It’s been a pretty boring week! As I “reflect” on the week, Beijing life is becoming routine. Judy’s classes are steady. She has the usual frustrations associated with teaching the IB curriculum for middle school. She’s developing all new lesson plans that have to meet a very strict criteria. Frotunately, the upper graders behave well and work hard. The lower graders are a different story. Combine their language difficulties with strong wills and bedlam exists. She’ll solve it, but it’s not solved yet.
My classes are fun! They began to get more relaxed this week. Some of the students are language challenged, and I’m not getting through to them as clearly as I wish I could. I decided to start each class day with some rhythm counting. It gets them focused quickly, especially when we began counting individually down the line. Some mistakes led to lighter moments, and we were able to have fun with it.
Working on some rhythms
I began to meet with a few of the students about the “clubs” I’m sponsoring. I’ve been asked to help with an instrumental music club, and also a guitar club. The students are responsible for determining their goals for the club for the year. We’re trying to determine when the clubs will meet. We have a “Club Fair” Monday afternoon where students promote the club to other students. The 10th graders are our “targets”, since they haven’t been at the school before.
Now that Judy and I both have our official “Z” Visa (work permit), good for multiple entries for a year, we had to register at the police station, again. Each time we leave China and return, we have to visit the police station and update our residency. The law states that it must be done within 24 hours, but there is some leniency. Since we’re visiting Korea next weekend, we’ll have to visit the police station again on our return. We have to have our passports, a copy of our apartment lease, a copy of our landlord’s ID, and a tax statement from BISS showing they paid the rent and tax on the apartment with all the official stamps. It gets complicated finding a time when the police station is open, Judy & I are both available, and our agent Lisa is available to accompany us to translate if an issue occurs.
Last weekend, the BISS Head of School was telling us about their TIC (this is China) moment. Their hot water stopped, and he assumed there was a problem with the meter, or payment, or something. When he was able to ask the apartment management about the problem, he was told there was work being done on the “hot water” that affected all the apartments in their complex. When he asked when it would be working again, he was told “it may be only a month, but it could be longer”? How fun!!!!
Judy had a little added excitement on her trip home Friday evening. When she handed the taxi driver a 100y bill for a 28y fare, he became very agitated. He insisted she go to one of the stores just outside our complex and get change. She finally found one of the stores that would do it, and she returned to the taxi and paid her fare. We thought he just didn’t want to “change” the 100y bill, or didn’t have change himself. Read tomorrow’s blog entry for an update on what was probably happening (oh boy, a cliff-hanger)!