Life at Summer Institute --Nina

I'm very very sorry that I have not updated this in over a week! My excuses are that our internet is very spotty, and that I am more busy than I have ever been in my life (not an exaggeration). I still don't have time to write a long post with a lot pictures, but I promise to over the weekend. For now, I will tide you over with a schedule of what our days are like, so that you have sympathy. I also included some work and a picture by Leo, since he has decided to be the teacher's pet and is adorable.


 6:30am Wake up, check that there isn't a cockroach on my toothbrush 
 7:15am Walk 20 minutes to the dining hall, eat buns and a hard-boiled egg for breakfast 
 8:00am Arrive in my classroom and finish setting up for class 
 8:30am Attend Chinese class while another teaching-in-training teaches my class for 1st period 
 9:10 Teach my 5th grade English class! (Highlight of the day!) 
 10:10 Attend Foundations of Pedagogy Class (imagine a lot of powerpoint presentations, group discussions, and poster making about how to be a great teacher) 
 11:40-12:40 Walk 20 minutes to and 20 minutes back from the cafeteria, eating lunch for twenty minutes. (Lunch consists of a bowl of rice with very oily vegetables and mystery meat products. Then it's the exact same thing for dinner, and lunch the next day, and dinner the next day, etc.) 
 12:40 Chinese class again 
 1:20 English as a Foreign Language Class, where we learn about how to teach grammer, phonetics, making an English immersion classroom, etc 
 3-5: Leadership workshops (group discussions, power points, role-playing, team bonding activities, and poster making) 
 5-7: Clean up my classroom from earlier this morning, get everything organized, make a worksheet for the next day, gather poster making materials, go to the print shop to print worksheets, etc 
 7-8: Dinner (Usually off-campus at an adorable noodle shop whose owner tells us what to eat every night. We usually decide to splurge and spend $1.50 for a delicious bowl of noodles or dumplings, rather than eat the dining hall food again.) 
 8-10: Lesson plan for later this week 10-1 Grade worksheets and exit tickets, put grades in my student tracker, make posters and materials for class tomorrow, attempt to go online and catch up on emails, but fail 

We asked our students to write us a note, telling us what they are looking forward to in English class, and any suggestions or concerns that they have. We told them that if they write it in English, they get an extra stamp in their passport (our tracking system-I'll explain in a later post, with pictures). This adorable, overly enthusiastic boy is really into the stamps. So, this is what he wrote, in response to his feelings toward English class.

He's so cute! (I promise there will be more cute student pictures soon.)