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How to NOT Teach

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Number One Teaching No-No: Students do not equal friends. I’ve learned this over the last year, and now I’ve taught a few new classes where I maintained enough distance between me and my students to be able to do my job and stay in control of the classroom. This was not the case for my first six months or so in China.

When I first came to this school, I was hired with reservations - I only have a bachelor’s degree in English lit and absolutely no training in ESL or anything vaguely related to education. I was lucky to have a connection to get me hired in the first place, and my boss explained that I’d be teaching lower level students as a way to get my feet wet.

I started out teaching two classes. One of them was a class full of kittens, as far as I was concerned. I made Number One Teaching No-No really quickly in that class. You shouldn’t make friends with your students. It will cause all kinds of classroom management issues and heartbreak further down the line, as we shall see. In my defense, though, I spent the first few months in China feeling freaked out, wildly intimidated by my coworkers, homesick, and a little lonely. Besides Chris, my students were pretty much the only people I felt really comfortable talking to. And I think they picked up on some of that, because this was the class that threw me a birthday party, showed me their pet snake after school, brought me candy, and occasionally greeted me with applause when I walked into the room. They were the ones who helped me get a grip on China - they answered my questions, taught me Chinese words, and gave me a better sense of modern Chinese attitudes than I was getting in my first furtive, stressful trips to the supermarket. So I owe them. I taught them every academic term since I’ve been here except for one, and now I’m teaching them again with a few changes in the attendance roster, which I’ll explain later.

Then there was the other class. This was the lowest level class in the school, consisting of fifteen boys. Their classroom smelled like a gym sock in hell, and the only English they could use with any kind of confidence was obscene. I’d been in there maybe five minutes before deciding that this was NOT a job for the rookie, but rather for the educational equivalent of a green beret. It didn’t help that some of them were over six feet tall, and every time they’d stand up I’d suddenly feel extremely small. They slept in class, refused to do their work, talked loudly in Chinese over me, once memorably showed up to class completely sloshed after a liquid lunch, or appeared with casts on their arms and black eyes from fistfights over girls.

The first term that I taught them was absolutely awful. I left the class feeling like I’d been wrestling bears for two or three hours, limping away to lick my wounds and have mini nervous breakdowns. Finally, one day I lost it on them, and chewed them out like nobody’s business. I’m not a screamy person, and the shock factor worked. Perfectly. Then the tentative conversations after class started happening - they couldn’t understand directions because the language was too difficult or I spoke too fast, they couldn’t make sense of the grammar rules and got so frustrated with it that they stopped trying, they had the feeling that they were attempting something impossible, etc. It got better after that (although there were a few repercussions of my righteous fury). I switched my tactics - instead of getting flustered by the wildly inappropriate comments, I started shooting back (which earned me some street cred), I explained parts of speech using the multifunctional f-bomb, I redesigned the textbook content to revolve around things they cared about (hip hop, World of Warcraft, basketball, etc.), Chris and I went to KTV (karaoke) with them, and I started really priding myself of being capable of teaching them. I thought I’d figured out a way to make things stick in their heads. I started thinking of them as my Lost Boys, I knew their personal problems, I figured out how to read them and see the difference between laziness and frustration, and I was dumping HUGE amounts of personal time into supplementing lessons with extra stuff to be sure they understood. By the end of last school year, I would have jumped off a cliff for those guys if I had to, and I think they would have followed me if I asked them to.

Then almost all of them failed their final exam. They got the opportunity to resit it, and some of them made it through, some of them didn’t. I was bummed out by this, and when I got back from my short summer vacation, I got called in to the boss’s office to discuss their future. They wound up taking a three week summer class and then retaking that level’s exam. I spent that three weeks wracking my brains for new ways to present the material and giving motivational speeches that would have made generals proud. And this, the most problematic class in the school behaviorally and academically, worked HARD for it. They were taking notes, asking questions, and acting like a completely different class. Finally, they took the exam, and all but two of them passed it. Whew. It was a better outcome than I was braced for.

