Funfair

Out of the blue my employer messages me one morning. They needed teachers to man the booths at a public school’s English funfair. I have no idea what this means except that I’d have to play games with the kids, but everything would be handed to me. I wouldn’t have to come up with the games myself.

The pay wasn’t that great for the length of time I’d need to be there. They were only offering 400 yuan for about 3 hours of work (decent pay is between 200-250 yuan an hour), but there would be a free lunch. I guess that counts for something, right?

It sounded like easy money and a good way to meet some new foreigners. I do need to meet some more people and make some more friends. I can’t just hang out with only the people that I work with.

Granted, I wished there was more money, but it also sounded like fun. Even if is horrible, it’s only a few hours. And after surviving the kindergarten, I’m sure I can handle whatever this “funfair” is.

I signed up to go. And I found out that the other teacher I started with was also going to go. At least I’ll have a familiar face there and won’t have to figure everything out on my own.

I was assigned a booth, an activity, tongue twisters, and given instructions in only slightly mangled English (the only part I didn’t understand was the bit about stamping and splitting the tongue twisters between the kids in the same group).

They also included the tongue twisters that the kids would have to say. Some of them I had never heard before. There was one about a copper coffee pot that didn’t seem that hard to say.

Still sounds easy. And, as promised, they gave me everything I’d need to do the event.

Getting There

Day of the event, the coworker and I had planned to meet up at the nearby metro station. We had gotten a few messages from the event’s organizers telling us not to be late or there would be dire consequences. They also said we had to be at least 20 minutes early!

As we were now more than a little bit paranoid and only had a location pin to tell us where to go, we decided to get to the station at 8 am, what is considered by many of my other coworkers a ridiculously early time.

The walk to the school was easy. All we had to do was go straight and eventually cross the street. Simple and impossible to get lost!

When we get to the location of the school, it’s a closed gate. However, before we have time to start wondering what to do, the gate opens and we’re let in, after showing our green health QR codes.

Waiting

A nice lady shows us where to go. We walked across a sports field and into a gym. Everything was already set up and all our materials were sitting there waiting. There were even instructions on how to play the game for the kids.

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Since we got there so early, they were still having some sort of meeting, in Chinese, of course. My coworker and I wandered over to explore our tables and see what materials we had.

I had all my tongue twisters printed out and on individual half sheets separated into easy ones, for the younger kids, and harder ones, for the older kids. There were also a couple toothpaste boxes. It took me a minute, but I eventually figured out they were there for the kids to draw a number to determine which tongue twister they’d have to read.

Next, we examined my coworker’s station, conveniently located next to mine. He had a memory game. We spent some time trying to figure out what some of the images on the cards were. Was it a scientist or a doctor? And would the kids know the word “scientist”? I suggested he just waits and sees what the kids come up with. They might surprise him with what they know.

A couple of red-vested locals were assigned to each table. We eventually found out that they are parents, not teachers, who are volunteering to help with the event. The pair I got didn’t speak much English, but the pair helping my coworker were very chatty, nice ladies.

Tongue Twisters

The individual grades had a set time that they would come in and play the games and when they completed the game, they got a stamp on their “passport”, a printed piece of paper that most of the kids folded up.

As no one had really explained what exactly I’m doing or how the stamping works, for the first class, I had each individual student pick a number and read the tongue twister, usually with a lot of help, before giving them their stamp and sending them on their way.

I was told pretty quickly that I needed to speed things up; my line was too long. One of the parents could do the stamping and the other one made sure that the teams came up to my game as a group and not individually anymore.

It dramatically sped up the game, even if 4 kids were now reading one tongue twister. Granted, there were a lot of kids that didn’t say anything when their team was up and then got upset and wanted to pick their own tongue twister after someone from their team had read theirs. But we got them all sent in the correct direction, to the parent stamping and then off to another game, in the end.

Lunch

After 4 grades of progressively older kids came by, it was time for that free lunch I was promised. I followed along with the other foreign teachers there as we left the school and walked down the street, wondering if they were taking us to a restaurant for that lunch.

Nope. We were going to McDonald’s for lunch. Oh, and we’d have to pay for it ourselves. I noped out of there when I realized what was happening. While I was hungry and don’t mind McDonald’s in China (it tastes much better here than in America), I had better options for lunch.

I decided to head to the IKEA on my way to the training center and got lunch there. So much better, and healthier, McDonald’s.

If you have any questions about any of the terms I’ve used, look in the glossary.