Always learning - in and out of class!

I have finished my first week of teaching English in China and it couldn't have gone better. I prepared a detailed lesson plan and the students responded well. They are all so eager to learn and we laughed alot. I started them off with Self-Introduction questions like "What is your name?" and "Where are you from?" I had each student answer the questions. And to my surprise they stood up when answering. So cool! They had a hard time saying the name of their school in English - Jiaxing Foreign Language School - but soon they were doing it without my prompting. We also sang the ABC song as a review. And they got that, too. Yeah and whew! Now onto week two.
On other fronts, I had to go into Shanghai to get more pages put into my passport. That only took about 30 minutes. But since it is a two hour bus ride into Shanghai, I didn't want to turn around and head back to Jiaxing, so I spent the weekend sightseeing. I walked down the shopping street, well, one of the shopping streets. The one with the haute couture stores (because I am so high fashion!) BTW, Shanghai does have haute couture boutiques. The city may be in a communist country, but these folks are fashionistas, baby! Everyone is tailored and put together like Blake Carrington! Anyway, I walked around for a while and made my way to the Bund. This is the old European neighborhood. It's on the banks of the Huangpo river and has gorgeous last-century architecture. On the other side of the river is the new development area called Pudong. This is where the financiers do their number crunching in skyscrapers. And just to make sure you don't miss them, most of the buildings are lit up with neon signs. It's a little gaudy, but very pretty at night. Oooo, bright, shiny things! Oooo.
The entire time I was out and about, I was being stared at like an exotic animal. The people in China are very curious and have no boundaries when it comes to looking closely and sizing it (me) up. Many times I thought some old chinese lady was gonna ask "Doushou qian?"(How much?) and take me home and put me on display. But, alas, it didn't happen. Maybe next time.
But I must qualify this generalisation, the old people walked right up to me and gave me the once over, but the young ones, the twenty- and thirty-somethings, ignored me with a blase attitude that would make the French look twice and then continue to walk away. But, as I think now, this isn't such a Chinese or non-American thing. It happened to me in NYC all the time. Ah, the universals are forever a source of comfort.
Anyway, one thing the young people do like to do with me is practice their english. Everywhere I go, people are always saying "Hello!". Sometimes I stop and chat them up for a while. One time, while I was heading to the Shanghai Museum, a group of four college students wanted to practice their english on me, and we ended up going to a tea house for a traditional tea ceremony. It was really fun and I am glad I was open and trusting. I learned how to drink tea properly - three fingers, three sniffs, and three sips - make as much slurpy noise as possible and don't tip! Hey, those are the rules - I don't make 'em, I just follow 'em.
So things are going well here, but I do miss NYC and my routine. I miss Sam most of all, follwed by my friends, family and my doggies! God, I loved that job! Dog walking was perfect for me! But alas, dogs in China usually have a different role in society than they do in the US. I let you come to your own conclusions on that.
Hope you are all well. Miss ya.