I survived the first weekend.

So yeah, wow. This weekend the new term started. After too little sleep Friday night, because after sitting at the resturant near Jusco with some new foriegn friends from another school, I went out to Sands with Joe, Kiki, Mandy and lots of other chinese friends. I had a really low key evening with only 2 glasses of beer and lots of listening to the conversations around me. Yes, even the Chinese ones. I'm really excited now that I can understand a few things. I'm really focusing on learning the language as quickly as possible. It's not as hard as I originally imagined. But anyways... teaching... ugh...

So Saturday morning was a little rough... even tho the classes were simply giving the children english names and passing out their books for class, I wasn't doing to well. The assistant they assigned me was brand new, and that didn't help matters either. But after many (many) hugs from Sue during the day, I was able to survive.

It's a nice group of us working out in the branch that is far away from the school's HQ. About a 20 minute bus ride, so it's not too terrible. The crew is me, James, Daniel, and Sue. The TAs are nice and I even helped one of them get a job. Good ol' Champion :) He's an amazing guy. He's 20 years old, goes to university about 1 hour from the city, works on the weekend at the Sands bar until about 2am and then will start working for TPR in the afternoons. I'm sure he has no free time. And he LOVES to study english. It really shows, because he's always asking questions and sometimes I think his grammar is better than most of us "natives"

Anyways, so that night, I was supposed to have a nice quite night in, cleaning and loving on my poor neglected Marmao, but alas, the sway of popularity washed over me again and I found myself consoling Joe about Kiki. It was nice tho, I really really love the beach here at night. And from were I was sitting, you could see the lights of Hong Kong and a beautiful moon. So Joe and I just sat on the sand talking and then after he left I didn't feel like going home so I sat with John, Macro and DJ Johnny for a bit. It dawned on me that I hadn't eaten and it was nearly 3 in the morning, so John and Macro and I hit 888 street for some delicious BBQ. I went home entirely too late, but had a really enjoyable evening just talking and getting to know people better.

Sunday at school, despite lack of sleep, was actually really really really good. The children didn't cry, my TA Milly had her stuff together a little bit more, and the new set of CY classes were a high enough level that I could talk to this in a mostly normal way of speaking. Best part about Sunday was we got a car ride back to Wan Zai Sha because Daniel had to teach adults in Jida so we crammed into the TPR car and to destress from the day started telling jokes. It was particularly funny if you knew Sue, she's that kinda person that is so sweet and gentle and kind and smiling, but yet there's much more beneath the surface. And we're laughing and having a great time when the dead baby jokes show up :) Good times. (if you don't know, google it)

Well that about sums up my weekend. More interesting things to come later :)