It has been, and continues to be, a busy week. This is the view that I was looking at on Saturday morning:
Yup, it's been a while since we've had a 2 day weekend. This is one of my classes sitting in an auditorium getting ready for a 40 minute demonstration lesson on Saturday. I had to present a lesson on Functions & Equations to an audience of teachers, professors, and experts. Over 100 people easily. It's not even a topic I necessarily teach, but it is from a Chinese textbook and what they do is have 4 different teachers (from all over China) present a lesson over the same material and then they critique them. Sometimes they have competitions and award places, and sometimes just talk about them. Thank God it wasn't one where they give awards cause that really bothers me... But each subject area does one and I got chosen to give one for math for our school. The other 3 lessons were all in Chinese and I understood nothing. I can say, however, that judging from my powerpoints my presentation was the flashiest! Some of the discussion afterwards was translated for me and they had a lot of positives to say. The Western style of teaching is definitely different than theirs! One expert did comment that he didn't think they should have competitions, but instead just share ideas...
Afterwards all the teachers involved decided to celebrate and go to Hooters. Yes, there is a Hooters in Xián! I have never been to a Hooters anywhere, so it was a first for me! It was nice because the food was really good and tasted just like home. It was definitely expensive. I can't compare the outfits they wear here because I haven't seen them in the US, but I would say they probably save a lot on clothing costs. Two things stood out to me though - first, they added in a 10 % gratuity. That's the first time I've seen a tip in China. And I have to say those women really hustled. And secondly, the bathroom was the cleanest I've seen here. China is not known for clean or nice smelling bathrooms. I could've slept on the floor of theirs.
So then I woke up Sunday not feeling up to par (I had been waking up most mornings last week with a slight sore throat) and have been under the weather since (but still making it to school!). Sky has hooked me up with some Chinese medicine and I don't know if it has helped but it hasn't hurt! I'm kind of mad because a bunch of us were planning to go to Hua Shan to climb a mountain this weekend but if I'm not feeling better I'm not sure if I'll go. Also this week, a representative from the main office in Nanking is visiting and doing observations and grading our work. I get observed tomorrow morning. It adds a lot of stress because they put a lot of emphasis on these observations as they don't get out here very often... Almost everyone in our office has come down with this bug in the last couple weeks.
Well, next time I'll either have some nice pictures to share of Hua Shan or I'll brag about how clean the air is here. This is a pic of the certificate I earned this weekend:
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