last day

today was the last day of class for one of my classes and two of Dan's classes. Truth be told, no matter how tired and grumpy I've been or no matter how unruly they've been (and they've been pretty awful for the past week), it's still a little bittersweet. I've spent 2 hours a day for 5 days a week with them for six weeks, and now I probably won't see most of them again (though it's highly possible that they'll take more classes at Lee-wen). Some of the students I'll really miss. One of my favorite students was a boy named Peter (I actually have about 6 students named peter, three in that class) who wore a light blue neckbrace. Many days at break, he would come up to me with elaborate drawings of dinosaurs and ask me to write the English name. He soon gave up after he realized I couldn't tell a diplodicus from a brachiosaurus, and so he researched their English names and then asked me to write the phonetic spelling. Every kid in China seems to know that phonetic dictionary spelling as well as they can write English, and are shocked that we English teachers can't. I did manage to find the phonetic spellings of several on one kid's expensive electronic dictionary, though they didn't have "memenchisaurus" or "sinosauropteryx."
Back to my classes though:
The attrition rate for my class ending today was pretty steep; today in a class that once had 26 kids only about 10 showed up, and I'd probably been averaging about 15 for the past two weeks. This seems to be vacation time for families; many students disappeared for a week or so and then suddenly showed back up with a tan. It did make teaching somewhat difficult, and definitely I think learning was a bit spotty. On the final exam, the class average was about 55%, compared to the midterm the class average was about 78%, only 4 out of 17 students taking the test scored anything remotely respectable, respectable being C or above. I think partially it was the student's attention spans drifting as the end drew near and summer vacation hit its high point, but also the book did become much harder at the end. For example, the kids went from having to make sentences like "this is my book" to "what do you think about the Greenhouse Effect. Write a letter to the editor," to give an example of an exercise completely over their heads. It was depressing to spend over an hour on the basic past tense and have only about 2 kids be able to use past tense at all correctly (It's not like they weren't creative though: 'She movis to Qingdao' and 'she moven't to Beijing' are two examples). Or on a match English-Chinese vocab section, to realize that most students couldn't tell the difference between 'sausage' and 'headache.' But to be fair, many of the better students stopped coming, so I'd like to hope they would have done better.
Other than that, life has continued as usual, the weather has been mercifully cooler and less humid. I'll still have to work until 8:30 most nights, but I'll be free until 3:30 in the afternoons, which is better than having to start at 1:15. Dan only has his 6-8:30 left, so he has pretty much the entire day free.
Other than that, I have found a track near our house, it's one of Qingdao University's smaller tracks, and it's a nice place for jogging. The gates are locked, but the fence around it is easy to squeeze through, and this being China, there are routinely about 30 people playing pick-up soccer in the grassy part, and small children playing on the track. I have gone running twice, though both times the humidity was killer and I am woefully out of shape. Somehow a steep 15 minute climb to our apartment every evening hasn't helped keep me in shape for a 30 minute jog.
Well, I have to go and teach my nightmare of a kindergarten class now, so I have to stop writing. This class is a room full of 5 year olds screaming, along with some four year olds who look suspiciously like 3 or 2 year olds who mainly seem to doodle on their books, desks, clothes, and the chalkboard when I turn my back.