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, …
Category: Beijing
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 …
It’s a bit early…
Today I met an ex-colleague, a Chinese English teacher from RDFZ. We went for lunch together, during which she gave me a couple of her students' work to look at (I used to teach her class). It was a pleasant meal, and conversation flowed, but I was a little tired afterwards, as I had not …
Love letters and similar things
This is a quick post about various things that I've seen or have happened recently.... I caught one student writing a love letter to another student in class last week. It wasn’t part of the activity we were doing, and he was initially reticent about telling me who is was for, but eventually he confessed. …
