Is This Real Life?

I'm sitting in Starbucks in Haimen China. Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer is playing in the background (It's March). I just signed 'autographs' for 50 Chinese children. This feels like some kind of bizarre dream.

 

I had my first classes this week. I have 18 classes each week that last for 40 minutes. Each class has about 50 students aged 13-16, all at varying levels of English. I have each class once per week. For those of you who are bad at math, that means that I have around 900 students.

 

Class has been very entertaining so far. For my first week of classes, I introduced myself, asked the kids to introduce themselves, and then let the kids ask me questions.

 

A typical introduction was:

 

"Hello. My name is Xia Lu Ren. My English Name is Benny. I am 14 years old. I like playing computer games best. I am very happy to meet you."

 

"Hello. Thank you for coming to China. My English name is Evian. I like purple best. I like Justin Bieber. I hope we can be good friends."

 

Favorite so far. "Hello. My English name is Bruce Lee. I am fat because I like to eat food but I don't like running."

 

You can totally tell who the trouble-makers are, because whenever they stand up to speak, the whole class laughs… In general though, the kids are pretty shy and speak very quietly. For a lot of my students, this is the first interaction that they have ever had with a foreigner, so the kids had lots of questions for me too.

 

Just about all of them wanted to know if I had a boyfriend, if I like KFC, if I like Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga, and if "all Americans are as beautiful as I am." (Loved that one… Thanks for the ego boost kids!)

 

I have a feeling my classes are going to be very amusing.

(The pictures are of my time table of classes, the school buildings, and one of my classes.)