Jingdong
on Tina's Journal (China), 25/May/2009 12:40, 34 days ago
I arrived in Jingdong yesterday evening and it was so nice to be met by Lesley and the girls. Jingdong is about 200k north from Simao and it feels slightly cooler here despite being at a lower altitude than Siamo. The photo is the view of the town from the Education Bureau offices where we have been working today planning lessons for the coming weeks' model lessons and calling the different teachers to make arrangements etc. Last night we visited  Minzhong Middle school to meet the teachers and some of the students in preparation for tomorrow's formal visit. I met the students I'll be teaching and they are lovely but one boy sitting at the front of the class was asleep and I kept going over to him to get his attention and involve him in the class discussion, but he was completely out of it! It turns out that the parents of this little boy have talked to the teacher about this problem, he keeps falling asleep and I think it's because he's going on a regular basis to play computer games in the local internet cafe. His parents though are quite wealthy and give him 100yuan ($17) a week pocket money!! This is such a lot of money based on the cost of living here. To give you an idea it costs about 3yuan an hour to use the internet cafe. That's where I am right now updating my blog. I must say the connection is fantastic, this is the fastest connection I have known since arriving in China. The boy's teacher told me today that he apologised to her on my behalf for falling asleep. I'll be giving a model lesson in his class tomorrow so it'll be interesting to see if he stays awake. Apparantly this is not an uncommon pproblem. It doesn't help either that classes finish late in the evening. There are no proper counsellors in the schools to help children with problems. It's basically up to the teachers to help the children.My hotel is wonderful, really comfortable and I'll be based there for two weeks. I have a couple of other overnight stops to do in other towns in the county but most of the time I'll be here in Jingdong. I Intend to climp up to one of the local temples as I've a few days off over the weekend as it's Dragon Boat Festival coming up.