Beidaihe

Be warned: this whole post is a heck of a photo dump.

Belated greetings from Beidaihe (bay die huh)!  My school's annual conference took place here, at a Club Med resort.

Which sounds a bit better than it is, mostly because all the activities and interesting things take place during the day while we're in meetings and meetings and speeches and so forth.  Still, you can't deny there are some lovely views, rather lovely sunrises, and of course the beach with all it's beachiness.

This, too, sounds a bit better than it is.  After all, it is still winter in Northern China we're talking about here.  The formations made by salt water and ice are pretty interesting though, and being a balmy 0 degrees C means the beachfront is pretty open...very few people out enjoying the surf (or lack thereof) and sun (and lack thereof).

But I found this really interesting seashell, which has almost a cave painting-like design.  Nifty!

Still, it is a Club Med, which means they have lovely amenities with relaxing luxuries. There's also this neat little theater where movies were playing on a pretty large TV.  I didn't take the time to try it out, but the idea of a giant pile of bean bags serving as seating for a little movie nook is kind of alluring.  In a fun, I'm-an-adult-who-wishes-he-could-play-in-ball-pits kinda way.
And then there's the food.  Dear lord, the food.  So much food.  The primary dining choice here is a buffet, which has several offerings that stay the same (lamb chops, steak, fish, salad, bread, etc) and many that change from day to day (too many to name).  Here, I got to see more of my favorite thing in China: attempts to translate various things from Chinese to English with varying degrees of success.  I didn't get a picture, but there was a roasted potato dish of some kind with the placard "That's a small potato."
And of course, some desert options.  China in general isn't as big on desert as the US, but they did have some pretty decent ice cream.  I get the feeling they knew their audience too, and were kind enough to provide us with shovels.

The conference covered topics ranging from the history of our school, to current trends, to corporate partnerships for sales, academics, assessments, and staff recruitment.  Informative, if a bit dry, and mostly just sit and listen and maybe take notes you'll forget on the table so they get thrown away but that's ok you didn't need them anyway.

I'm not in a place to complain.  This is one of those moments where I feel like this school really is special - the meetings and speeches and whatnot could have been given anywhere.  They chose to bring us here to show how much they value us as the staff of the school.  They cancelled all classes for nearly the whole week for this.  It's a great school to work for, and I'm glad I landed here.

Now that we're back, it's time for our winter Additional Course (ADC) offerings.  These are mostly phonics intensives that students in multiple levels attend for an hour each day, four days a week, atop their normal class schedule.  My understanding is that Chinese public schools are out of service until mid-February, after Spring Festival. During the Festival, the school will be closed as well, which means I'll have about two weeks without any classes to teach.  Which will be a relief, especially after ADCs.

My 'typical day' for the two weekdays when I'm teaching is as follows:
Wake up around 6:30-7AM.  Be at the school around 8:30-9AM.  Teach a class from 10-11.  Plan the next class, which I teach from 12-1PM.  Downtime for about three hours.  Teach my evening class or classes.  Get home around 7:30-8:30PM.
My Saturday/Sunday hours are roughly the same - 8AM-8PM most of the time.  But two days of the week being 12 hour days, that's pretty easy to handle.  Four of them is getting a bit tiring, and we're just at the end of the first of three weeks.  When the school lets out for Festival, I'll be fairly glad for some rest.

I've mostly finished covering other peoples' classes now that they are back from holidays, which means it's time to take on my own.  Which is to say, taking classes from other teachers who are either leaving soon or just have a heavier load than is necessary now that I'm here.  So far I'm still getting oriented to most of them, but I'm guessing I'll be teaching around 11-13 classes over the course of the week.  It's manageable, especially once ADCs wrap up and I have more of my mornings to myself.

Hopefully during Spring Festival I can hunt down some actual Chinese lessons/classes, and get my History Bites more updated.  I'll certainly have the time.

Zaijian,
-L