Happy Teacher's Day!

Happy Teacher's Day, 教师节日快乐! In China, September 10th is Teacher's Day. There was a nice ceremony for the students, teachers, and some parents. After several speeches, the parents, the teachers, and the students each took a pledge.

Students, led by a local teacher, pledging to study hard, etc.

The teacher pledge translates something like this:
Teachers, we who are engaged in this sacred occupation,

Teachers, we bear the weight of this mission all our lives.

Children need us to develop their ability, wisdom, and motivation.

The trust of the family heads is the starting point for our confidence.

Under the banner of our solemn country, facing all the students and all the parents, we make this pledge:

"Devoted to the career of education the people, offer as a tribute our lifetime’s vigour, strictly abide by the moral standard of the teacher’s profession, pursue education to reach the most  virtuous, the utmost boundary. Use compassion to mould, use the truth to reform, use examples to encourage, use personality to nurture, pass on culture, awaken wisdom seeking truth; follow the law, ardently love the students; bravely bring new ideas, in time becoming the people’s teacher. Use wisdom to begin wisdom, use compassion to support compassion,  treat all students equally, construct the foundation for them to stride toward success!

Although I only understood bits and pieces at the time (it's honestly hard to understand 1200 students chanting in unison...louder is not always clearer...), it was a nice ceremony and interesting to participate in.

After the ceremony I went back to my room thinking I might take a nap, but I got a call saying to come down to the gate area to hang out with other teachers and eat. Again, there was quite a spread of fruit as well as sunflower seeds, candy, and these ridiculously sour fruit called 橄榄 (ganlan), also known as Chinese olives. I stayed for an hour or so before sneaking off for a nap. Also I needed to get away from all the smoke (Chinese men, by and large, smoke almost non-stop).

When dinnertime came around, I came down to hordes of guests--representatives of some of the families and government officials, apparently--and a feast.

So much food! We usually have just four or five (simpler) dishes and a cabbage or radish soup.

The food here is mostly sour (酸 suan) and hot (辣 la). These are their favorite flavours. Perhaps because I've therefore had a lot of hot and sour recently, my favorite dish yesterday was something sweet. They called it eight treasure rice cake, but I'm not sure what the eight treasures are. It clearly had sticky rice, red bean paste, small beans, candied melon, strips of sweet cake, and a candied cherry on top!

Eight treasure rice cake. So yummy!

Perhaps the best part of teacher's day for me, however, was finally obtaining my teaching schedule! Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday I have four classes a day, alternating between music and English. On Thursday I have three classes, and on Friday I have just one class in the afternoon. It's a pretty good schedule, allowing me to see my students almost every day. The mental switching between music and English may be more of a challenge, however. But hey, I'm getting better at switching between English and Chinese...slowly...

When I walked into my first class today they asked "Is this English class?" and when I said yes they cheered "Yay!" It was heartwarming (and confidence boosting--a nice way to start off), but not as heartwarming as the cards and other crafts that many students in that class made for me for Teacher's Day. They say things like "May you have good health", "May your work be smooth", and "May all hopes be fulfilled."

Cards from one of my third grade classes for Teacher's Day.

The first day of teaching went remarkably well...but more on that tomorrow. It was simultaneously invigorating and exhausting and now that the adrenaline has worn off, I'm tired!