They call me Ms. Chu

i'm teaching a 3-week long oral-intensive english class at Huagong university, where my parents went to school. i applied to it during the school year, and my mom got my family friend, jean, to teach it with me (we're splitting the paycheck).

we were both kinda nervous and not sure how/what to teach them -- the rest of the program's teachers (there are over 30 of them) are like retired elementary school teachers and most of done this program before. they gave us no guidelines and just told us to teach whatever we wanted. neither of us have ever taught before. but it turns out we think our students like us! we hope haha =). we teach them a lot of slang and play games that use english, make them do presentations which they're not used to, and tell them about american culture which they're most curious about. and they're SO CUTE!! we talk about which of our students we would set up with each other and rank them by cuteness outside of class. lol.

we teach a morning class and an afternoon class, 3 hours each, and we just repeat the material. it's so tiring but a really good experience at the same time.


here below was "relationship day". we taught them slang such as "third wheel", "blind date", "to dump", etc etc. Then we played the dating game and gave the winning 'couples' roses. =)














the first friday, one of TAs arranged for the afternoon students to meet at a coffee house. we just ended up all talking for a few hours.

on the bottom right is stephanie, one of the few other younger teachers. she's from texas and applied to the program because she had a chinese professor who recommended it to her. the rest of the teachers are part of TFF, "teaching for friendship foundation", like i said most are 40 or 50. eric is about 26, probably the youngest member of TFF, and is just a young teacher. stephanie and her friend kealy are in grad school. and there's jean and i (jean is in the bottom middle, black tank top). yup... five young'uns.



we treated our students to KTV! that is KARAOKE. chinese ppl LOVE karaoke, and i've been pretty much turning into a fob. i've learned the lyrics to a jay chou song already and a wang fei song... ahhhh i miss my indie music!

we have about 45 students. and OVER 35 of them came!! we rented the largest KTV room and over half of us still had to sit one the floor. you should see the videos i have.. crazy dancing, normally quiet students singing crazy loud. it was a fun night.

the next day we found out 3 of our students were locked out of their dorm (they close at 11pm) and had to sleep in the park.. oops..



the next day we met with our morning students at the same coffee house. we played mafia, or as they call it, "the killer game".


lol... they all take lunchtime naps. and since our classroom is one of the few places on campus with a/c they all come early and sleep. so cute!!