I’ve decided that I am going to stay in Hohhot for an additional four months. This means I will be home at the end of November, ideally for Thanksgiving and UF/FSU weekend. As many of you know, I was toying with this idea for a long time. I miss everyone at home so much, and can’t wait to see everyone again. But if I stay here a little longer, I can save a good amount of money so I won’t be so hard pressed to find a job when I get home.

Many of you have asked me what I am going to do next, to be honest I am not quite sure. I’m thinking about a teaching position somewhere in South America. Reasons? Well, no crazy Hohhot winters for one, and being on the same side of the world as all my family and friends is a huge plus. A huge reason, though, is that I want something completely different from the culture and society I am in now, so I can compare and learn. I’m not going to start a job in South America until around next May or so, which will have be looking for part time work until then.

Yes, eventually I will be coming home to stay. I love the US, Florida, St. Augustine, Gainesville, etc. I just want to get as many experiences as possible before settling back down. As before, everyone will be more than welcome to come visit me!

The post is about something I never thought that I would be doing as often as I do now: playing computer games.
Back home, extra time means going outside and reading a book on the beach, or, if the weather is bad, flipping through the TV channels to find yet another Law and Order. I am somewhat ashamed to say, now when I am bored I usually find myself playing a game on the computer. Why? Many reasons…it’s easy, it’s fun and addictive. Not to mention the fact that I have no beach, and no TV channels that I can understand enough to be interested. I am only somewhat ashamed of my new addiction because the alternative would be to plan lessons, and that no matter how many computer games I play, the average Chinese boy plays way more.
So what games are Sarah’s favorites? On the website primarygames.com, I play Dune Buggy, Wild Wild Taxi, and Monkey Go Happy (I also use this website for lots of games with my students, great learning games on there!). Thanks to Google Chrome’s new App system, I’m hooked on Bowman2, Zombie Drop, Robot Unicorn Attack, and of course, Angry Birds. I have finally been taught how to play Pants vs. Zombies, and can see why it is one of the most popular games in China (that and Crossfire). I have dabbled in a few others that are good, just not favorites, such as Use Boxman.
I realize though, that the playing of all these games stem from one certain game, that I proud have gotten most of the staff addicted to- Mahjong Solitaire. In this game, you have to get matching tiles. Yea sounds easy, but it is a little more difficult than that. You cannot collect a tile if it has tiles on wither side of it, or on top of it. Now, this is not the true Chinese Mahjong, pretty much a Westerner made it up because they didn’t understand the real game (which is like a poker game). I am still hoping to learn the true Mahjong, but have yet to have the time or patience to do so. For now, I will just stick to killing zombies and flipping dune buggies to fill my free time.

Intensive is not fun. Would I rather be chewed on by a thousand ants while an elephant sat on my head? Nah, probably not. But still, intensive is not fun.

What is intensive? Intensive is three months during the summer and two months in the winter when, because school is out, we work a lot more hours and have a lot more classes. Remember, I work for a company, not for the school system. I’ve mentioned it before, but think of it this way: growing up, we went to piano or gymnastics or karate after school, yea? Chinese students go to English class (and for some very unlucky ones, extra classes for math and such). Personally, I have so many thanks to give for not being raised in the Chinese education system. Ten hours of classes, plus copious amounts of homework everyday? No thanks, I prefer to be seen as a stupid American.

Anyway, back to Intensive. We have extra classes for all grade levels, in addition to their usual ones. The students don’t have to do them, but of course they are “highly suggested”- think summer camp, a bit. They are called Life Club (we actually have these life clubs throughout the whole year for adults, but this is the first time we are doing them for kids). The topics are usually things that we don’t cover in the regular course, and in my eyes, are usually more fun. Nothing beats a morning of teaching adults how to play BS and poker ( Oh wait.. sleep does..).

Today, myself and another teacher taught a “Life Club” lesson for a group of 10 year olds. What life lessons do kids need to learn? Why, finger painting of course! That’s right, my “teaching” today involved a couple quick games on colors, and then painting. Ahh, this is the life. Other than painting, we are doing other cool things with the kids, like talking to the museum and making “dumplings” (which will be filled with chocolate and such). All in all, not a bad way to spend all your extra hours at school.

