I'm Going to China!!!

So last month I applied for a teaching  placement for the summer - in China - and after a rather stressful interview and a long wait... I GOT IT!!! So just to keep you all up to date of my goings on, and what I'll be doing when I'm over there, (and more importantly how it's going while I'm there!) I've decided to start a blog!

I apologise now, because I've never written a blog and my English is rather terrible, but I'm going to give it my best shot!

Briefly what's happened so far, after the interview and finding out I was successful, I met up with the other two girls I'm going to be travelling with. Luckily for me they are both lovely and full of ideas and I think we shall get along really well! we each had to film a short clip to send to the Chinese kids we will be teaching so they can see who we are and hopefully get excited about the Summer School!

We fly out on the 5th July (87 days from now!!) for an 8 week Summer School, where we will teach music - and of course a little English - to 150 local children aged 8 - 16. TERRIFYING!

Anyway! I had the idea of teaching bucket drumming, which for those who don't know is drumming... on buckets! Well in fact it's buckets, dustbins, whatever we can get hold of, and today my book came with some ideas and resources for me to use... the only problem is, I can't play some of the things its telling me to teach! Going to need a bit of practicing and planning to get it up and running before we go! Hopefully I can combine this with some dancing which Robyn wants to do, and maybe some a cappella choral stuff too from Jaclynne! I'm very excited now - it's so cool!

My 'Teach Yourself Mandarin' Audio CD's came today - and a book which teaches you basic chinese characters... I can now introduce myself and say hello and goodbye, as well as write the characters for 1-10, and more importantly the character for a cup of tea! I must say whoever says English is the most difficult language to learn, they've obviously never tried Chinese Mandarin! The symbols are tricky to draw, let alone remember and there are so many different tones and vocal sounds you have to make! Good Job I like a Challenge really!

So until our next planning meeting, not a lot will be happening - but as soon as something does I'll be sure to update you all!

Over & Out (from England)

Cat xxx