Day 48

28.05.18

Great start to the morning
Watching Lebron James carry the Cavs past the Cees at TD Garden - one of the all time great performances.

Cold noodles are the go
The weather is getting hot, so the noodles you eat have to be cold. The joint below my apartment does nice cold noodles for a very reasonable price. 16RMB for a big stack of cold noodles and a fat pork cutlet - that'll do me for lunch.

How spoilt can you get
So I took my first pre-departure class for this kid going to Australia. Walks in 15 minutes late. With his lunch. Munching down his hamburger with no regard. His name is Cat. He has his headphones in. His eyes don't leave his phone. This goes on for the next 2 hours. I've never taught someone so disengaged and look like they don't want to be there. He'll be going to Ringwood Secondary College for Year 10. He'll be taking classes from Hawthorn-Melbourne English language school when he's over here. He tells me that he heard that Ringwood is a mountain area. He doesn't take off his headphones through the whole lesson. He said that he just went clubbing last night, was smoking and drinking and left the club at 4am, slept at KFC until he had class this morning. This kid is 15. His parents are paying for all these classes to prepare him for the Australian schooling system - this kid couldn't give less of a fuck. Anyway, I knew I couldn't really force him to learn what I wanted to teach so I used this opportunity to learn more about this kid.

He taught me about the tables that you could book in club. There are two choices: 1) 开招待 - requires no expenditure, only requires you to get there early and bring a few people and sit down, they will give you free sports drinks. 2) 开消费卓 - requires you to pay money. I assume the first tables are given out to give the impression that the club is busy. It concerns me that there are 15 year olds getting into these sort of clubs - getting into bars and clubs in Nanjing is very lax, they don't check your ID - I've also never seen bouncers.

So I'm with this kid for another 11 lessons. I don't think he'll change his ways. It'll be a good way for me to earn some easy money regardless, and maybe get Cat to teach me a thing or two about Nanjing

More classes
So I got called on last minute to take a few classes at night. Intermediate and Advanced. My first class was on the Internet. It was a very enjoyable class because there was good contributions from all my students. The second class was good too, only a pair of girls and we decided to scrap the book and just have a conversation. The girls are actually very close friends - both are not from Nanjing and met each other 3 years ago because they work at the same company, KIA. Now, they're roommates and classmates. One of them told me that she just found a job to go back home and we talked a lot about their futures. I was moved by how much they valued each other as friends here, especially both coming here not knowing anyone and becoming best friends in this new city. Now that one is leaving, they were expressing how sad it was. It was a touching moment.

FIFA night
After a couple of hours of classes, I headed to Arcano where they were having a FIFA competition to have a beer. Met some new people over there and stayed a few hours before calling it a night. Very busy day!