A Day in the Life of English Teachers in China- by Current Teacher in China Robin

It has been a long time!!!! I swore I would not be the person who started a blog and then quit after a month, so consider this my attempt to make up for my previous neglect.

I had a few other blogs saved but they were lost when my computer was Chinafied, but also, life here has settled into a routine so I feel like suddenly we have become less interesting :)

An average day for us consists of a quick breakfast and then a scooter ride to East campus, where we have Chinese class with the other foreign teachers and exchange students, if one of us doesn't have to teach in the morning. We are either in Chinese class, or teaching English, until 11:40. Then we have two hours for a lunch break. Usually we fill this time with our p90x workout. Our friends Van and Luan have been working out with us, which keeps me from just blowing it off everyday. We have been using Jeff's living room as a gym for some of the workouts, but for the ones where we have to do an absurd number of pullups, we go outside to the playground thing in front of our building and workout there. As if being American in China isn't enough, imagine doing a plyometric workout in the middle of campus. We literally get groups of students that walk up right next to us, and then just stand there and watch for a little while. One of Van's students told him the next day that she saw him dancing with some other Americans in the park...sure, call it dancing. Anyways, Jeff wrote about all of this already so I shall move on.

After our workout, I have to run off to class at 2. I only have to teach 2 classes a day, Monday through Thursday, so I get a three day weekend every week, much to Jeff's chagrin. Jeff teaches 3 classes on Mondays and Fridays, but the middle of his week is much easier. He teaches 2 classes on Tuesday, 1 on Wednesday and none on Thursday. I think we are getting too comfortable when we complain about having to work 6 hours a day on the busy days.

We are working on adding some extra hours to our schedule through outside tutoring. I work three days a week at a Korean school in Huang Hai, the Korean village just 15 minutes walking distance from our apartment building. I also teach another group of students at another school once a week. These outside jobs pay better than our jobs at the Institute per hour, so we are trying to live off of just tutoring money so we can save our salaries. While teaching the college students has gotten a lot better, getting to teach kids who actually understand English and who have personalities reminds me that I do still like teaching. About three weeks ago, our tutoring hours doubled so we have much busier weekends. Jeff teaches kindergarden downtown, so go ahead and picture him standing there teaching the letter "E." "Eddie the Elephant has an eggcup..." (Of all the English words, these people want the kids to know what an eggcup is....)

After we get finished teaching, usually around 4 or 5:40, depending on the day, we walk down "Eat Street" to one of our favorite restaurants and get dinner. For about $6, we can get three giant dishes that not only feed us for the night, but serve as the next day's reheated lunch. We usually get kung pao chicken, some kind of fried eggplant dish which tastes AMAZING, and a spicy shredded potato dish. Having friends who speak Chinese has done wonders for our diets :)
After dinner, we come back home and take it easy for the rest of the night. Sometimes that means Jeff sits down for four hours in front of the TV to watch Season 8 of 24 (so I get a lot of time to myself...), or we grade some papers and maybe study some Chinese. Our current favorite pastime however, is descending the 12 stairs to Van and Luan's apartment to spend the evening eating fruit and getting riled up over a game of the Settlers of Catan. The beginning of the game usually starts out pretty friendly and casual, but once we get into it and people start collecting 7 points (you need 10 to win), that is when the yelling begins. Regardless of who wins, we always leave as friends...most of the time.

So there you have it. An average day in the life of Jeff and Robin in China. Sometimes we mix it up and pay badminton (MY NEW FAVORITE SPORT!!!!!! It's just like volleyball, except that the net is lower and I have one really long right arm!) Our friends Eric, Katie and Joni all love to play too, so I think we will be half moving into the gym in the winter. And there are the occasional spa days of course, but overall, life has settled down for us. We were talking over our barbequed squid last night about how happy we both are in China. When we first got here, I wanted the time to hurry up and pass because 10 months seemed so long and I wanted to get some of it behind us. But now it is already the end of November and I know that we will be on a plane headed west before we know it. So, here we are, trying to soak it in and enjoy the adventures as they come.

Well, I had better be going. I have to teach this morning in Huang Hai, and so does Jeff. Maybe we will stop at the Korean bakery and get some lattes on the way back! The ladies are planning to go downtown to do some shopping this afternoon(knock off Ugg boots here I come!) and then we are all meeting up at Mama's, the American restaurant, for a nice long dinner of fajitas! So life is good here in Yantai.

Robin
Teacher
China

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