Poor aul Boys in Green

Went to English Corner yesterday evening. It’s where the students can come together and speak English. And hopefully some native English speakers will come along too! Myself and Tom went along anyway to have a gander. Turns out, we were the only foreigners there. I enjoyed it anyway. Met a few interesting people. I met 2 lads who were Navigation graduates. They asked where I was from and I said Ireland. They asked if I was from Dublin and I said, yeah. They said they’d been there. I thought it might have been for study but turns out that they worked for Maersk Line and their ship had docked in Dublin for a night! They were surprised with how many Chinese they saw in Dublin! There is another English corner on Saturday night, so I might head along for the craic. The only danger is the odd clingy student, who wants to be your best friend!

My alarm went off at 2:40am this morning. I had forgotten in my half asleep state that the match was on! I stuck on the laptop but all I could see was Cameroon versus someone else. D’oh. Well the 2 Irish lads arrived. It’s quite eerie here at night, since there is so much activity here during the day but night time is as about as exciting as a morgue.

We wee lucky and we got the match on a local TV station rather than the internet. It was odd having a can of beer at that hour of the morning (and being sober) and watching the match. Well, I think we played really well and it was only that time that Zidane got the goal that we had lost it a bit. I dunno if we even lost it cos he had space like that in the first half but didn’t do anything. Well, what can you do? At least Northern Ireland beat England!!

Today, I had a good class. I got them speaking a lot of English and also taught them Yellow Submarine by The Beatles. I think teaching songs is ok once in a while. I only did it or ten minutes. If they can leave the class and sing the songs to themselves that night, then at least there is English in their heads! Sometimes songs can actually help with grammar! I learned a bit when learning the Chinese song Yueliang Daibiao Wode Xin (月亮代表我的心).

I had my second Chinese class as well today. Maybe it was the tiredness kicking in from watching the match but a lot of it went over my head! I had a headache after the class, haha! I just need to practise some more, that’s all!

Had some nice fried rice for dinner. There is a stall up the street sells freshly made fried rice. The guy fries it up there in front of you! Gonna hit the sack fairly early tonight cos I’m tired after the lack of sleep!