"Welcome back!"

Today was the first day of the new semester. Over the course of yesterday afternoon about 850 students and their families flooded campus. The students themselves carried much of their school supplies, but most of the parents carried their bedding. It felt like a great migration.

This morning, in typical Chinese fashion, was used for sweeping the school, a couple of school-wide assemblies, distributing books, and some other tasks, the purpose of which I couldn't discern and didn't ask. This gave me all morning to, yes, prepare, but also to worry about teaching again. Then I discovered that the textbook that I was given in January is not, in fact, the textbook that has been distributed to the students. Luckily, I also had time to chat for a few minutes with some of my students, which was a good reminder of why I'm here.

This morning I had to teach the whole school an English phrase, so I chose "Welcome back." Last semester I was rather skeptical of this weekly ritual. Not only is it difficult to choose an appropriate phrase for first through sixth grade when some of them have never learned any English and some have had several years of it, but they don't have much time to actually practice or use the phrase, so mostly they don't remember it for long. But today I felt the value of it. Do they actually learn any given phrase, no. But they get the chance to chant English in unison and interact with the strange foreigner. And honestly, it's quite fun to hear 1,200 students shout "Hello", "Good morning", and "Welcome back" back at you!