Peking University

I taught TEFL at Peking University (PKU) to primary & junior summer camp students. Also took Chinese classes at PKU.

PKU is so famous in China. Cannot even enter campus w/o guards seeing your credentials. So many Chinese simply stop to take photos of the western gate.

  

I liked PKU a lot. Just a lot different than US campuses. You would have a lot of really nice areas on campus and then a lot of rather old/dated looking areas/buildings. I bought a few gifts w/ PKU on it including a t-shirt. Lots of very cheap little street vendors to buy breakfast, lunch, etc.

Most of the classrooms were awful. Terrible A/C if any at all. Small classrooms. Smelly toilets (including squat toilets). No bathroom paper of any kind; very common in China.

The children liked having an American teacher. Always wanted to take our pics and have our emails. They like pretty much everything American: history, movies, music, games, NBA, etc. They all adopt Western names though some of them were really strange, like Bobo, Bin Bin, Nike, Cinderella, etc.

It was so hot during my time at PKU. Training, teaching, & studying was so intense, that in addition to the heat, most of us were exhausted. We had no days off. You worked Saturday & Sundays too. Our classes would also often follow each other at different ends of the campus so walking was terrible.

But all-in-all, not terrible. I included some more pics below regarding PKU. I took these one day with Laila. Really nice lake in the middle of campus. There was also a subway right outside campus which was convenient to go to downtown Beijing.