We had a week off for orientation, and I was totally psyched about coming back to class and giving high fives and starting Level Four with them. Seven of them had moved up to a higher class, leaving eight with me. But there was another aspect of their program that I had no idea was lurking out there to trip them up. These students are studying in a foundation program. They passed the level exam for that program, but there was more to it. They also need a mark of five on their IELTS score (American friends: like the TOEFL) or higher to get their visa. If they don’t have the IELTS score to get a visa, the foundation program won’t do them any good. And they just took their IELTS tests, and their scores were too low.

The school decided that the class shouldn’t move on to Level Four. I understood the reasons for this - they’d barely passed their exams, and in a practical sense, the lower IELTS score meant more than the ok exam score. The school wanted to give them the best shot possible for getting into a foreign university, which meant a hardcore focus on IELTS and English. So they got taken out of their program, and put into intensive language training - no more foundation program, no more subjects, strictly classes in IELTS and English. I found out about this on Tuesday, the day before classes started.

They were NOT happy when I went to class on Wednesday afternoon. They’d found out the news that morning, and were moping around the corners of the classroom when I came in. I’d spent hours the night before putting together a curriculum of sorts, which I’m pretty proud of, to replace the level four textbook they wouldn’t be using, and several other hours freaking out on Chris over the matter, and I had this complicated vocabulary/writing exercise/role playing thing all photocopied and planned out. The class trudged to their seats, and I asked them sympathetically how they were. The universal answer was, “bad.” One of them told me that they were all planning to leave the school, because they couldn’t see much of a point in staying.

Now, I rationally know that these students had massive problems with study skills, motivation, and what have you, and they’d been floundering in all of their other subjects. But I defy you to learn that a class you’ve been teaching English for one year hasn’t improved their ENGLISH at all, in one year, and not do the math and come up with a highly plausible common denominator.I felt like I’d let them down (and of course key players have told me that’s not true already) and misled them.

I meant to go into class and be as optimistic and motivational as I could, but one look at their faces and I immediately forgot everything I was supposed to do, and started with “I’m so sorry, I feel like I haven’t done my job well,” and started bawling. NOT professional, at all. And now I know that if you ever want to seriously freak thuggish Chinese youth, just start crying. So they spent a few minutes making me feel better, and then we pretty much just had love fest for the rest of the class. One of them made the comment that they’d bombed the IELTS because “we are all VERY bad men.” “No, no, you are good men!” And all eight of them grinned and said, “NO! BAD!” So we spent a little time giving everyone gangster identities - I had a hitman, a mob boss, an arsonist, a cat burglar, a sociopath, a jewel thief, a ruffian, and a drug dealer by the end of it. We wound up talking about a surprising variety of stuff (art, women’s rights in China, high school, the Olympics, stuff like that). At some point they started addressing me as Anne Jie (Big Sister Anne), which almost set off the waterworks again.

Most of them have left the school by now (and for the record, I have actually done things in class with them since last Wednesday - it was only one day of horsing around). Last term I’d write little stories about them for reading on Fridays (I gave them all superpowers in one, stuck them into western fairy tales in another, stuff like that - it got them to read and get a little bit of new vocabulary in, I guess). I started working on one called Very Bad Men that I’ll never get to give them. So this turned out not to be a touching family comedy about a ragtag group of champions after all, no matter how much I was looking forward to cheering for them at the graduation they didn’t make it to. I don’t really know where they’re headed - I think they want to take cheaper IELTS classes with people who speak Chinese. If they don’t get that IELTS score, there goes the “study abroad” dream crashing to the ground, which depresses me to think about. Some of them wanted to go abroad because their Chinese entrance exams weren’t good enough, and I have no idea what they’re going to do. It’s just been a bad week for me. The good news, I guess, is that by next term I’ll have mostly fresh classes that I will not make the mistake of getting so personally wrapped up in, thereby avoiding massively depressing situations like this.

I got a text message from one of my guys that said, “Anne. I will miss you. You are not my teacher now, you’re my friend.” Damn straight, and that’s probably a better arrangement for everyone.

I got really sad over this.

