Photos!

I just finished putting a bunch of photos on Snapfish. It's made me realize how few pictures I've actually taken here. I need to get on that. Ten months will be over before I know it. If you would like access to the albums, send me an e-mail or post a comment. Right now I have pics from my adventures in Beijing and my 6 hour trip to Europe.

Favorite products seen (but not purchased) at grocery store last night:
Spice of Stewed Meat
Refined Chive Flower

Doesn't that just make your mouth water? And those were the labels that I could read!

RIP: Of the three fish I bought at the market on Sunday, all have passed on to the big Beijing sewer in the sky. I guess you get what you pay for. I suppose I got my $.16 worth of enjoyment out of them.

Tales of 7th Grade Terrors

And today was yet another wonderful Tuesday with the 7th graders at JingShan. I woke up feeling kind of sick this morning. I hoped I would be better by the time I got to school (an hour car ride) but I ended up feeling like my stomach really didn’t want to keep that half of piece of toast I ate for breakfast. My first class was actually very good. The other 7th grade teacher and I suspect that the grade as a whole got yelled at pretty bad. And trust me: you don’t want to get in trouble when you go to a Chinese boarding school. I only taught for about 20 minutes and let them use the other half of the class to talk or work quietly. They were all perfectly quiet! A few kids slept but the rest did homework quiet as can be. I was starting to feel a bit better (the wonders of medicine) which was good because I had my terror class after that (aka the worst class in the whole school of K-12). And terrors they were… I’ve decided that baby steps will be the trick for working with them. Right now, we’re working on staying in our desks during class. There was improvement: I didn’t have to physically put any students in their desks, a mean teacher look and a “Sit down!” was enough. There were other issues to deal with today, though. Next week (well after the holiday), food is not allowed. (I know it should never have been but I have to pick my battles). Why? Well, one girl decided that it would be funny to dump grape juice on another boy. I kindly reminded her that 12 year olds do not act like that. There was also some spillage in the back of the classroom when I was reminding her of her age. All I saw was a girl come back with a mop. Then there was the mp3 player incident. I caught a student listening to it during class and told him next time it was mine. He was listening to it again in about 2 minutes. I tried to take it from him but couldn’t pry it from it fingers. Five minutes later, he had it resting on his leg and of course ear phones in ear so I snatched it then before he had a chance to react. Later in class, I caught him trying to take it off my desk when I had my back turned to him. After that I carried it around with me for the rest of class. This upset him quite a bit. So he started pointing at me and saying “bad teacher, bad teacher” over and over. I turned and looked at him and said “Bad student” and ignored him for the rest of class. At the end of class, he wanted his mp3 player back and I told him he could have it if he asked me for it politely in English. The best he could up with was “Give me!”. I told him that was a command and not a question and left with the mp3 player. He followed me and I told him to go back to his classroom. Amazingly, he listened. Hopefully he will remember all this after the holiday. My last class was as usual pretty although in comparison to the class before them, that doesn’t take much.

So I really do do more then fight with 7th graders here in China. This past weekend I had some great adventures. On Friday, I went to Carrefour (European Wal-mart chain store) to buy furniture for my bedroom. I ended up spending more than I planned. The bookcase wasn’t on sale anymore and I got a nicer nightstand. I also got some banana bread and two baozi which are steamed bread stuffed with meat or veggies. When I checked out, I realized that I only would have 10RMB left for a taxi ride home. 10RMB is the minimum amount for a taxi here and I wasn’t sure if that would be enough. It was my first time in a taxi by myself and I didn’t want to risk being caught with not enough money especially considering how bad my Chinese is. I wasn’t sure what to do. I certainly couldn’t carry the boxes home. One weighed over 20lbs. I decided to try my luck with an ATM which did work and then I definitely didn’t need to worry about money. Between the taxi driver’s broken English and my pitiful Chinese, I got home. I was excited to see a light on in my apartment and hoped that Hannah was home to open to door for me. As Vick tells the story, “we heard someone yell “Hannah, Hannah” and then thump, thump.” Those thumps were me dropping the boxes. Oops! Oh well, nothing was damaged. I was pretty happy with my successful shopping trip and taxi ride. I had done it all by myself and used some Chinese. Only I found out later that it wasn’t so successful. The baozi which I had asked for without meat were stuffed with pork. Yuck! And I had only bought half the bookcase: just shelves! I have a Chinese friend helping me solve that one. On Saturday I spent all day with a Chinese friend. It was really fun because I got to learn how to cook some new foods. On Sunday, Hannah and I went “book shopping” and made a new friend on the subway who later came to study that night. It was really neat! Ok this is long enough. I’ll let you know if anything else exciting happens. Four days till October break!