One of my least favorite situations to be in here is when people tell me they don’t like America because it is so dangerous. They watch movies and TV shows, and are convinced that all we do is go around and kill people all day. I’m not making this up, I had a student two nights ago tell me that she did not want to go to America because of that. Thanks to that, and rap music and music videos, (and I am not being racist whatsoever, I am just stating the facts) most Chinese people do not like black people. We recently had a teacher arrive from South Africa, and many Chinese staff members expressed concern when they heard the word Africa. Again, I am not condoning this in anyway, just relaying how it is here. We did, for a short period, have a black teacher from London. As far as I know, she never had any trouble with the Chinese people based on her skin color. The Chinese can be very quick to judge, but they are tolerant enough that they would still let a black teacher teach their children. Now, not all of the Chinese people have these beliefs. One student I had today expressed her feelings about the matter quite well. She knows that the movies are just movies, and that there are dangerous places everywhere in the world. To quote her, “Where there are people, there are problems”. She still felt a bit of concern about the places and situations depicted in some movies, but knows that there are as many good places in the US as there are bad. It is interesting to think, though, how much of an impact a movie can have on a person’s future education and career. And it doesn’t help that they don’t get much positive news from the West, just as they don’t really get any bad news about China.

So I’ve said it many times before- most of Hohhot doesn’t speak English. There are still people in the city that have never seen a foreigner before. After 11 months here, I still experience people stopping dead in their tracks and going “Whoa’. But to say that they don’t speak any English would not be true. According to a Chinese friend, there are certain words that all Chinese people know in English. Namely, ‘hello’ and ‘bye bye”. Interestingly enough, the Chinese rarely say the Chinese word for goodbye; maybe they think that “bye bye” is Chinese? Almost everyday we walk down the street and some teenagers shout “Hello!” and run away giggling. Yea, it’s a blast. Usually we respond in Chinese, or ignore them.
The other words all Chinese people know? Weird versions of the ABC song and the Birthday Song, and several swear words. They probably don’t know what they mean, but thanks to us, they use em.

So a few days ago was my birthday (and thanks so much for all of the amazing birthday wishes I received). There was something extra sweet about being so far away but still getting lots of messages. To be honest, other than receiving some random presents (not complaining, I love my kitty socks), it didn’t really seem much like a birthday. I had to work, of course, though my classes were pretty chill.. and when I say chill I mean me throwing a football down a hallway and enjoying watching the kids scramble to get it. The Chinese don’t place a lot of emphasis on birthdays. Whenever you ask a student what they will do for their birthday, they always say, “eat cake”. They don’t get presents or even have parties. That’s right, Mom and Dad, had you brought us up in China you wouldn’t have had to shell out the megabucks for Chuck E Cheese. Though, if you had brought us up in China I most likely wouldn’t exist..I like to think a little celebration once a year is worth it to have me in your life!
Random Chinese birthday facts:
In China, when you are born, you are one year old. Which means all of you out there, clinging to age 49, thanking the stars that you aren’t 50, sorry! In China, you are 50! (It is actually more complicated than that, it goes by the lunar calendar and such; sometimes you are a year older than we think you are and sometimes you aren’t.) This makes things very complicated at school sometimes. The minimum age of students we are supposed to teach is 3. So in come these babies that don’t even understand the minutest amount of Chinese, and the sales staff says “They are almost 3!”. Nope, not at all. That baby is one and a half.
The Chinese sing the Birthday Song differently. Despite the fact that about 85% of Hohhot does not speak English, I have yet to come across someone that does not know the Birthday Song in English*. However, they song;
“Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you”.


*-See post: English Words Every Chinese Person Knows

Lesson Plan for the Teens
This is a lesson plan on materials (plastic, metal, etc) for a class of 12-14 year olds. These lessons are 2 hours long. Pretty much everyone hates teaching them, because they are so long. However, it kind of works out because since the students will do activities for a longer period of time than the little kids will. With the babies, you can only play a game for 5 minutes, and then they lose focus.
1. Check attendance and homework (noticing a pattern yet?)
2. Introduce vocabulary- gather students around the computer and bring up pictures of the words, students write the Chinese translation in their book. The teenagers don’t really care about flashcards, and I like to make sure they get the correct translation (I don’t have a Chinese teacher in the classroom with me). This sometimes takes 20 minutes, because something we see online invariably sidetracks us.
3. Give the students a sentence structure, and have them plug their own words in- A ___ is made of ___.
4. Scavenger hunt- students go around the school and find different materials, write the down then share with the class.
5. Invention- students have to create something new using the materials listed in the book (just draw a picture and describe it, I wish we had the resources to attempt to make things).
6. Complete a page (or 2) of bookwork.
7. Paper airplane tournament- students make a paper airplane. They say a sentence or answer a question, and get to try to throw their airplane into the trash can. If the get it in, the go to the next round, where the throwing line is farther back, and so on.
8. Listening (out of book).
9. Discussion- Quality of materials, where you should buy certain things, etc.
10. Worksheet on a grammar structure
11. Football throwing game- kids throw ball back and forth to each other, first to drop is out and answers questions.
12. Review sheet (like the ones the kids do, but I don’t comment on their behavior unless they are really bad.)