Filed in Adventures in Teaching, Whining | Comments (1)

a fervent apology

Friday, August 8, 2008

A while back, three students came running into my class five or six minutes late. Technically, they’re not allowed in the classroom after the bell rings, but these three had never been late before, always did their homework, and generally never made me angry. Plus, we were reviewing for an exam, and five minutes didn’t seem worth costing them a full hour over. However, their classmaster was in the hall and had seen them come in late, so I had to take some action. I assigned a paragraph explaining why they were late, just to keep myself covered. Two of them tossed out a basic “sorry, overslept, won’t happen again” thing, but here was the third:

Dear Anne,

Today, I’m late. About five minutes later. For this behavior, I have nothing to say. It’s my fault. I shouldn’t sleep like a person who has no responsibility. William predict the time at 7 o’clock, but his clock lost an hour. He made a mistake, but the daylife teacher in the dormitory call us, we didn’t wake up. So I have most of the fault. I think the matter will not happen like this terrible day will not appear again.

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first Chinese banquet

Wednesday, August 6, 2008

When I came home to visit, the number one question I got asked was, “what’s the food like?”, which made me feel incredibly guilty. The truth is, I don’t eat that much Chinese food, and when I do, it’s not especially exciting. My favorite dish is scrambled eggs and tomatoes. There are a few beef and chicken dishes I can get into, but for the most part, I really haven’t gone for gold in a country with arguably the most exciting/fear factorish culinary tradition on the planet.

My awesome friend Wells came to see us last week, and we took him to the restaurant around the corner that Chris and I had tried a few nights ago. We had some really good veggie dishes, and thought that the place would be a solid addition to our dietary canon. Of course, when we took Wells there, we wound up ordering a plate of feet on accident, which caused me to totally lose my appetite.

I felt bad about that - I don’t want to be the white girl in China who gets squeamish about exotic food (even though that’s exactly who I am). Fortunately, last night I had the chance to make up lost points when I went along with Chris to dinner with the family of a student he’d been privately tutoring.

One of the upsides/downsides of working for a school with a really large foreign staff is that you’re spared a lot of the culturaly stuff most foreign teachers get, including formal banquets. I’d never been to a serious Chinese banquet before. The weddings and staff events I’d attended previously were buffet situations. I was terrified when we went. 1) I didn’t want to embarass Chris with my bumbling laowai ways, 2) I was really worried that something would be put in front of me that manners demanded I choke down, even if it resulted in me blowing chunks all over the table, 3) I don’t speak enough Chinese to be anything other than a goofy monkey masquerading as a person.

It wound up being a lot of fun. It was in a really ritzy hotel, and we had a private dining room. We went with the boss and his wife, as well as the student and his family, and some of their family friends. This included another high school student, who I’m pretty sure got dragged along in order to converse with American teachers. She sat by me and bore her cross bravely, spending more time helping me eat than gleaning valuable information about American university systems.

We sat at a big circular table, and when we first walked in, we all had a big showy fuss about who would sit in the seat of honor. I don’t even remember how it worked itself out, but it took a long time. I just stood there until someone showed me which seat I was supposed to be in. In front of me was a plate with some shrimp and cold meats, one of which was duck, the others - I have no idea. It was tasty, though! We managed to avoid baijiu, and performed the required toasting with orange juice (which, incidentally, was damned good juice - way better than any I’ve been able to find in a store). A server snatched the plates as soon as we were done, and plunked down new courses as fast as we could eat them. There was an AMAZING chicken (?) soup that the high school kids told us was featured in Kung Fu Panda, which I haven’t seen, a dumpling course (holy god, good dumplings), a weird custard thing that was tasty, “western” style beef (which was the only thing I had to eat that made me wince on the inside - it was nasty meat wrapped around a huge honking chunk of bone), a rice dish, vegetables, and more. Early on, we got some kind of sweet stuff served with milk and honey in a hollowed out dragon fruit. I don’t know if the actual stuff was dragon fruit meat or if it was just extremely elegant presentation, but it was GOOD. I mean, the food just kept coming, plate after plate after plate. Eventually, the server began passing out what looked an awful lot like an extremely unhealthy piece of human feces with weird little quasi tentacles coming out of it. It was a sea slug. I saw it, and inwardly I felt a huge rush of relief when I realized that I was, in fact, going to be able to do it. And by god, I really liked it. It had a squishy, gelatinuous texture - basically exactly what you’d imagine a sea slug would feel like - but the second I stopped thinking SLUG and started thinking tasty sauce, I scarfed the whole thing down and really enjoyed it. I think I finished my slug before anyone else at the table. I was in serious danger of bursting at the seams when the final round of fruit appeared to signal the end of the meal.

