Ok, so this morning I had my first class. I showed up an hour early to prepare (7 am) and most of my students were already there and just sat and stared at everything I did. It was so quiet and I did not really have much else to do after I wrote what I needed on the chalkboard. So I perfected a map of the United States. I would have made you all proud how good my knowledge of US geography was! (I did get a 50 out of 50 on the capitals test in 5th grade.) When class did start all the lessons I had prepared took a lot shorter than I expected. I took pictures of all my students and I had them write down information about themselves on cards. I had them write something interesting about themselves, or something special. Here are some responses that were interesting, in no particular order:

"When I was five years old, I often sold the things in the market with my mother. It's a tiring job but also have a lot of interest."

"When I play basketball, I like wearing white shoe."

"In my whole life, I just fished two fish."

"I'm a good talker but always say something far away from the main idea. And once I start my talk, it will be very hard for me to stop it."

"I am a boy who runs after the perfection."

"Someone tell me that I'm heavy, but others tell me I not. I think I'm wonderful. I'm strong!"

"I once cried for a whole day."

But often the answers were something like, "I have no special thing."

”What do you want to learn in this class,” I asked the class.
"I want to learn about the secret of the nature."
Apparently not only am I a foreign expert but I am also Buddha!

"I wonder why the U.S. could be the first of the world in a very short time."

But mostly everyone wants to learn about American and British culture. Which is the name of the class. So that really helps me narrow things down.

Anyway, then we all had interviews in front of the class and then talked about what culture was and what they wanted to learn about. Besides music like West life and Backstreet boys, they also want to learn about: Las Vegas, Famous Politicians, Silicon Valley, Education, Business, Entertainment, Dating (actually, the student asked...how can I have a foreign girlfriend like you?) and US colleges.

I found out that everyone in the class is an engineering major. There are only four girls in the class of 60. Oh, I also asked them who their heroes were. Mao Zedong, Zhao Enlai, Albert Einstein, and Steven Hawking were all popular heroes of the day.

After rules and assignments were clarified--we still had 45 minutes left to go and I had nothing prepared. That is where the trouble started. I was just talking about anything. I started talking about Labor Day weekend, which was interesting to them because in china the Labor Day holiday is a week long and a big deal, whereas in the US, it is not as big a deal as they make it here. They thought that was astonishing.

Then I started talking about Judaism and I had all this time and soon I was going on about Jim Jones and the hail boppers and the seventh day Adventists who could not drink coca cola or dance and my grandfather the Mormon who left the church and how Americans were scared of Muslims at the moment. I do not even know what was coming out of my mouth but the students seemed to be interested so I kept going.

I also never gave my students a break. No one told me about a break. Another teacher after class told me that they should get a 10-minute break. They must have hated me!

Class went fine and the students asked a lot of questions and were very interested but I feel like the responsibility I have is too great and I do not know enough and I have no resources and I have all these students with faces looking up at me ready for me to tell them all these profound things—It's too much. Just
because I speak English I must explain all of the English speaking culture and values to these students? And it's not like I can get up there and just talk. There will be an exam and there will grade will count towards their future; there has to be structure to the class.

Their assignment this week is to write about culture in china. I want to turn this class back to what it means to be Chinese. What learning about my culture can shed light on about their culture.

Anyway, I am really feeling frantic at the moment because tomorrow I start teaching US history. The university has never offered this class before and there is no textbook.

First off—I have to speak in front of 150 people??? I was thinking tomorrow we would do introduction games like today, but not very possible with 150 people. Also, I was just going to briefly go over American history from early America
to the civil war, going form what I remember from high school. Now all of the sudden I have 2 hours to talk about 100 year of US history in front of 150 people when all I remember is the Mayflower and Oceanus. I played Oceanus in my kindergarten production. After today’s class, I realize that is going to be a lot harder than I thought.

I feel like I need to talk about something profound and interesting and different and thought-provoking and bring up interesting historical arguments. I have 150 eager students all excited to take US history, the first time it has been offered—and what am I going to talk about? Christopher Columbus was mean? The war of 1812 was in 1812? How bout that stamp act?