Tempest7: Blogger

New Legal Life, New Stress

It feels good being legal. I have no restrictions on living, studying, or working in Hong Kong. My Classes were hard again, due mainly to my poor Chinese grammar and vocabulary, but it went relatively smoothly. The students have choosen to focus on the BULATS examination. My boss at SME Education strongly recommended that I steer my students away from this choice, since we lack the training material for it, but I won't influence my student's choice if they've so strongly come to the decision by themselves.

This leads to a different problem though, I still need to prepare them, even though I don't have the resources to do so. I have a few grammar sheets that I passed out, but grammar is really my weak point. The good thing is that BULATS is very focused on business English. I've been searching for articles that they can practice reading. It is hard to say what is the best method to teach English in the shortest period of time. It would be good if I could speak just in English, but unlike the children I use to teach it is much harder for adults. I do have students in my afternoon class who are willing to try to speak in English. I'm willing to accept suggestions though, I've got about 18 housewives in the morning and about 13 in the afternoon.

Right after class I went to iron out my payment details. Payment is an issue at the centre. It is complicated requiring me to fill out sheets for everything I've done. I write my own times, they double check in their books, then I need people to sign them. Also each course and each month requires their own sheet, so I end up filling in tons. Luckily I track my work days and times in my outlook calendar. Currently there is work, but I need to find another job soon since this one doesn't pay on a timely schedule. They have a policy to pay after the course has been completed, which could run up to 2 months in some cases.

The just added a class for me that runs Saturdays. The interesting thing about this class is that it is for teaching web design. The course is not related to English at all, it completely focuses on computers (HTML, CSS, Dreamweaver, Flash, Photoshop, etc) and so it must be taught in Chinese. That means a lot of stress for me, but it is also a good chance to force me to improve on my Chinese skills. I will need a lot of support from my friends but hopefully when I get through this, my Chinese will have something to show for it.

I met up with Ceci at Festival Walk. I thought it was actually a path similar to the Star Walk but it turns out to be a mall. There is an indoor skating rink at this mall as well which I hope I will have some time to try in the near future. We talked about our potential housing situtation and took a walk around the community there.

I need to figure out other ways to make money, and I need to find more information about BULATS. Tomorrow I'm suppose to meet up with Carman to fix her computer or her internet, I'm hoping to ask her to help me with my personal pictures since she is a photographer herself. The stress in my life has changed, but Hong Kong is still stressful. I hope I can survive until the next big step.

posted by Tempest7 @ 11:00