Kung Fu Fighting

I gather Peter is on a bus on the way back from PuYang where he has been doing "promotions" - like deputation, drumming up support for the college. They don't have any foreign teachers there, so they wanted to use him as much as possible, made him do lots of lessons. As far as I can tell from his short phone text messages his first class was a mere 1400 students, and they wanted him to sing a song! So he chose "Incy Wincy", that being the only one he is confident of! I suggested various others, but no, he wanted something really short! Then he found his 'act' was sandwiched into an all-costumed all-singing all-dancing extravaganza. I think he might have put China-Australia relations back a couple of hundred years!!

Anyway, they then had him doing 6 lessons a day, all big classes, and even this morning as he was due to be returning they managed to slot him into a 2-hour primary school presentation teaching classes of 100 ...

Meanwhile, back at the ranch here, the school has been experiencing a bit of a problem. Some boys in my class offended a girl in the high school class. Then they or her (I still can't work out who) called friends (parents, relatives, older people). Someone stole the front gate key (they've been locking the students in at all times lately) opened the gate and let in a mob of about 20. They fought - "Kung Fu" fighting, I'm told, and trashed my classroom - knocked over the TV, broke windows, chucked stuff about, beat some of the boys in my class...

Two of the boys in my class walked away, wanted no trouble, and apparently the other boys are still sore at them and threatening them...

None of this really affected me - I was alone in our apartment, Peter was away the first night - I only heard some rowdiness outside and was glad to be on the third floor.

But then the students all disappeared - catching up on sleep, nursing injuries, talking to the police, or just scared and went home. I have had a class of 3 for the last three days - which is actually very difficult to teach when it’s not your regular class! The principal who was traveling with Peter's promotional team had to return to help sort things, so now Peter and our minder are on the bus home because he took the car and the driver.