Throughout the whole thing, people periodically got up and walked around the table, toasting everyone. It seemed to be a pretty simple process - stand up, say xie xie, smile a lot, take a tiny sip of orange juice, and move on. Chris and I made a round too, and most everyone said thank you, or cheers, in English, and smiled at us. We also got presents from our hostess - I scored a necklace, and Chris has a handsomely crafted shark with a diamond for an eye that doubles as a keychain and a bottle opener. I was really worried going into it that I was going to breach some sort of etiquette unknowingly, but it was totally ok. My high school neighbor finally just told me, “eat as you want, do not be worried about table manners here!” After a good round of guffaws over my inept chopsticking abilities (there were advanced chopstick challenges here, mind you), I gave it up and used the fork and knife thoughtfully provided.

I feel really silly posting about this, since this is extremely old news to anyone else who’s spent any time in China. It’s also eyebrow raising that I’ve been here nine months and haven’t gone out to a nice  dinner with a Chinese family yet. I sort of feel like anyone I know who’s also in China is going to jump on this post with the “well, actually…” comments that I definitely deserve (once again, the usual disclaimer: I haven’t been here long enough to know much about anything, and I’m the least expert source on anything Chinese you’re likely to find). But it was cool and I really liked it and wanted to tell the internet about it. Also, I really *like* a lot of Chinese manners. I guess it seems like the dominant social principle here is one of hardcore passive aggression (I fit right in!), but there’s other stuff, like the ritual toasting, that’s just awfully nice and respectful. Or like making sure your table has knives and forks and your menu includes “western” beef for your foreign guests. Or putting away the ridiculously expensive baijiu you brought in favor of nonalcoholic orange juice after seeing looks of horror on your foreign friends’ faces. I think people get a little carried away with the Chinese notion of guest/host relationship (witness: the 2008 Olympic Games), but I like the idea that respect and courtesy are the most important characteristics of social interaction, you know?

Anyway, main points:

  • Chinese banquets = fun, not stressful.
  • I like it when people are nice.
  • I ate a sea slug.
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Really, really, really unfortunate.

Saturday, August 2, 2008

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my bookcase

Thursday, July 24, 2008

Ok, if you’re wondering how the China/America jetlag works, here’s my experience: go to America, and be unable to stay awake for five or six days. Come to China, and be unable to go to sleep for the same amount of time. It’s two in the morning, and I absolutely cannot sleep. So, here’s a tour of the bookcase in my bedroom.

The primary bookcase that shows off our dazzlingly varied interests and astonishing levels of literacy is located in the living room (incidentally, when we moved over here and I was ecstatic over winning the rights to organize by subject and alphabetize by author, I realized that sooner or later I’m destined for library science and should just stop fighting it), but we have a second one in the bedroom, with glass doors on the front. The top shelf holds the collection of single issue comics that a couple of wonderful boys in Arkansas took pains to get for me and either send to China or send with me on a plane in one of the most meaningful gestures of transpacific friendship extended to me thus far. There are also some magazines (Vice and a few cooking magazines), Chris’s headphones, and the case of Michael Hearst’s Music For Ice Cream Trucks with a mix CD inside that I’ve been meaning to rip and keep forgetting. Two things to mention: Music For Ice Cream Trucks is the best music in the world to listen to if you’re sad and trying to fall asleep, and that mix CD is one of the best that’s ever been made for me, which is a perennial source of guilt. Its maker got in my way at exactly the wrong time for a well-meaning guy to cross paths with me at my most emotional bulldozer-ness. I have absolutely no idea what happened to him, only that I hurt his feelings pretty badly and the music is awesome. If he ever reads this, dear god, I’m so sorry - try to stay clear of 23 year olds fresh out of their first misguided three and a half year relationship, because heaven knows you didn’t deserve THAT.

