You're welcome for the fabulous jokes. You burned extra calories there rolling your eyes or giggling slightly. I'm the new diet plan! woot.
Although I'm not exactly salary, I have recently had a taste of what it is like to work a salary job and the struggles of not working 24/7. When I worked retail at my first 'real job', my boss used to tell me there was always 'something' to do (be it cleaning shelves or reorganizing something you forgot existed). I also probably get this mentality from my mother and father, who are both extremely diligent and hard workers. The job I am in requires me to choose the hours I work to a large degree so long as I get the work done and hit a certain number of hours. I have some commitments in the morning, others in the afternoon, and still others at night, all varying depending on the night of the week. Point: I'm not working any certain consistent shift. I also am beginning to realize the amount of time it takes to prepare lessons, especially when you have students with unpredictable understanding levels of things as simple as directions (English is their second language and my first/kind of only language, remember). This first week post-orientation has been a lot of meetings, but also a lot of late hours at the office because there are things to do and...well, we don't have families to get home to. It's working out fine, but it's definitely been making me think about what I want to do in my future.
Today was my first official day teaching. The kids use my last name since non-native English speakers seem to be challenged with my first name. Often, when they attempt to say my name, I find it produces a lot of spitting, confusion, and something that sounds like 'shelphshelly' more than my name. That's completely fine and understandable considering how much I butcher Chinese words, but I've tried to use my last name to make it a bit easier. So it was me against 3 classes of 30+ ten year old boys today (and one girl!). I only had to give them my mother's eyebrow and squinted eye look once. In other words, discipline was pretty good considering they're boys at that age. Their Chinese teacher is in the room in case they need to be disciplined, but otherwise it's all up to me. I found that my first class had excellent usage of English with a narrow vocabulary (which I can help expand!), but that my second and third classes struggled more to understand directions and explanations. I quickly was able to deduce that the lower level of English in the same grade was because, although they are supposed to be taught in English all day, the teacher of the 2nd and 3rd classes had extremely poor English, even in speaking to me. Well, we'll just have to work on that, now won't we? :)
A cool fact about kiddos in Macau (and mainland students learning English) is that they get to choose their own English name. In Debate the other evening, I had a girl named Swiky, and a girl at the Speaking with Confidence interviews went by Fangtasia. My elementary boys have more common names, many of which are Oscar and Sam. Oh, and last in list of popular names, there are 3 Echoes in Debate. I think it would be fantastic to pick my own name; I'd go by something fabulous like Onomatopoeia.
That was my morning. This afternoon included interviews for Speaking with Confidence, and I just recently finished Debate Society. Tonight's debate: "Macau has no future." I was coaching a team of new debaters in a style I have not used: British Parliament style. It was a great debate and these university kids are brilliant (some with GREAT english). I really enjoyed learning about this new style of debate, although it is much longer than what I've used in the past. (In other words, it's a good thing these students are good debaters or it could get really boring).
Everything in balance...even work hours, trapeze artists, and hippos on bouncy balls. Wait, what?
Done.
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