Foreign Expert

I got my foreign expert certification today. It's a little brown thing that sort of looks like a passport. I could not for the life of me take a good picture of it, I was either too close or too far at every angel I could think of. I'm not sure what I'm meant to be an expert in exactly. I'm not an expert teacher by any stretch of the imagination, pretty much the only requirement to get this job is being a native speaker and not having been adjudicated mentally incompetent in any state. I'm not an expert in China either. I barley know what's going on from moment to moment. Confusion is probably the number one emotion I feel in China, unless I'm crossing a street then it's just good old terror. I think the only thing I'm an expert in is being a foreigner. Yes, I'm an expert in not knowing the words for anything, an expert in getting lost, an expert in having no idea what's going on almost constantly. I am an expert in not being from here, and in China that seems to be quite the accomplishment.

I had my small class again today and for once it wasn't a disaster. I'm just glad that it's physically possible to have this class without wanting to pull my hair out. It's still a ton harder then all my other classes combined, but at least it seems sort of manageable. So far the only thing I've figured out to do is just come up with a ton more activities than I need for other classes and try to stretch them as long as humanly possible. I think being in there departments office helped since, with the exception of people still taking phone calls in class, the students were pretty well behaved. I still have this damn cold, if it wasn't for them having tea in the classroom I think I wouldn't have made it through the class. The only time I like tea at all is when I'm not feeling very well, but in China they drink tea like water. Actually, the water isn't that great so I think they probably drink a lot more tea then water.