It was my birthday this week. Like last year, I had class on the day itself, although this time I was not listening to Senior 1 students’ exams, telling me about their favourite things or what they would do with £1 million. This year, I gave my class a quiz. I did something similar at …
Category: Beijing
Harder than it looks
I bought a ticket for the cinema yesterday. That’s not overly surprising, since I watch films a lot. But I bought it online and collected it from the ticket machine, which was only in Chinese. It took me a couple of tries, hitting the back and delete buttons, before I finally got it. Avengers: Infinity …
Winter Travels (Tokyo to Beijing)
Departure day was largely uneventful. My flight was at 14:20, on Friday, the day of Chinese New Year. So, I thought perhaps the plane would be quiet. It wasn’t, but it wasn’t as busy as it was when I left, and the airport in Beijing was very quiet. Still, on checking out I did, basically, …
Winter Travels (Beijing to Tokyo)
Before the end of the holidays, I had one more trip left. Over ten years ago, I’d visited Japan and spent two weeks travelling to various places on the main island of Honshu. This time it was going to be a much shorter trip (similar to my weekend hop over to Seoul last year). I’d …
Christmas all the way
The Christmas season is upon us! I taught my last class of the week on Friday, and whilst it didn't have a Christmas theme per se, we did do a couple of Christmas-related activities (including two Santa drawings I did in class - see below). Students also wished me a Merry Christmas. The lesson was …
Asking the right questions
On Saturday, I had to judge a speaking competition. It was paid (albeit pretty poorly), but as with many things here, I did not get much information in advance, until the night before. The 23rd China Daily "21st Century Coca-Cola Cup" National English Speaking Competition, Regional Final - Beijing, was held at my university. 31 …
When it works, it works well…
This week has been a good week for classes. I have been doing job interviews/job fairs with the students and they all took to it really well. Even my small classes did it reasonably well. Last Friday afternoon I had to tell my afternoon students off for using their phones in class, but this week …
