Day Six - So Hot!

Today started in the normal fashion of waking up ridiculously early.  I normally wake up at 3 am, 5am and then get out of bed between 6-6.30am.  I bet my body clock will be sorted just as we go to leave.

We head to the classroom with an addition of Steve - an English Language Tutor from NMIT. Great guy!  We spent the first hour in class going over the contents of the research proposal in detail.  I am so impressed at how fast my groups are picking up and running with this subject.  The second hour the four groups I have met in one classroom them broke into their own groups to have team meetings and talk through what needed to be done and by whom.  I went around each of my four groups and made sure they were on track and asked them if they had a question for me.  I have one group- the bottom of the streamed class that I hope to drag through!

We decided not to teach in the afternoon as the students need time to actually carry out the work.  We walked out towards the cafeteria and were greeted by a student called Shirley.  Her English language teacher had set homework to talk to Ash and I.  She was very nervous and we had to encourage her to slow down.  We took photos with her and then she insisted to Bluetooth the photo across to Ashleigh's phone so that we had a copy.  We walked down the four flights of stairs to be greeted by another mob of students with the same homework!  We just wrote our names and that we were from NMIT in their books and they were happy as... it was a fast walk / run to get away!

We had lunch... and the best part was I was able to find POTATOS! yusss... but it was soo hot!  About 26 with 90-95% humidity.  This meant it was flippn hot in the lunch hall.  The thing is that this is getting cold for these students; Hangzhou has past summer so this doesn’t feel hot to them. so NO aircon?!

We got back to the apartments and worked on our own school work for a few hours before going for a stroll around the apartment complex. The kids here are sooo beautiful.  Their faces light up when you say hello to them - in English of course.  We saw Chris and went to the bakery with him... we found normal bread and chocolate cake... score!

We heading to See Straights for dinner and had pizza again before doing a wee shop at a busy Wu-Mart.

We managed to run into another westerner on our walk back to the apartment. Turns out the hotel he is staying at has a Kiwi Chef and they are showing all the RUGBY LIVE! So we are planning to head down there to watch both semi-finals on the weekend.  So thrilled about that!

We are heading to Shanghai tomorrow for some serious shopping. I am so excited about it. John has asked that I take a moment before I go shopping crazy! Ha funny!  We are leaving at 6.45am so it’s an early start tomorrow.

Shower time and then sleep.

"Stay Classy New Zealand"

Lucy

HIGHLIGHTS:

Potatoes, bread, chocolate cake and live screening of the RWC on the weekend!

LOWLIGHTS:

INTERESTING:

• The College plays music at random times throughout the day to relax the students so they remain calm.
• Your not allowed a boyfriend / girlfriend until 21
• Traffic drive on the right side of the road so we have nailed the keeping right in the hallways but are still remembering this when we cross the road!
• There are some awesome 'chi-glish' t-shirts over here.  English that has been translated wrong. So awesome!
• I have caught a few students taking sneaking photos of us in class - kind of weird being a 'celebrity'
• Students when they enroll at the college can decide to have an English name.  They name themselves.  Kind of cool but today Tim decided he wanted to be called Jason and they guy that was Jason decided he wanted to now be called king.  Hard to keep up!