Today started off just like the past couple of days, I went to school early and needed to get into my classroom but our building appeared to be locked. Luckily one of my fellow teachers informed me yesterday that it only "appears" to be locked...if you pull on the lock, it is not actually locked and you can just slide the doors right open (super secure..I hope my apartment door locks better than that)! My students had to make posters during class today and present them; these kids LOVE presenting things (and their presentations are usually hilarious; by the end of them my face hurt from smiling/ laughing). The kids are also however OBSESSED with grades. Now, most students are but I think these kids are a little more obsessed than students in Ontario. It is drilled into the minds of these kids at such a young age that marks are the only thing that matters (this is why cheating is also such a huge problem here). They seemed confused today when I gave them a quiz and tried to explain that cheating is pointless because it is not in fact worth anything (that it is only to gauge whether or not they have actually learned what I wanted them to). I think that despite my explanation some of them still did cheat (..only a little).
I went to the office during the half hour break today because I need to grab something and lucky I did because another teacher informed me that we were going at 1:50 to get our Residency Permits (we need them within 30 days of arriving or else we are here illegally...we don't want that) and that we may not be back in time for our classes later that day. Apparently we had been texted about this; I always forget that I have a phone here! I guess they just cancel classes for anything around here. At 1:50 we met at the front of campus, we didn't leave until at least 20 minute after though (I still don't know why, that is one thing I have gotten a little more used to since being here; having absolutely NO idea what is going on around me). Off we went to the police station or something of the sort to tell them that we're here and get all of our paperwork sorted out. We went with an assistant (I think.??) and the CTC Liaison...so you would think that between the two of them they'd speak enough English for us to have a clue what was going on, but no (in fact our principal asked, "Ben could you please turn up the air?" Ben looks back at him confused, he points at the air conditioning, Ben looks at other guy confused, other guy shrugs, Principal again says "air conditioning" they both look back and laugh (it was actually kind of funny, but not very useful translators for us!). We were all shuffled around from place to place within this building asking questions all the while and having none of them being answered. The only time they actually answered when I asked what they were saying was when I needed to give them money (of course)! I think I should get a bunch of passport photos taken here before I leave though bc I had to (I am still unsure why...) get 6 photos today and it goes 20 RMB, which is less than 4 dollars; for me to get 4 photos at Shoppers it cost me nearly $30! In the end they took our passports and all of our paperwork and said that we could have our passports back on the 26th; so hopefully it all goes through soon!
There has been a lot of talk going on about this island dispute between China and Japan. There have been protests all over China including some in our city. No one still has any clue what is going to come of the whole thing but the Chinese are nothing if not patriotic. We were following a person driving a Honda yesterday and one of the guys commented that that wasn't a smart car of choice right now (leave it to me to not know that Hondas are made in Japan) and this person (I guess to make up for the fact they were driving a Japanese car) was hanging out the window (yes as he drove) with a Chinese flag. A fellow teacher of mine has been doing journalling with her ESL students and she has been receiving some interesting journals relating the island dispute. It is interesting to be here during something like this but I sure hope it all blows over soon!
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