very aggressive to get you to buy one of the thirty thousand pairs of fake nike air jordans. Quite the shopping experience...



The next night after our 8th day of class in a row without many breaks at all, we were invited out to dinner with one of our bosses, who for her sake will be unnamed...haha just kidding, read the title nitwit. So ya, i must preface this story with describing our boss...she is a rather petite asian woman maybe a few years older than us. ok back to the story, so our boss thought it would be a good idea to take us out to western food because it was her friend's resturant and this night was the grand opening of the resturant, so it was a special night for them. if it weren't for that we likely wouldnt have dared to set foot in a western resturant in china, but it made for some entertainment. So ya, dinner was ok, they brought us red wine with dinner and it became clear this was their first experience with red wine...so diogo, pat and i had to show them how to serve it.
...Continuing their inexperience with red wine, to celebrate the night people kept coming over to our table and cheersing with us, however cheers in chinese means bottoms up and sure enough each of them would down nearly full glasses of red wine in one gulp. eww. We also thought it would be funny to get our boss a little tipsy for the night just to mess with her...and stereotypes shine true as a petite asian woman cannot in fact hold her liquor. 4 bottles of red wine down and a few beers for pat and all 4 of us were "smashed" as our boss repeated over and over to us.
It was hilarious! especially because us 3 dudes were in far better shape than our boss was and we had to carry her home while she yelled at pat that she was our boss and that she shouldn't let him drink, and pats cunning reply was simply "ya only for 1 more week..." haha we had an awesome time

Then our story brings us to day 10 of teaching the first group of kids and the final presentation for the kids. The presentation was for the parents to show them how much english they learned over the week. It was truly the performance of a lifetime. complete with backstreet boys sing a longs, 3 seperate plays about a resturant with jackie chan, a wedding, and a birthday. oh and of course there were the short skits on cinderella and sleeping beauty. the kids were awesome and most surprisingly talented. We ended things with gifts and cake, which turned into a giant cake fight on stage and i think i may still have frosting stuck in my ear...

Number 1 Middle School

So we have arrived at our 2nd school which happens to be known as the number 1 middle school in Beijing. Pretty cool. The school is very nice, we are living in two seperate rooms on the 8th and 10th floor of a sweet dorm/classroom combo building. There is airconditioning, a fridge and a water cooler! not bad...considering the toilet is a bit dodgey and the shower has almost no pressure, still not too bad. We all got settled in nicely and went to the book store to pick out our teaching materials...which was interesting considering we still really have no idea how to teach, but it all works out in the end right?

Once we found a good book to teach from we got ready for our first day of class, which went great! The kids are incredibly smart, most of them are almost fluent with english so we get to focus more on teaching them american culture and difficult vocab words and slang words and songs and games and stuff like that. Its great, we teach for about three 1hr sessions each day and inbetween classes we have sports/activities, so we can choose to play basketball, badmitten, or table tennis. Im getting so good at badmitten and it is only the 4th day of class at this school.

Then tonight we are going over to the headmaster's house and his family is going to teach us to make dumplings (dim sum). so cool. The teachers putting on the summer camp at this school are awesome, they are extremely nice and we are getting a kick out of teaching them american slang too, so they now know how to say, lets bounce house. haha ohh english...