Just Finished 7 Days of Intensive English Teaching

Yesterday I finished the first of three Crazy English summer camps. I taught for twenty five hours, and was on campus for most of the week. It is a good experience. I get to meet a lot of young intelligent people, and work on being a better public speaker. I had to answer many difficult questions about myself, America, what I think of China and Chinese, as well as provide substance in the form of English language pronunciation and common usage. Hey, I'm pretty American, so it comes naturally to be culturally like that.

I am planning to go to Qingdao tomorrow. I finally wired some money back to my US accounts. Speaking of money, I was feeling a tinge of jealousy yesterday, which is unusual for me. I was talking with some of the other teachers about money in China, and we all concluded that Chinese people have a lot of money. They save almost everything they possibly can. Every time I go to the bank, every other person there has a stack of 100 Yuan bills that makes my stack look like pocket money. I wonder how they do it, what motivates them to save so much money. Maybe it is the lack of a strong credit card industry, or the cultural importance of stability and security. Perhaps it is family, the close knit unit, which provides for all of its members. It has me thinking about how I could be a better family member, saving more money than I spend to support my family now and in the future. I guess I am growing up a little.

This comes to mind because I went to the bank today to make the transfer request. The money is already there, after only nine hours, amazing, really. Although it costs me about $45 USD to make a transfer, which is a huge waste of my money. I can do that for now, but I am going to find a more cost effective way. It seems both banks charge me about $20 to do a transfer. That is a lot of money to spend every month just to change a couple bits on a computer network.

I am looking forward to going to Qingdao again. Last time I went for only two days, and only one day of sight seeing. This time it is four days, and I know where to stay and where to go.

The kids at the summer camp are so cute. They all asked me to sign autographs at the ends of the camp, and they always told me how handsome I am. The camp was held at a small professional school campus on the seaside, about 30 minutes from my home. Crazy English provided me with a room on campus, with a shower, TV, and two beds. I came home to my apartment most nights, because I have other things to do with my free time. However, the nights I stayed there were a pleasure, everyone took care of me, we were provided free meals, and the children provided entertainment in the form of adorable-behavior and words as well as an actual talent show. I performed in the talent show, playing blues on my electric guitar. The children seemed to enjoy it, although they had never heard the blues as I play it before.