Tuesday Excitement

I really should be planning classes now but the problem is that I don't know if the book I was given for class A is the book they will be using and I don't have the right book for class B. I know what I'll be doing at lunch tomorrow. At least my morning classes are easy: it's the same thing I taught today in the morning.

Excitement for today: My BAD 7th grade class was so horrible today that I ended up teaching the one girl interested in learning one on one. Every few minutes I got up to put the other students back in their seats. There's nothing I can do to control that class. I've tried every teacher trick in the book. I think the language barrier is the biggest problem plus I have nothing to hold over them. There's no tests or grades thus no motivation to learn. I can't use (and wouldn't want to use) physical punishments like the Chinese teachers. Hopefully next week I'll have a Chinese assistant that can yell at the students in a language they understand.

Hannah and I have power again!!! After an unfortunate misshap with the DVD player on Wednesday night (that's right last Wednesday), we haven't had lights or anything. It was mostly fine during the day because we have enough windows and could charge computer batteries and keep food at the Joshes' apartment, who live across the hall. Nights I spent at other people's apartments. (Me: So, um, you guys doing anything tonight? Jon: No, why? Me: Well... Umm... Jon: You can come over and watch a movie at our apartment. Me: Thanks!) I have to say that I'm enjoying sitting in my own apartment tonight without out having to constantly watch the battery on my computer and being able to get hot water from the waterbottle.

I got a new tea today. I love trying new teas! This one is orange flowers. In the bag they are dried out and small but when I put them in hot water they open up and look alive! It's really pretty and tastes good too. I have to drink it out of a special cup that has a tea filter in it so I don't drink the flowers too. My other favorites here are chrysantimum tea (dried flowers) and jasmine (Lipton bags... oh the shame! I need to learn what it looks like dried or what the characters are for it so I can get real jasmine tea).

I found some (cheap) furniture to buy for my bedroom. As soon as I get it, I can rearrange and reorganize my room and maybe finally feel moved in! So much of my stuff is still in bags and boxes because I don't have a place to put it. Hopefully on Thursday morning that will all change.

Well, I should get to bed. I need to be to the Great School (the main offices) by 8 tommorrow which means waking up at 6:45. Yuck!

Hope everything is well back home. Write me an e-mail and let me know what's up! I love getting mail from home. Oh and speaking of which, I have my snail mail address and landline phone number now, if you would like either of those, let me know and I'll send it out.

Oops!

I'm sure you figured this out but the captions for the bathroom and the kitchen are reversed...

Busy Busy Busy

So, let's see, what have I done since I last updated my blog... Classes have been going great so far! I'm really starting to get a hang on this teaching thing. It took me a while to realize the level of the students and come down to that level but it's getting more and more fun every day. Plus, I don't need to plan every minute of class anymore which saves me a lot of time.

We finally got paid which means that I have money to buy stuff for my bare apartment. And bought stuff I have! Our kitchen is almost fully stocked with all the necessary baking and cooking tools needed. Buying food is challenging. Most labels are in Chinese... Plus just finding food I eat is hard. They don't sell canned beans here! Which is what I lived on most of last semester. But the tofu is super cheap and super available. And I have a wok to make yummy stir fries. I took some pics of my apartment tonight. I figure if a picture if worth a thousand words, it would be the best way to describe where I live. And yes, everything is as small as it looks in the pictures.



This is my kitchen... My favorite features: a gas stove and on demand hot water from the water cooler/heater, perfect for tea!



Next is my bathroom... Notice the shower stall. Well, actually, there is one. That cord hanging down in our shower head (it leaks, so we leave it over the drain). The shower curtain is to keep about half of the bathroom dry when we shower in front of the sink. It's quite the experience.

I'll try to remember to post more later. The pictures are taking forever to upload. We don't have internet yet, I'm just mooching off a slow wireless connection.

First Day of School!

Yesterday was my first day of teaching class. I just had two classes in the afternoon with 5th graders. That was at a school called Cui Wei The classes were huge! Each one had about 40 students. I think the kids was a little scared of me. They hardly said anything. It was pretty hard teaching. The classroom was really noisy from outside noise (think a jackhammer... literally). Plus my ears are plugged up from being so congested from the pollution. (I carry a water bottle and pack of kleenex with me at all times). I asked the students to take out a notebook but none of them had one. Oops! Evidently that's not a standard in China. They were well behaved just very very quiet.

