This episode is from two years ago, during the Chinese New Year break in January and February. Now it's the end of April, 2018. Here in southern China, we've had a whole month of holidays, it seems! At the beginning of the month, we had three days for the Qingming (Tomb-Sweeping) Festival, then a couple weeks ago my province of Guangxi had a five-day holiday for a local Zhuang minority festival, and now I'm on another three-day break for May 1! All of these holidays mess up my teaching schedule! Sometimes I even have to teach on Saturday or Sunday. For example, yesterday (Saturday) I had my Monday classes. Now we won't have any more holidays until June, when we have a three-day break for the Dragon Boat Festival. In the dialog below, I mention that I'm tutoring a student from the city of Chongqing. She's from Nanning but studies in Chonging. We finished our lessons and I didn't hear from her again. Until a month ago when I walked into a classroom at an IELTS center where I work part-time and she was there for private lessons to prepare for the speaking part of the IELTS exam. She didn't know that I was going to be the teacher! It took me a few minutes to remember her, because I have prepared a lot of students for the IELTS. It was so interesting to meet her two years later. We had eight hours of lessons together to help her prepare for the exam.

 

LnR 022 Watcha doin? (Replay)

What are you doing? = Watcha doin'?

A phone call with my brother:

A: Hey, little brother, it's Nancy!

B: Oh, hi, Nancy! It's good to hear from you.

A: Yeah, I know. I call Mom once or twice a week, but I seldom call you. Sorry.

B: Don't worry about it. Mom says that your classes have finished.

A: That's right. We're on the Chinese New Year break now. Students and teachers have about five weeks free, thank goodness. I worked a lot of extra hours this semester. I'm glad for a long break.

B: So, whatcha doin' for the break? Traveling?

A: No, I'm staying at home. I've been teaching a student from Chongqing every day at 3. She's made a lot of progress.

B: And whatcha doin" when you're not teaching?

A: Oh, sleeping late, going online, watching TV, working on my podcasts. Relaxing. What about you? Whatcha doin' this weekend?

B: Oh, man. My boss asked me to work this weekend. I had planned to go visit Mom and her two cats, but now I can't.

A: Well, what can ya do? Ya gotta work. You don't wanna make your boss mad.

B: No kidding. But in my free time, I'm gonna look online for another job.

A: Good luck with that!