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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
I tend to make my job significantly more stressful than it should be, especially since I teach a whopping 12 hours a week. Instead I’m haunted by constant doubt that my class is evenly remotely interesting and that I’m teaching my kids anything at all. There are some days, walking up the steps to the [...]
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 [...]
Welcome to the third and final installment of From the Mouths of Babes, or How I Went to Kashgar and Killed Class Time by Making My Students Write My Blog. Today’s installment comes from Wednesday morning Customs 0702/0704. This class is actually two classes combined together, and one day I walked into class to find [...]