Winding Down

This week the students have been taking finals. I'm not really sure how fair the testing process is though. As teachers we were told to make a 25 question test for each of the grades we teach. We divide the number of questions we need to write by how many teachers teach the same grade. However, we all teach from different books. So now, the students are being tested on material that they weren't necessarily taught. Does that make sense? NO!! We are trying to change some things around here so that each grade will be taught from the same books. There is a constant flow of teachers in and out of the school so it's hard to keep some things in place. New people come in with their own ideas and change things around. Also, sometimes it feels like what the native English teachers want is really not taken into account and that we are here so that on some transcript somewhere students can write that they learned English from native English speakers. I hope teaching doesn't always seem so futile.

A couple things from the past week or so:

Last Thursday was Alexis' birthday. We all went out for hotpot and then some drinks afterward. Lots of fun. We let a boy do all the food ordering and we ended up with a ridiculous amount of food. We had three carts of meat and three carts of vegetables, all for 9 people.
Yesterday we had a teacher lunch to say farewell to the teachers that are not returning next year (the new year here starts in March). We went to a really nice Chinese restaurant. Instead of ordering they just bring a ton of food out. We all sit at a giant circle table and the food goes in the middle and is just rotated around the table. I love that everyone everywhere in China just shares food. Since eating off other people's plates is one of my favorite things, I fit in well. I tried almost everything, although there were some things that just looked gross. The most interesting thing I tried was sea cucumber. It's really expensive here and is supposed to be very good for your health. It looks like a black, spikey slug, covered in goo. I wasn't so sure about it, but had to try. It tastes like cartilage. Not something I would ever order, and I didn't finish it, but significantly less gross than I had thought going in.

The lunch concluded at karaoke. I'm becoming a regular. It's not pretty.