Chinese National Teacher's Day

Today was our first day of classes and conviently also Chinese National Teacher's Day!

We got presented with more flowers after a hot and grueling set of speeches by each grade level. Then we got presented with more flowers for posing in front of one of their awesome gigantic murals. Then we had to teach.

My classes were pretty fun. The 5th graders are significantly rowdier than the 6th graders, but both classes worked pretty well for me (They got very excited and into it when i helped them choose their team (class) names- so far we have the lazerbots and the Super Cowboys but more on that later.)

Kitty didn't have as good of a time and got pretty frustrated, but i think things will get easier for her in time.



The chinese are big into banquets, and it is a pretty crazy system with so many zillions of rules that books are written about how to properly sit, eat and perform at them. We have had 4 banquets in 4 days.

The most favorite activity at these banquets is, of course, trying to get everyone way drunk. Here is a sample of a toast that had gone on for at least 15 minutes prior to this. My favorite is the cute guy in the blue shirt in the background, who, though was not drinking himself, decided to take on the role of "drink commander" and kept fueling the drunken fire. Keep in mind everyone here is grade school math, science, and english teachers who have class in the morning, or heads of the entire school board.