Had one of those days today when you realise why people want to teach - the students were all interested in my lesson and we even had some good discussion groups going. It's wierd how the same lesson plan can fall flat on it's face on day but work brilliantly the next! I spent some of lunchtime with one of the Chinese teachers who was explaining to me why some of the students know very little English. It was difficult to understand exactly what she was saying, but it seems that as a general rule our school (Huairou No 1 Middle School) only takes students from certain Junior High Schools - ones which are considered to be of a high standard. If you want your child to come here and they didn't attend one of those nominated schools, then you have to pay fees. We went for noodles tonight as we hadn't had them for 4 days!