Yantai Bilingual Middle School, China

Well we left behind the tropical heat of Thailand and arrived in the city of Yantai, China on a chilly, gray winter day. The city is big. It has big buildings and big streets and big construction projects going on all over the place. The school where we live and teach is also big. And the classes are big--40 students or more. If you asked our impressions of China so far, we'd probably say China is big. They seem to like to do everything in a big way.

We've been here for two weeks now. We've settled in to our lovely little apartment--the "Foreigner's Flat." We've been treated very well by the staff and the kids. As you can see, the staff is big too. That's us with the sixth and seventh grade English teachers. Yes, just the English teachers. We'd probably need a panoramic lens on the camera to take the picture if we wanted to include math, science, history, and phys ed teachers.

Teaching is fun, and the kids are great, and the weather is warming up. We're planning to do a little traveling around the area over the next few weeks to see the sights...