silencio

I just had a bad teaching day. Everything seems a bit hit and miss at the moment and I'm trying to put together lesson plans amidst a lot of confusion and uncertainty. I'm supposed to put together a 16 week syllabus for 9-11 year olds (I actually don't know how old they are because here in China you are 1 year old when you're born - ie your first birthday you turn 2) but I have a book that could probably last 8-10 lessons and yet I'm told it has to last 32 lessons - ie 1 year, because parents don't want to pay for the price of costly English books. This means I'm to put together a 16 week course, when I already don't have enough material in the book, but extend it out to 32 weeks... And of course I haven't mentioned the fact that I've never taught children before.

I also started another new group of adults tonight and they conjured up the Silence of the Lambs effect that I mentioned somewhere else on this blog. The material we are trying to teach them is too complex, but again - that's out of my hands because this is the book they've purchased.

So enough about teaching complaints. The weather here has changed dramatically. Within one or two days the temperature has dropped at least 10 degrees. Last week we were living in air conditioning at home, in cabs and at work and sweating lots with the high humidity. Then it started raining and has continued to rain for the last three or four days, and now it only feels no more than about 18-20 degrees - cool, and not humid at all. The locals say these changes in temperatures from one day to the next are a regular feature of Suzhou. Perhaps it's a bit like Melbourne? I actually think that 2 weeks ago we were experiencing weather hotter and more humid than you would in Brisbane - maybe on par with subtropical places like Bangkok. Now everyone's already getting ready for winter when it usually snows.