Tipping...and ways to avoid real teaching

I was thinking about my last post, it isn't entirely true that there's no tipping in China. There's no tipping in restaurants, but taxis usually charge a .5 Yuan "gas surcharge" or something - basically a tip. More seriously, I've read that hotels often have a 10% "service fee" or something like that that they don't necessarily disclose in advance - that could easily do more damage than a tip in the US.

So today, for something different, I had my kids teach me about the Chinese zodiac, using Chinese characters. This is something good to do every once in a while, if for no other reason than to remind you how nerve-racking it is to speak in a foreign language in front of native speakers in a classroom setting. In any case, the kids were really impressed by me writing and talking in Chinese, and I think I remember some of the new characters. Tommorow I'm going to teach them to use a frisbee, we're near the end of our time at this school and I don't feel like teaching them too many things...and from what I've seen so far, frisbees are not available anywhere in China. I figure it'll be a once-in-a-lifetime experience..