The second shelf is where the pictures and souvenirs are. There are two of me and Daniel (from New Years and Halloween) and one of the entire Gresham clan at the beach, containing rare photographic evidence of my ill-fated black hair dye stint. I ADORED the way it looked, but Mom really, really, really didn’t, and after a couple of months I wound up feeling so guilty that I wound up paying an absurd price to get my hair stripped, which was an awful lot harder on the pelt than the dye and has become one of those things that the family jokes about and everyone laughs, but there’s still a sore spot. There are also two pictures from Chris’s sister’s wedding, who I got to meet last week and who was really, really cool - none of the suspicious, undermining, disdainful, all but overtly threatening treatment that I’d be wholeheartedly throwing at my siblings’ significant others. There are also a couple of pieces of coral, a jar of sand, and sea shells from the Philippines, a rock with a lot of fossils Amy and I found in a drainage ditch in Harrison, a weird Chinese sculpture paperweight looking thing that has a purpose I keep forgetting to ask Chris to tell me, and the souvenir “traditional” baijiu cup from the Maotai gift set Chris got for his birthday. Maotai is swanky baijiu, and I think almost everyone reading this now knows exactly what baijiu is after my trip home. I swear the nice stuff tasted worse than the fifteen RMB stuff from Suguo (the name of our local convenience store chain) that I brought home.

The third shelf is along the same lines - a picture of Scout in a frame, the group photos taken of all the teachers and students at the beginning of the year (I’m not in them - I didn’t get here until October), and a jar with some nasty water and the now dead white flowers our landlord brought us as a housewarming present that smelled really good at the time. I tried to fit in the little embroidered panels that one of my students brought me from Suzhou, but they wouldn’t fit, and they’re still in their box until I get around to finding a catproof place for them.

The last two shelves are a little bit junkier. The fourth has all of my Chinese stuff stacked up on it - flashcards, CDs, the scripts for the CDS, a grammar/vocab workbook, the two character workbooks, character grid pads, and the dozen or so notebooks that I’ve accumulated over the last year. I also temporarily stuffed in the bags of Mardi Gras beads I bought for my students in New Orleans as a cheap souvenir that leads into an easy lesson (about Mardi Gras and New Orleans culture, not exposing oneself to get shiny things). The bottom shelf is really junky - it’s the storage spot for Stuff We Use Often (my ipod, cameras, various chargers, cables, stuff like that).

That’s it, really.

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three scary mannequins at the local pageant dress shop

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

No hands.

Inexplicably, one hand.

OH GOD KILL IT KILL IT KILL IT KILL IT KILL IT!!!!!!

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chicago/new orleans

Monday, July 14, 2008

Good grief, what a week. I staggered off the plane around 9:30 Monday night, which according to my biological understanding of time should have been 10:30 Tuesday morning, spent the night in Little Rock, drove to New Orleans, saw my sister, drove back to Harrison, spent the night, drove to Arrow Rock to see my brother, spent the night, drove back to Harrison. I am BEAT, I’ve got a cold, and the best two cats in the entire world are fighting for space on my lap and making it very difficult to type.

I’ve read up on reverse culture shock, but I don’t think it actually applies to a two week visit after an eight month absence. I think that stuff hits you a little harder when you actually repatriate after a considerably longer length of time. I think reverse culture shock is a little more serious than the “holy crap everything I thought I was familiar with is freaking weird” feeling that I’ve got going on. 

When we landed in Chicago, we went to our gate to wait for our connecting flight to Little Rock. And I realize how horribly insensitive this is to say, but it was like going whale watching. Bear in mind that I’ve been in a place where the overwhelming majority is skinny enough to look unhealthy or model-quality by American standards, and it was WEIRD to see such a large number of serious obese people. I’m not talking about people with some extra poundage, or with larger figures. I’m talking about *really* large people (the sort whose doctors are frantically begging them to do something), and I just hadn’t seen that in a while. Also, the amount of English flying at me from all directions made me feel a little dizzy. Since I started studying characters, I developed the habit of looking really intently at any printed material I saw outside (signs, ads, etc.) to see if I could recognize any characters. I usually could get one or two, but I really had to LOOK at everything hard. When I stepped into the Chicago airport, that habit kicked in and for a few seconds my brain was on spin cycle, trying to wrestle with such a huge load of symbolic content I’d just actively engaged with. Then there were the people speaking English. Everywhere. Granted, when I’m at work, I’m around English speakers, and when I’m at Castle Bar, most people speak English, but somehow this was a lot different. We were sitting next to a group of missionaries, and I got really disgusted listening to their conversation (I don’t remember specifics, they just had a really disrespectful attitude toward the culture they were trying to “save,” and that really bothers me). And I couldn’t STOP listening. Then I had to readjust to being somewhere where most people could understand ME. I’ve developed a tendency to swear very openly in public, and it takes some conscious effort not to do that, or to converse about people nearby. Stuff like that. I bought a bag of cheezits and some altoids at the airport, and it felt really, really, really weird to use English to complete a transaction and even have a little bit of a conversation. 

