Yesterday I had what can only be described as a terrible terrible day. Last week whilst playing basketball I agreed to visit a school in Tian Yu Village. I thought sure no problems, they are middle school students and should be able to communicate with me with some success.

During the week Qiu came to visit me with a tasking of what my lesson topic was to be about. And let's just say I was less than impressed. I was to tell the students why learning English is so important. Now I'm living in a country where the only thing that means anything is exams - which is precisely the last reason I think learning English is important and to top it off, the week has been plagued with Trev and I pulling our hair out with the number of cheating cases in the school and the latest idea from the headmaster to combat this is that all teachers need to submit a code of conduct essay.

The teachers themselves are cheating by pulling various previous essays from the internet and putting their names on the top. What hope is there!!!

Back to preparing for the lesson. I was tossing around ideas on how best to get my point across, while trying to be funny or at least interesting and the fact these kids get an opportunity to go abroad I was thinking a lesson using a map, or different music, pen pals something a long these lines. Then the next bombshell comes, the class will be 100 students. What the?????? There goes any plans of group work - as how do you fit 100 students in one classroom, the answer like sardines in a can.

So I go back to square one, at this stage I was becoming very sinnical and decided to just briefly touch on the importance of English and try to show ways to make learning English fun and tips for remembering vocab. I had some ideas in my head, all tried and true with previous lessons, I had a catchy song, a powerpoint, visual aides, at this stage I'm feeling confident and thinking how hard can this be.

Qing Zhong, our school had sent along two teachers with me, both I assumed were English teachers and were there to help translate for me. This does not mean much as their level of English was crap. An example of the crapness and pardon the pun
Jo: "When will the lesson begin?"
Teacher: "The toilet is there"

So by now you can tell my day was not off to the best start. They had also crammed 3 classes into the room about 130 students, and any Tom, Dick and Harry who was passing by just popped their head in.

The kids seemed to enjoy the lesson, and had a better grasp of English then any of my supposed translators but lets just say the lesson was a complete failure in my eyes - and did not even touch on any of the supposed outcomes. It was a case of fight for survival and hope I come out alive.

I had been played the fool again. They had successfully trapped the laowai!!!