My first week in Jinan

RT-Marts - really fresh fish
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Ok, I've been in Jinan nine days now. Not really got enough time to write everything I want to say, so this is a fraction of what I'd love to tell you.

The City

Jinan is the Capital of the Shangdong (literally East Mountain, it is famous for springs and Confucious) province, it is the most significant city and the Region it links Shanghai to Beijing. The main urban area is home to around 4 million people.

The Jinan-ese?: Nice people - can-ee speak proper

Maccy D's and KFC in all their splendour
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The people in Shangdong are known for being friendly and my experience would support this. Jinan-ese accent is quite a long way from standard Mandarin, it is best described as yokal. So I guess, it's a bit like foreigners visiting Newcastle.

The Job

I'm on a 25 hour contract which involves me mainly teaching kids and about 7 hours of adult classes. The job is pretty easy. The emphasis is on the speaking and listening, as most Chinese kids study a lot of reading and writing in their schools. The age groups start from around 4 years old (in classes where the parents sit in and you use big picture cards. Typically the in these classes you’ll have at least one of excited kid who keeps shout apple as your asking him ‘what colour is it?’ and at least one emotional kid who takes one look at the apple before bursting into tears. Most of my class are with junior school aged kids who know quite a lot of words, but need all of correction with their grammar ‘Yesterday, I go park’. The Jinan dialect is such that they end almost every word with ‘ar’ sound, so many kids add this on the end of words like food or straight. So they say ‘I like food-ar’ ‘go straight-ar’, well at least they can say ‘Utah’.

RT-Mart - the big supermarket across the road
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The classes I enjoy most are the adult class with ages ranging from 16 to about 60. These guys can communicate well, but just need help with specific vocabulary and understanding idioms such as ‘give me a hand’ or ‘feeling under the weather’.  I these classes I learn at least as much about Chinese culture, as they do about the English language and culture. A Scottish teacher was recently teaching his class the vocabulary the need to break up with someone, such as ‘We need to talk’, ‘I need my own space’ and maybe even ‘it’s not you, it’s me’.