Then we flew to Little Rock, met up with our parents, ate at Waffle House (which was fun), and went our separate ways. I was feeling really off balance as a result of jet lag and the unpleasant first impression I’d had of my nation, and I lay down on the hotel bed to try to sleep some of it off. But I’ve been sleeping on a really hard Chinese mattress for eight months, and the hotel bed felt like it was made out of flan. I kept sinking and sinking and sinking… It was very hard to get to sleep. 

But by the end of the next day, I was in New Orleans. I abruptly switched from, “man, the US sucks,” to “THE US IS AWESOME!!!!!” New Orleans is a strange place anyway, and that made it easier to deal with than more familiar ground. I could tell I had China leftovers in my head when I was amazed at how clean everything was, but all the obsessing over my two national mindsets got dropped pretty fast when I was presented with so much eye candy. I got to see my sister, walk around a cemetery, walk around the french market, see a really good production of As You Like It, and get my bearings a little bit. We didn’t stay long, but it was a good visit, and made me much more optimistic about the next two weeks of my life. And I’ll continue later, because I’m too tired to stay awake any longer. Here are some pictures from New Orleans.

 

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back home

Saturday, July 12, 2008

 

If you’ve never been to Harrison, just trust me. The sign’s funny.

 

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going home

Sunday, July 6, 2008

Ok, so tomorrow I’m getting on a plane to go back to the states to see family and friends, drink tap water and cherry coke, eat real Mexican food, buy conditioner meant for my freakish foreign hair, take bubble baths after eight months of standing showers, freely talk to strangers without having to struggle for words, snorgle my cats, and stock up on books, gossip, and uncensored news.

And I am DAMNED proud of myself that I’m going back to visit after making it eight months in China without turning tail and fleeing. This has been a period of time in which I can definitely say that I’ve Done Something, and it feels good to know that over the last eight months, I’ve actually changed and moved forward in a completely unexpected direction. I’ve had some really frustrating periods of time here, and I’ve gotten alarmingly used to feeling incompetent, dependent, and lost. I’ve got to say, though, that the last couple of months or so have been really, really good China months, in spite of a nasty workload.

I’ve noticed that I have a tendency to channel all of my newbie expat issues (frustration, loneliness, feelings of inadequency and general freaked out-ness) into little things, and I’ve seen other people doing this too. Specifically, if I’m having a Bad China Day, I don’t necessarily start screaming at the government or the crowds of people on the street - all of that bile and anger gets directed 100% at the copy machine at work. The poor thing gets jammed with maddening frequency, and it’s not advanced enough to do double-sided pages or any of the fancy things I’m used to copy machines being able to do. And I swear, when that thing messes up on me at the wrong time, it unleashes a really untoward flood of hostility. It’s not China’s fault that I have problems with the copy machine. If you work in an office anywhere in the world, you will have to deal with paper jams and spacial-conceptual puzzles involving which way to turn the paper, what to do when an extra blank sheet spits out in the middle of your fifty copies of a seven page exam, or which coworker is least likely to mind rampant staple theft. But I have had SCENES with that machine that are completely out of proportion to dealing with a paper jam. When I’m in the office by myself, it’s not uncommon for me to wind up screaming profanity, slamming paper drawers, overheating, and cursing China for allowing this stone age piece of shit to exist in the first place. “If this was any kind of NORMAL country, they’d take the manufacturer out back and shoot him in the head….” etc.

So yeah, the copy machine is basically the barometer for how I’m feeling about my life. I wish I had a more poetic symbol of my mental state  than a Xerox machine, but there you have it.

