Spoken English Class

(pictured: Spoken English teacher helping my classmates successfully play a word game)

Yesterday was a school day, but a fun school day at that! You know why? Because we had Spoken English Class taught by a foreigner just like me! Well, not exactly, he is British. But his first language is English! I helped him play English-speaking games with the class. One of the games was where we both read a dialogue aloud and the students would have to pick out the English word that was particulalry of British or American English and then give its equivalent in the other style of English. For example one of the words picked out of one of the short dialogues by a student was "rubbish" and then they had to say the American English equivalent.

My class was just giddy to see two foreigners standing on the teaching platform. When I first stood up there next to him many students whipped out their phones and started snapping away with the handy camera feature.

Another game we played was 20 questions, in which I pretended to be a celebrity and they had to ask me questions and then guess who I was....but the game didn't go according to plan at first.

(Mind you everything was explained in English)

Here were the questions asked:

"Are you a boy?"

*roars of laughter from class*

"Yes."

"Are you interesting in China?"

"Uh...yes I suppose I am interested in China..?"

"Are you good at math?"

I looked very confused at this point, and so did the teacher. We both burst out laughing. The class looked confused now too.

"Um, um, I highly doubt I am good at math."

The student who asked this question sat down with a puzzled look on his face.

There was whispering going on in the back row and finally someone stood up and asked the question, students were sniggering.

"Do you, ah, have a girlfriend?"

*tremendous laughter*

"Yes."

*non-stop laughter from the students* (when it comes to girlfriends/boyfriends/dating Chinese highschool students are a tad sheltered and tend to act like little kids on this matter. They usually turn red or just laugh if you mention such a thing.)

Right away the teacher and I looked at eachother and at the same time said:

"They think it's you!" he said.

"They think it's me!"

Thankfully I have enough Chinese to explain the directions to the game we were playing. Once everything was cleared up they guessed pretty quickly that I was Kobe Bryant. One of the most beloved basketball players to the Chinese.