What DO You Want, Exactly?

One of the remarks I heard about the locals when I first arrived was that they will do what you ask, but rarely the way you wanted. Apparently, the Chinese way is to do things the way you think they should be done, but not necessarily the way your boss thinks they should be done.

There is a flip side to this, one with which I am becoming well acquainted. Many of the local teachers I've spoken to seem to assume that I always, always have a plan, even if there's no practical reason to think that I would. Case in point:

I had a class today - two hours with middle schoolers (shades of EF - needless to say, this was not one of my favorite classes). I wasn't even told who I would be teaching until the cab picked me up. I asked the woman who was taking me there what I should do. It's always good to get specifics, since there's no way for them to know what my bosses have told me. She told me what they always tell me - freetalk, lots of practice, games if there is time. This would suggest that there was nothing in particular that they wanted.

The first hour goes off fine. It wasn't until the break that I realized that I was supposed to do a single class of two hours and not two classes of one hour each. The latter would have been much simpler, as I would have only needed to repeat the first hour. Instead, I muddled through a second hour with the same students, trying to come up with anything to keep the class moving. Part of the way through, the local teacher who'd been assigned to the room (not the one that picked me up) commented that I should have prepared in advance. I didn't say anything, but my thoughts ran along the title of the post.

It seems that the teachers around here have a habit of giving me grossly insufficient information and then chiding me for not being ready for things they never told me about. Apparently I'm expected to use my soothsaying abilities to determine what the class needs (those powers being akin to the psychic locating power I need to find my school after I'm given incomplete directions).