Anyway, I’m pleased to report that lately the odds of me throwing bricks at that unavoidably necessary piece of machinery are really low right now. I’ve been having a really good China time lately (if you take work out of the equation). I’ve been recording voice tracks for an English textbook, and this process requires me to take a lot of solo taxi rides. It’s one of those little things that’s been helping me a LOT. Previously, getting into a taxi and saying my address was a little bit like a key sticking in a door. You say the words over and over again, until finally you jiggle it the right way and something clicks and the driver understands you. On my way to and from the recording studio, though, I’ve been able to fumble my way through a conversation with the drivers, and they’re some of the best, cheapest Chinese teachers I’ve got. It’s a little nerve-wracking, since I really don’t understand much at all, but it makes learning Chinese feel so much more possible when I’m using it and getting things across. I had one guy who spoke a little bit of English, and we spoke a weird hybrid language, randomly inserting English words in Chinese sentences, and laughing at each other and ourselves. It didn’t feel like a struggle - it felt like two people actually communicating as human beings, and it made me feel very good.

I know that I probably won’t stay here long enough to become fluent in Mandarin, but the tiny little chunks I’ve got have been enough to unlock a few tiny Chinese doors, and that’s enough to keep me coming back for more. I’m really excited about coming back after the summer to see how far I can get with it.

However, I’m also really excited about having a break for two weeks… If you’re going to be in New Orleans, Missouri, Harrison, or Fayetteville any time over the next two weeks, let me know, because odds are good that I’d love to see you.

Filed in Going Places, Surviving Daily Life | Comments (0)

Ice Cream

Friday, June 20, 2008

We’ve developed a raging addiction to ice cream bars called Magnums. And yes, they do have a sultry female on the packaging shooting a come-hither look. The logo is Desire, 2008. And yes, the size is about what you’d expect from the name. And it’s just funny to say, “ok, I’m going out for some trash bags and magnums.” “Did you pick up any Magnums?” etc., when you’re actually talking about ice cream (and I’m still about twelve years old in my head).

So today, I was in charge of picking up the magnums, since I’d eaten the last one and Chris was away doing night duty (sitting around the school watching students study for two hours). While I was walking down the street looking for places that sold ice cream, it started pouring rain. I found a place that had ice cream, tea, and wine, and ducked inside. I bought enough magnums to lend credit to the idea that foreigners are inherently bizzarre, unknowable creatures, and the man running the shop wouldn’t let me leave without an umbrella. I didn’t know how to explain in Chinese that walking around in the rain on a hot day is one of my favourite things in the world, and kept trying to communicate that I didn’t need to take his pink floral umbrella. He began to get a little upset, and was probably giving me a lecture about walking around unprotected in the rain wearing sandals (additionally, he might have thought I was pregnant, due to how much ice cream I was buying and the poofy shirt I was wearing), so I took his umbrella, walked back to my apartment, got my own umbrella, and walked back to the ice cream store to return it. I wasn’t sure if it was a gift or a loan, and had a huge moral debate with myself on the walk home as to whether or not I should return it - I never know what’s going to be rude here, and it seemed like failing to accept a present might be a breach of etiquette. On the other hand, the man was really nice and I wanted to buy ice cream from him in the future, which I couldn’t do if I inadvertently stole his umbrella (he took it back without a fuss, so I don’t think I screwed up).

And that’s basically how I’ve been treated in China. People help me out, language barrier be damned. When I was struggling to carry an oven home from Jin Run Fa (my Chinese version of Wal-Mart), total strangers stopped to try to help me. If I don’t have enough small change in a restaurant or at a street food stall, I wind up with a one to four yuan discount. People point when I look lost, help me open doors when I’m pushing instead of pulling, and teach me Chinese words with a smile if I ask (learned umbrella yestereday - yu san). One thing that I will definitely say for China is that it’s a damned hospitable nation.

I guess it’s stating the obvious to say that most Chinese people I’ve met have a MUCH stronger identification with China as a whole than I ever did with the United States, and I think that’s why I get the guest treatment. I’m a guest in their enormous home, and on a daily basis most strangers seem eager to make sure that the guest is happy. The dark side of this, though, is that as far as I can tell, I could live in China for the rest of my life, marry a Chinese man, speak and write the language fluently, and every time I walked down a street, I’d still be a Guest.

Regardless, though, the ice cream tastes good and it was a very sweet gesture.

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