It should have been an easy day today, since we were doing midterm exams. Instead I did five oral exams before noon, three oral exams in the afternoon, and edited a 52-slide PowerPoint presentation that my “dear” assistant gave me for our 4 pm class. And I STILL have to grade two classes’ essays from today, and will have two more tomorrow, AND I have to finish prepping my primary class’s oral exam for tomorrow.

I’m tired.

If I were a teacher in the US, I would be doing a LOT more than this, on a regular basis. I would also have meetings, parent-teacher conferences, and who the f**** knows what else.

I am SO glad I never became a teacher in the US. As tired as I am, at least everything I did (and still have to do, damn it) has to do with teaching directly, not some bureaucratic nonsense. (Okay, I do have to kowtow to the Chinese English Grammar Police [more about that in a future post], but that’s just mildly irritating, not tear-out-your-hair-and-cry frustrating). That’s the reason I never tried to be a teacher in the US – I would lose my friggin’ mind.

US teachers, I salute you. If I had to do this every day, and more, I would be crabby, too.

The Chinese system of holidays has me really confused. Not the dates, or the holidays themselves (although that can be a bit confusing), but the system of make-up days and classes moving around.

You see, when students get a day off, they don’t really get a day off. They get a – well, let’s just call it a reschedule. So, if they have a day off for Tomb-Sweeping Day, they don’t actually get a day off. Instead, the classes that were scheduled for that day (this year, a Friday), were rescheduled for Sunday.

This wreaks havoc on our school schedules, since most of our classes are on the weekends. Labor Day (or, as the Chinese call it, Labor’s Day) is May 1, and many student have three days off. Sort of. They are off Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday, but they have to take their Monday classes on Saturday, and their Tuesday classes on Sunday. Which means our weekend classes are moved from Saturday and Sunday to – Monday and Tuesday. And any classes we teach on Monday and Tuesday at the outside schools, we have to teach on Saturday and Sunday.

I’m so confused.

So, this week, I had Saturday and Sunday off, I teach Monday and Tuesday, off on Wednesday, then teach Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Yep, boys and girls, I get one day off this week. Oh, and I teach all my Saturday AND my Tuesday classes on Tuesday. All eight of them.

Yay me. Yay holidays.

There was an earthquake near Chengdu, Sichuan, China, about 365-ish miles from Wanzhou. A lot of injuries and deaths in that area, but none here.

We felt a slight tremor locally. By “we,” I mean everyone except me. Apparently living in Memphis (on a major fault) and San Francisco (on another major fault) has numbed me to slight tremors

It was scary for a lot of people, especially those who remembered the quake in 2008. And frankly, considering the lack of earthquake-proof building standards (or, really, many building standards at all), I can understand the fear. I don’t feel it (I guess I’m a bit of a fatalist), but I can understand it. The owners of the school decided to cancel classes for the day, and we got the day off. Which I will spend doing cross-stitch and watching movies.

And drinking beer, of course.