Category

teaching

• Shanghai, huzhou, less food-related, students, teaching

  Revival

  08.09.10 | Permalink | 5 Comments

  Daytime soaps deliberately leave the greatest cliffhangers for Friday so that the viewer must suffer through the weekend wondering just who is the father of Theresa’s baby or if Louis will ever find out that poor Sheridan is locked in Beth’s basement and that the baby Beth is ‘pregnant’ with is, in fact, a sack [...]

  • 

• Balloons, huzhou, less food-related, students, teaching

  Latex Bribery

  06.01.10 | Permalink | 4 Comments

  Teaching, I imagine, has quite a few similarities to parenting. Parents see their kids at home acting out, letting manners slip, saying and doing things they would never do around others. Then when they’re out in the world, they’re prefect angels and parents are like, “What? My kid?”
  Last week I had the bittersweet pleasure of [...]

  • 

• From the Mouths of Babes, amuse bouche, huzhou, less food-related, students, teaching

  On Lady Gaga and Enlightenment

  05.20.10 | Permalink | 3 Comments

  Since my brain has been bled pretty dry in terms of lesson plan ideas, I had my kids make dialogues in class today. Little did I know it was time for the teacher to become the student. In three separate dialogues, the kids exclaimed, “Oh my Lady Gaga!” This is new, red hot catch phrase [...]

  • 

• Christmas, holidays, less food-related, students, teaching

  ******mas

  12.30.09 | Permalink | 2 Comments

  Chinese people like to compare Christmas to Spring Festival, the Lunar New Year, the Chinese Holiday of holidays. Over Spring Festival, big cities are abandoned as people go home to see their families. Even in Beijing, which is renowned for its abysmal traffic, the streets are empty. All over the country businesses close, train [...]

  • 

• home cooking, huzhou, students, teaching, unruly chefs

  Skippy Gourmet

  09.27.09 | Permalink | 5 Comments

  “You know,” my dad used to tell me whenever I complained about how much work I had for school. “Teachers do a lot more work than the students.”
  Each time I would roll my eyes and scoff. Please. All teachers do is give you work to make your childhood as miserable as possible. Duh.
  I thought [...]

  • 

• From the Mouths of Babes, huzhou, less food-related, students, teaching, tidbits

  I Don’t Know What That Is, Reege

  09.09.09 | Permalink | 2 Comments

  One of my favorite students just sent me the following text:
  “Hi,Ellis.can I ask you a question?how to analyse the reason on the fluctuation of the variable home mortgage rate”
  I was a film major specifically to avoid encountering questions like this.
  Thank God for Google.

  • 

• less food-related, musings, students, teaching

  In This Weekend’s New York Times Magazine

  06.18.09 | Permalink | 5 Comments

  Questions for ellis friedman

  New York Times: You have now lived in China for nearly eight months, and your first school year as a college English teacher has just ended. I was wondering if you might share some insights about your life in China so far.

  ellis friedman: That’s why I’m imagining this interview with you.

  NYT: Right [...]

  • 

• huzhou, less food-related, students, teaching

  A Huzhou Home Companion

  06.14.09 | Permalink | 2 Comments

  Every night, the speakers around school blast a strange, vaguely Celtic jingle, which means it’s 5:15 and time for the school’s radio broadcast. When I told Jennifer about it a few months ago she said, “You mean you have to listen? What if you don’t want to?” But when you come to China as a [...]

  • 

• KFC, Parks, animals, huzhou, less food-related, students, teaching

  A Serious Expression in the Middle of July

  04.13.09 | Permalink | 4 Comments

  “Hey, a preschool is asking for some foreign teachers to give classes…and they want to invite foreigners from our school. Do you have any interest in this job offer?”
  Silly me, I thought Hebe wrote that message in English. It wasn’t until I declined her offer that I realized it was actually in Chinese. Translation: “Hey, [...]

  • 

• amuse bouche, headaches, less food-related, musings, teaching

  So who lives in Central and South America…?

  04.12.09 | Permalink | 1 Comment

  Jennifer pointed out this infuriating little gem occupying the bottom corner of the front page of a newspaper distributed to students all over China to help them with their English.

  “There are mainly three kinds of races in the world—white, yellow, and black. The white people live all over the world—in Europe, America, and East [...]

  • 

Plate of Wander

Tag Cloud