Originally uploaded by monkeyking

Every morning Monday through Friday, I wake up bright and early to go teach English at my Kindergarten. From 8 until 12, my babies and I hang out, make cute decorations for the classroom, learn about different kinds of animals and talk about which one is the biggest, and if we get bored, I pretend I’m a bee and chase them around the classroom. Basically, I’ve turned into Miss Honey.

It’s a good, stress-free life here in Shanghai. Teaching only takes up about 20-30 hours of my week here. A lot less now that the holidays are over. So what have I been doing with my afternoons? Well after New Years rolled around this year, I began to ask myself the same question. (It’s too bad I don’t have a Liz Lemon-esque montage to enter into this blog right now – one that shows me laying around laughing at Chinese soap operas, dancing ridiculously to Taylor Swift, and eating a large bowl of noodles while google image-ing What is a blipster?)

Needless to say, I woke up on New Years Day with the feeling that I really need to do something these next few months. I mean, I’m almost halfway through my vacation year of teaching in China. I need to get out and take this all in! Live life! Learn new things! Enjoy this incredible experience while I still can! Unfortunately, it is extremely cold outside right now so I’m gonna hold off on the living, laughing, and loving until spring. But I have made one vital step in making my time here in China more profitable. I got Chinese tutors. Yes, not one, but multiple Chinese people to teach me. Here’s the scoop:

I recently ran across this great program called IMCPI. It’s a Chinese language school that has the lofty goal of “enabling four-fifths of the world population to speak Mandarin Chinese.” Good luck guys. But one great thing about this institute is that they provide “public welfare activity.” That translates into free Chinese classes. Yes, freeee. From 4:30 to 5:30 every day, they offer to the public free one-on-one tutoring sessions. You decide which days you want to go, you show up, and get someone to tutor you for an hour or so. While there’s usually a catch with these kinds of things, I started going a few weeks ago and have really enjoyed it. All of the staff are super helpful and friendly — every time I come in, they hand me a free cup of water. I’ve had a different tutor every time I’ve gone, which is kind of unfortunate (I think the whole point is to provide training for Chinese-teachers-to-be). I’d rather be learning from a set person， but at least this way I get a little bit of variety in my Chinese schedule. But so far all of the lessons and suggestions have been great. One of my proudest moments in China so far was having a conversation about the economic crisis with one of my tutors. ALL in Chinese. Go me!

So with these new Chinese lessons under my belt, I’m looking forward to the upcoming year. My resolution for 2010 is “enable Betsy to speak Mandarin Chinese.” Hopefully by the time I come back this summer, I will have turned into a fine-tuned Chinese-speaking machine. More importantly, I hope it’ll spice up my resume a little bit. With Advanced Chinese sitting next to TEFL-Certified and Double Dutch champion, what employer could turn me down?
Here’s to the New Year!