This is Da Ji. Her name means “big luck”. She is a small Pekinese-like dog with a talent in begging for food. I always refuse these requests, so she retaliates with crazy barking when I enter the school.

Once, someone tried to clean her coat but it rained heavily the next day. However, she did lose a fight against a large black dog a few months ago. Stitches and bed-rest followed. She tried her luck again a few weeks ago (and lost).

Maybe we should change her name to “Not Da Ji”, however, I do not have that power, since, due to a complicated tax dodge, she is the legal owner of the school.

Does the title sound strange to you? This is not an IQ test, since there is nothing grammatically wrong with it. Actually, this is an example of a change in style English over the last few years. You might feel more comfortable if the sentence was corrected to:

James hasn’t got enough time on Fridays.

Or:

James doesn’t have enough time on Fridays.

The words in bold act as auxiliary (“helping”) verbs. They don’t change the meaning of the sentence but are probably necessary to use nowadays. However, no-one told the writers of the English textbooks that are used in China, so my students continue to make this style-mistake. And a market is created for native English teachers. Yay.

Actually the reason I wrote this sentence is that Fridays have become my busiest day this term. I begin with teachers’ meeting in the morning, followed by lesson planning in the afternoon then I teach my class in the evening. After more than 12 hours at the school, I still have to plan for tomorrow’s lesson and do my Chinese homework. Instead of getting on with it I chose to moan on my blog.

Well, I’ve finally updated this blog and I can tell you it probably wasn’t worth the wait. My time has been consumed by teaching, learning Chinese and designing the school’s new website. Check it out at www.teachers4china.com I’m quite proud of it (though I’m sure the code is amateurish) but it has meant that this blog has been neglected. (15 Jan 09 – www.teachers4china.com has since been disbanded!)

I have spent the evening marking my student’s homework. I always appreciated the teachers take marked my homework promptly and gave me good feedback so I try to do the same for my students. Sitting on the other side of the desk has given me a greater appreciation of how utterly boring this is. Actually, I don’t sit behind a desk during my lessons because I normally stand. All my students scored As, so I must be doing something right as a teacher.