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!