This morning I had three more classes at JingShan. It is a boarding school about 45 minutes by car away from the central office. I teach 7th grade there. The classes are smaller. The first two classes only had 15 kids and the last one had about 30. I thought I could be a bit nicer and not so strict because they were smaller classes. Bad choice, especially with 7th graders. Let's just say I'm glad I won't be seeing those kids again for a week. It can only get better. And next week, I'll have a Chinese teacher in the room which helps more than you can believe.

So my other exciting news is that I have my apartment now! Moving and starting class all on the same day isn't the way I would have wanted to do it but that's just how life in China is. You don't ask questions, you just do what you're told. The apartment is clean which is nice that Hannah and I don't have to worry about that. But um it's totally bare. We have furniture (and a fridge in the living room, why? remember the rule about asking questions) and sheets for our beds and curtains but that's about it other than our own stuff which is still packed somewhere in our suitcases. I did some quick shopping last night for breakfast food and had to buy spoons and bowls which actually ended up being useless because I forgot to buy dish soap to clean them. Oops. I bought a towel too but when I tried to shower this morning the water didn't work. Oh well. Bit by bit it will become a home. And not just any home but the first place that I get to live in for 10 months in a row in over two years!

Sorry I don't have time to write much more. I have to rewrite lesson plans and figure out homework for next. Right now I'm at Subway where I found a wireless connection. Yeah for 2 for Tuesdays! (Two 6 inch subs for the price of one)

China Update

Wow! What a busy week! Sorry, it’s been so long since I’ve put up any blog entries.

So what have I been up to this week… I’ve had training at the Great School in the afternoon. Mostly it was pretty boring but they did give us some good ideas for the first day of class and teaching games to play. I have my class schedule now. I’m one of the few teachers who actually has a weekend which is nice because I have two consecutive days off but bad because I have to work all day Wednesday when most of them have off. In the afternoons, I teach 5th grade. I also teach on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday mornings. I’m not sure what level, I think 4th or 5th grade. My schedule sheet just says the names of the books I’m using. Overall, I have 20 hours of class in a week which doesn’t sound like a lot but the returning teachers have assured me that it will keep me plenty busy.

I’ve been learning this week that anything that seems like a simple task will take at least twice as long as expected in China. My medical examination is an excellent (hopefully extreme) example. The three newbies plus one returner who needed to renew his visa first attempted to go on Monday. We were told to be at the school office at 10am. About 8:45 we got a call saying we should be there as soon as possible because we needed to be to the doctor’s by 10. In the van on the way to the doctor’s, we were asked if we ate breakfast. Of course, we said. Oops. They forgot to tell us that we couldn’t eat before the exam and the exam is only given in the morning so we’d have to go another day. Take 2: Wednesday morning 8am. Tuesday night around 9, they told us that actually only two of us would be able to go and I was one of the chosen. So I got up early, did not eat breakfast and took a taxi with the other guy to the school. We got in the van and started driving to the hospital and continued driving for 2 hours. It wasn’t that far away and the traffic wasn’t that bad: the driver didn’t know where he was going. Funny, huh? A little after 10 we got to the hospital, which we had previously driven by over an hour before but no one noticed. The exam itself was easy: height, weight, blood pressure, blood sample, EKG and chest x-ray. By the time we got back, it was after noon. Oh and I found out yesterday that I was denied for a Z visa and would need an F visa. The difference: a Z visa is for a year and requires the med exam; the F visa is for 6 months and doesn’t require the med exam.

Oh! I forgot! I got a cell phone finally this week! If you want to call me or send me a text the number is 138.. Ok so I don’t actually remember the rest of it and there’s no one else home that I can find it in their phone. I’ll have to post that later. So you know how whenever we buy electronics in the States, the instruction manuals are in like 6 different languages. Not so here, I had to find a manual online to figure out how to set my clock…

What else did I do this week? On Wednesday, I went salsa dancing! Catherine, one of the returners, goes a lot and invited us all to come. It was so much fun! It was so crazy to be hearing Spanish music sung by a Latino band (live music!) with Chinese people salsaing all around. Some of them were amazing dancers! Me, not so much but I have a whole year to improve. Hannah’s Chinese friend Emily was in town this week. I was so excited to meet her after hearing so much about her. She as nice and funny as everyone has said. I wish I could have had the chance to get to know her better. Hmm… I think that’s about all the exciting stuff. Today I don’t have much going on, just prepping for classes, grocery shopping and other fun activities like that. I’ll probably be pretty busy the next couple weeks but I’ll try to be better about updating my blog. Keep sending me lots of e-mails! I love hearing news from home!