Survived another first week

So, the first week of teaching is now behind me. I really wish I had started blogging earlier because so many things have happened that I'd love to remember years done the road. I'll try to do some backtracking as I go along. The first week of teaching actually went pretty well, even though I felt like I was flying by the seat of my pants. We actually started class last Friday, August 29. The kids take nine different classes during a week, of which we teach six. On Friday, we were supposed to run through all the blocks, but for a half-hour each, to give the kids a sense of what their classes were like and who their teachers were. Unfortunately, there was a problem with the computer system, so when I got to school on Friday morning at 6:30 AM, they still didn't have a schedule of which classes we would be teaching where. The admin team (who had been working all night except for a two-hour break from 2-4) told me to come back in a half hour. I was starting to panic because I was afraid I wouldn't be able to find my classrooms in this gigantic school. I was hoping to scope it out before the school day began. Soon afterwards, the admin team realized that the student schedules couldn't possibly come together on time, so they decided to scrap the half-hour blocks and create a day of activities in the homerooms. So instead of doing a bunch of short math activities, I had to lead a grade 11 class through a bunch of get-to-know-you activities. We also took a walk down to the beach and played some PE games in the field (which you can imagine would be pretty difficult to coordinate with 500 kids on a field). All the teachers had to dress up semi-formally for the morning flag ceremony, so we were pretty sweaty and our feet were all sore from our nice shoes after the unexpected activities. Thankfully the kids were very well organized and knew where to go, so we could just follow them. The day was a success in spite of all the last minute changes.
On Monday, we had the first real day of school. We found out that our blocks and classrooms were rearranged and I ended up with one of the best situations imaginable. I'm teaching in a large, bright, new classroom equipped with all the latest projectors and sound systems (but not an overhead projector! What am I going to do? I just have a whiteboard and no whiteboard markers that work). My three prep blocks are all in a row, so I can get a lot of work done during the day if I choose to be productive. The school days are long here, especially Monday. The kids have class from 7:40 AM to 4:40 PM on Mondays and 7:40 AM to 3:40 PM Tuesday to Friday. Thankfully, the way my preps worked out, I teach 8:40 - 3:40 Monday, 9:55 - 3:40 Tuesday, 7:40 - 8:30 and 12:50 - 3:40 on Wednesday, 7:40 - 10:50 and 2:40 - 3:40 on Thursday, and 7:40 - 1:40 on Friday. Many of the other new teachers have to switch classrooms a couple times during a day or go to separate buildings for their offices, but my classroom is all mine and it's just two doors down from my office. I love the students already. This year, the school decided to segregate the genders in grade 10, so I have two blocks of Math 10 girls, two blocks of Math 10 boys, and two blocks of Math 11. So far I really love only having to prepare two subjects and having so many other math teachers to bounce ideas off of. Our classes are still changing a lot because the admin team is still trying to iron out problems with the students' schedules. Next week I'll make a strong effort to learn everyone's names. Each kid picks an English name and they definitely get creative picking names. I have girls named Cinderella, Memory, Funny, Cissy, and Tree, and boys named East, Wish, Rabbit, and Lucifer.
Last night, two of my close friends, Angali and Anita, and I caught the school bus to Kaifaqu to do some shopping. (It's crazy how quickly we all met and became friends here. It seems like this shared China experience drew us all together. I guess it also helps that we all work and live next door to one another. Relationships are developing all over the place). Anyways, we managed to pick up plane tickets for our end-of-September trip to Beijing. We have a week off for the national holiday, so we're going to explore China :) I can't wait to do some traveling! We also discovered an incredible store called the Haute bakery, which has amazing black forest cake. We went out for dinner at a pretty good Indian restaurant and then had a get-to-know-the-staff party at the Silk Road Bar. All in all, it was a great Friday night.
This morning I cleaned my place (which got incredibly dusty after one week - I'm definitely hiring a maid soon) and did my laundry (which is quite the task, involving dragging my heavy washing machine into my bathroom so I can hook it up to the sink, plug it in, and put the drain tube in the drainage hole in my bathroom floor). Right now I'm supposed to be planning lessons for next week, so I'd better get back to work!