We teach at No.42 Middle School, which is right across from our apartment. Which is good in the fact that we can come back and laze around during the day, and that it only takes 2 minutes to get to work (apart from sometimes if the road is particularly deadly) but bad because we have Chinese teachers in our block who seem keen to report any acts of coming in late, or drunkeness, to the powers that be.
The school is massive. There is some 6000 children in total (I teach 630) and over 500 staff. I think about 3000 of those kids live in at the school for the whole time. The accomodation is no where near as nice as ours but at the same time wouldn't look a miss in spain or somewhere.
On our first day in the school there was a massive welcoming ceremony where all 6000 kids were packed into the playground, actually more like hearded by a guy with a mega phone, and then we had to sit through an agonizing hour of speaches and recitals in english and chinese- but it was an awesome spetacle. We thought we would have to get up and introduce ourselves, which was a daunting propect, but in the end one of the american girls just did a general "hello" from everyone.
The kids that we have met are all pretty nice, sometimes a bit boysterous, and we play football with a different group almost everyday. You will be pleased to learn that Dave and I are yet to lose a single game- but we are playing against 18 year old dwarfs most the time, so perhaps we shouldn't!
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