Earthquake!

I've finally felt an earthquake! We had a 4.2 magnitude earthquake night before last (the epicenter was in Myanmar but pretty close to the border). I had already fallen asleep, so I awoke to my bed shaking. My cofellow on the first floor said he didn't feel it all, and a local teacher said she was walking home at the time and hadn't felt it at street level, but on the fifth floor it was very noticeable, though perfectly safe.

Teach for China then sent us information about how to survive an earthquake and the school gave us information about what to do (a multi-page packet the contents of which are still obscure to me). On the one hand, isn't it a little late? But on the other hand, it might have been a foreshock to a larger earthquake. The English translation of the TFC directions was laugh worthy though. Having first explained that it's important to get outside and away from buildings it then said: "The most important thing is, never going back into buildings even if the shaking stopped." Never. You can never go back inside!

Yesterday evening, just as dinner was supposed to begin, the heavens opened in an epic thunderstorm. Gusts of wind overturned piles in the teachers' office, branches fell, the school banner broke, and students ran for cover. And then, just as I finished writing that much of my blog post, the power went out! Since I wanted to save my battery charge for today's music class in case we didn't get power back in the meantime, I took this as a sign for enforced rest. The problem is that even in dreams I seem to be either teaching or planning. It never ends!

The other challenge I'm facing right now is that it's really hard to know what success is. Clearly I could be doing things better. But it's also not a total failure. What parts of a lesson should I reuse? Which should I change? What's the right balance of strict and fun? What would a really good teacher teaching these kids in this classroom situation even look like? I have no idea.