Busy as bee

You know how the work just comes crashing down and even when you're pretty darn busy you volunteer to do a gazillion more things? It's a little like that here, especially since when I'm not actually scheduled all day, I'm worrying about overscheduling my life!

Friday was fine as far as I can remember with EC in the evening watching Philippe behaving like a cartoon for an hour explaining circumlocution, drawing and miming to explain words you don't know (way too much energy and lack of time management, but entertaining and I think the students learned something). Well, I was working on the quiz till midnight after EC and met with my speech contest coachee for an hour right before EC, but other than that, it was fine!

Saturday I had auditions for the Opening Night of English Festival from 10am to 1pm then a singing contest workshop from 1pm til after 3pm and I was feeling sick most of that time.

Sunday we Frisbeed in the moring and I turned a nice shade of splotchy purple then we went downtown, got massages and spent time not working ahead of this week of insanity. Then I planned class when I got home. Probably the most relaxing day I'll have for quite a while.

I'd planned to make dumplings Monday but that fell through due to Chinese, speech contest coaching, running errands and more auditions in the evening.

Tuesday was no better: 6 hours of class, 1 hour meeting for English Festival, 1 hour singing contest workshop. The evening made it better when Lok and Daniel (very cute, sweet student couple) came over to make dinner and I managed to find a little time to make a chocolate cake. HongNgoc and Micah came over and joined in our little slice of normal life.

Wednesday, there should have been dumplings, but that's still in the works, due to writing of multiple exercises for quiz review for a few students who seem to think that my day between classes is entirely devoid of entertainment so they need to find ways to help me fill my time. Most students are fine but a couple (this morning) seemed shocked and appalled that I hadn't had time to go online and add the latest powerpoint to our class site and write more exercises between 6pm Tuesday and 8am today. Wednesday ended with office hours- no students.

Today is pretty busy too: 6 hours of class, a level meeting where I have to pretend I know what I'm doing (and should be getting ready for now!) and 1.5 hours at English Lounge. The good part of today is that my active role in class is fairly minimal as it's presentation time. I'll post some highlights of students' business plans to take over the world. The assignment was to come up with a business plan and then present information about the company including budgeting their 1,000,000RMB for the first year and making an advertisement. It's fun and they have some great ideas.

Off I go back to the land of work.