Notification of Placement Region

• So yesterday (7/17/2012) I found out that my placement region is Guangdong province in either Chaonan or Chaoyan County

I'll be in the pink region to the lower right of Guangdong province by the sea

• • This of course was after we learned that the Chinese fellows were going to be told that they would be known their placement region on the first day of SI which got revised to being told we would all be notified on Saturday July, 21 but still I’m happy I know at least what province I’ll be in
  • I still don’t know the exact school I’ll be at and I won’t know that until the last week of Summer Institute (about Mid-August) and I’m willing to be flexible for that
  • It turns out that TFC used to try to get fellows to their schools as fast as possible but due to the last-minute nature at which things happen in China those fellows that went super early felt there was no need for them there because at the last minute the schools added new teachers before the school year started so the fellows kind of felt like extra teachers
  • I fell in love with Guangdong the minute they said that they had a Wal-Mart in Shantou (a major city that’s near all of the placement schools)
  • They had an info meeting the night of the announcements and when they told us that there was a Wal-Mart near there I thought, “YES, I CAN GET REAL DEODARANT!”
  • Plus they said that the Guangdong fellows are closer because they’re all more centrally located as opposed to the Yunnan province which is way more spread out in mountains and such so I’m really excited to bond with the Chinese and American fellows in the province
  • Plus we get a month and a half off for spring festival so I really can’t complain
  • The thing is that I preferred Yunnan over Guangdong in my placement survey too
  • It seems like that for all of the fellows with very low Mandarin speaking skills that we got the opposite of what we preferred (Probably 9 out of 12 of us) 
  • It's kind of understandable though that I got Guangdong because in my survey I said that I preferred Yunnan but it wouldn't break my heart to not be placed in Yunnan and it seems that more people preferred Yunnan than Guangdong
  • I know one guy and his girlfriend (Chinese fellows) here in Summer Institute that both preferred Yunnan but they both got placed in Guangdong so at least they won't be separated
  • The decisions for provinces are final but no one seems to be mad because everyone is really on board with eradicating educational inequality wherever it is, no matter if they do it with real or fake deodorant from a Wal-Mart
  • I mean quite a few people said “This is bulls***” in English and/or Chinese but then after 5 minutes they were cool with it
• Summer Institute forces you to reflect more than a mirror
• I don’t think I’ve done this much introspection before in my entire life over these first three days of SI
• I’ve introspected about my past experiences, my feelings, my ideas for my students, etc.
• Plus SI gives you a good creative outlet because I’ve also drawn more on posters about “visions”, “goals”, “values”, etc. 
• I am learning A LOT about being a teacher
• Thank goodness I had good teachers in my life (shout out to Mrs. Ferrarro-3rd and 8th grade social studies teacher) who practiced basically every best practice TFC covers
• It’s simple, “I do, we do, you do” and all of a sudden you’re an awesome teacher
• Also thank goodness for some college professors who now when I look back I can say, “Now I know why everyone in my class fell asleep”
• I’m hoping that by the time I’m done with SI, I’ll be transforming so many lives they’ll call me Mr. Megatron
• You get a lot of acronyms thrown at you too
• TAL (Teaching as Leadership), FWBAT (Fellows will be able to),….
• My favorite is PMs for Program Managers but one girl didn’t know how to spell out the acronym right so one time the teacher wanted us to read something that was up on a powerpoint and this girl read, “I should expect ongoing support from my P-M-S” instead of “my P-Ms” and everyone busted out laughing
• And the ice breaker games we play are so fun
• Prom Queen
• You basically go up to someone, say your name and 3 facts about you, and the person you tell that to steals your identity and you steal the identity of the person you were talking to.
• So you’re playing for 5 minutes and so identities are being constantly exchanged and the 3 facts definitely get mixed up with hilarious results
• I said for one of my facts that, “I hate butterflies” and for some reason at the end they said that I said, “I’m afraid of butterflies” and I interrupted her with, “Alright…hold on here…”
• My favorite was the person who started with, “I’m Josephine and I have 12 cats…” and this guy busted out laughing and he said, “Sorry I made that up because I forgot who I talked to”
• 8 Paperclip Game
• This was designed to immerse ourselves in a community with the object of the game being that 2 Chinese fellows and 2 American fellows go into the community with 8 paper clips and see what they can barter for from those 8 paper clips in an hour
• We ended up getting a little sweet, 3 cigarettes, 4 chopsticks, a mango, and a bowl of noodles with 2 paper clips left over
• The strategy was that I would go in, speaking what little Chinese I know as icebreaker, and then the Chinese fellows would come in and actually barter
• One team got probably about 200 RMB worth of stuff including: a comic book, a bottle of baijiu (strong Chinese liqueur), a pot of flowers, and expensive Yunnan tea.