A Day in the Life...

I have gotten several requests for pretty much, my schedule.  Sooooo, here ya go.

A Day of Miche (Meagan Michelle) Lee’s Life in China

Prologue: I’m on a SVU study abroad in China to teach English to little kids.

7:10 Wake up twenty minutes before my alarm, because I still go to bed early after recovering from jetlag, and I decide that I’m not going to breakfast.

7:30 My alarm finally goes off, I take this time to peel myself out of bed and do my morning routine, viz. brush teeth, pee, get dressed, take vitamins (because I haven’t gotten sick yet but I’m paranoid.)

8:00 or 8:30 (only on Tuesdays and Thursdays) go to Kung Fu or Chinese class. (Otherwise, my roommate and I make French Toast with peanut butter.)

10:00 E.L.E. Class---I go into a classroom full of 9 year olds and teach them my choice: either a song or some random word games.

11:00 LUNCH! I love lunch.  Even if all the food looks weird, it usually tastes delicious.  Everyday you have the option of rice and soup, to go as side dishes with the main courses.  Usually there are two dishes of either meat or tofu, and then two dishes of cooked vegetables.  For dessert they either have raw fruit, or some sweet veggie, like yam or pumpkin.

12:00-3:00 Prep time!  Email, decorate your class room, get ready for your lesson, clean your room, watch Big Bang Theory on DVD . . .

3:00-5:00 Primary Class: the finest time of day.  This is teaching time.  The 8 year olds come to the class room and we are in the lesson, and teach them words and phrases that they need to communicate. I love teaching.  It’s my favorite thing about China. The kids learn your name and enjoy yelling “HELLO TEACHA MISHAAAAAA!” They’re easy to love. You learn the individual children’s strong-points, weaknesses, and personalities. The other day, I had my kids play a prank on my next-door teacher, Doug. They all pretended to be zombies when they walked to his class.

The kids who learn English the fastest are the kids who speak it the most---this makes it very motivating to get them to practice speaking. Sometimes it’s a struggle to stay one step ahead of them,  but  it’s always a worthwhile challenge.

5:00-6:00 Dinner time!!! I love food. Usually some variation of what we had for lunch.

6:00 or 7:00 (every other night is free time, Mondays and Tuesdays are meetings and program practice for teachers.)

For free time you can hop on a bus for fifteen minutes to go to downtown, where a myriad of noodle shops, bakeries, stores and shopping are.  You never really know what adventures may befall you.

For example, I went to downtown Shanghai and decided to bleach my hair.  I haven’t decided if that was a good idea or a bad one yet, but nevertheless, I’m now blond. And by blond I mean My Little Pony yellow.  I really hated it the first day, but it’s kinda grown on me now that I’ve had an opportunity to play with it a little.

9:00-11:00 Get home, watch a movie, eat some snacks that I couldn’t resist buying, watch more Big Bang Theory, read, shower, do my nighttime routine and pass out!

Day over.