T.I.P Training.

Tuesday 4th September 2012

Today we had our first T.I.P training and, to be honest, I don't  think our trainers know that most of us have little to no teaching experience! My experience has basically consisted of volunteering at brownies and 'mentoring' in a few classes at school. Not really enough to dive straight in! We are going to be what's known as 'facilitators', which is basically an assistant to the main trainers, to 22-40 year old CC English school teachers on the T.I.P training camp in a couple of weeks time. Slightly different to teaching 5-18 year olds like we had been told! 

We had orientation in the morning , which was basically a load of boring speeches which I only filtered in various bits of information which could possibly be useful. To get our 'motivation' a trainer named Stephen 'taught' us the macarena, but, not surprisingly, we all already knew it so it just turned into one crazy group dance! 

Our first task was to teach the trainers an English song; Josh was picked to teach them but we all joined in to help him! We chose head, shoulders, knees and toes as it was the easiest choice! After this, the trainers taught us how to teach it properly, apparently we weren't good enough. Not that we were surprised. After this we taught them hangman and duck, duck goose. 

Then, we were taught the Chinese version of 'Who stole the cookie from the cookie jar?' which unfortunately included forfeits if you were caught with the cookie. Luckily I didn't lose, the Chinese seem to have an obsession with public humiliation and making us sing and dance. We couldn't very well refuse, we were getting paid after all! We then had a brief word before having KFC again for lunch. We definitely regret complaining about having the same Chinese meals for lunch everyday... this was turning into super size me! Especially for poor Georgia who was having it for breakfast and dinner as well! 

I then went with Georgia and Natasha, one of our mentors, to the hospital to get her stitches out. Her head is fine now, just a bit sore now and again but thats understandable! They put some sort of liquid on it that made it look like it was bleeding again. I'm definitely sure everyone wants to see a tasty picture of that... although it doesn't look as bad in the photo as it did in real life!

Then we went to a shop to get our photos taken 'professionally', as we are applying for a temporary residence permit and it needs to be taken to the police station along with my passport. Georgia and I got there before everyone else, so we had our photos taken before everyone else could come along and see how hideous they were! The photographer edited out our nice tans, making us look very white.

When we got back to the cc experiment centre, we split up into two teams, the fruit (Emma, Ollie, Ben, Dan, Josh and James) and the animals (Georgia, Alex, Hamish, Sam, Matt and I) to play team games. First Sam and Hamish played password; where one person has to guess the word and the other has to give them verbal clues, but are given a list of words they are not allowed to use. Then Alex and Matt played a similar game but they had to guess English sayings, but I don't think they were, as Sam had never even heard of them and thats saying something as he is the group genius! 

Unfortunately, they didn't have a game for Georgia and I, so we were nominated for being a facilitator by presenting the everyday procedure as follows:

1.Greeting

2.Tell the teachers what the ABC's are (Attack your limitations, Build your confidence and Commit yourself) 

3.Ask them to say the English only chant

4.Announce the c.i.c rules

5.Daily announcements

6.Results

7.English only updates

8.Encourage them to keep speaking english and not mandarin

Despite James obviously giving a better performance, the trainers gave me and Georgia more points! We then had a short break with some beverages and well sort after WiFi access.

The teachers then decided to mix things up a bit and swap the teams around. I was with Sam, Ollie and Josh. Each team had a character with a list of qualities and were asked to act them out. Our team got Sophie, a rich girl who was looking to Marry a suitable bachelor. We decided on Ollie as Sophie and I was Sophie's best friend. The other two teams had Ethan and Derek and had to win Sophie's affection. Ollie was given team points for best actor and I was given team points for best actress! SO in other words we were the least terrible. Seriously its like being on drama camp or something. But I didn't even care as my team won! Naturally, there had to be a forfeit, and it was for the other team to give us a massage. The forfeit was for the fruit to give the animals a massage... this didn't happen.

Ollie getting into character.