"It's like being in night class."

And then some.

So today (Monday) was our first day that was pretty much nothing but classes, meaning that we started at 8 and got done at 4:15.  We had a break for lunch though.  :)  The classes are great; today was a lot of Classroom Dynamics, so think a crash course on lesson planning.  It's very interesting, but I think that everyone is more than ready to be done by the time 4 o'clock rolls around.

We returned from lunch to find that our hotel had provided us with ball caps (with extraordinarily long brims) and fans.  You can see Bethany modelling both above as she finished reading before a class session.

To shift gears to yesterday, here are a few pictures.

The morning:

They had these very spiffy headphone sets so that we could listen to an English translation.  So cool -- or, as they'd say in China -- 很聪明!  So bright!

In the afternoon we all hung out together and had some classes and then ate delicious Mexican food together, which I did not get any pictures of.

And then, in the evening, as we came back to our hotel (aka "Base"), we found a group of employees dancing outside of a hair salon.  This is not the first time it's happened, in fact, it seems to be a nightly occurrence.

I realize that it's a little difficult to see what's going on in this picture, but if you can see the two foreigners, those are Andrew and Hilary, who are both going to be teaching at the same school as me.  They were having a blast joining in the dancing.

And this little girl was having a blast watching it.

See the sidewalk tiles in the picture above?  There are all different types of those, all over China.  The kind pictured was also popular in Xiamen.  They're kind of fun, a little bit more interesting than concrete.

And that's about it for today, folks.  I'm still working on getting material for a post about my team.  :)  If there's other things you'd like to hear about, comment or email me and let me know.