Bruce Teaching English In China: August 2012

Friday, August 31, 2012

Month 1 Planning in Shantou

Month 1 Planning

So the purpose of these 6 days in Shantou is to get all of our planning done for the first month of school

We didn’t know what schools we would be placed at until the end of SI (more on that later) or what grades we would teach but we had to plan for it anyways

One of my mentors there put it the best,

“You know how there’s some words in one language that just don’t translate into other languages well? Kind of like Schadenfreude or 厉害. Well for some reason, I don’t think the word “to plan” translates well into Chinese because I have yet to see any of that”

I think my favorite part was just how easy and open the lecturers were to side comments

I remember one where we were naming why visions are important and we said three good things but our lecturer wanted more and after she said, “Does anyone have any more?” I shouted out, “Isn’t that good enough for you?”

My classroom rules

I decided to not try to re-invent the wheel so I just looked at the rules of one of Teach for China's best teachers and copied them because they work

1..Be Prepared-Come to class on time, take a seat quietly, take out textbook, notebook, and homework 静坐别迟到，拿出三件宝（课本，笔记本，家庭作业）
2.Be respectful-silent when the teacher is speaking, respect yourself, other students,the teacher, and classroom facilities 听课安静，尊重你我他（老师，同学，课堂识施）
3.Be attentive- pay close attention, focus, and track the teacher (专心记得牢，老师要很好)
4.Be active-take initiative and participate, speak with confidence and courage (发言要积极，尝试练勇气)
5.Be consistent-do not waste time, treasure every minute/second, stay focused and work from bell to bell (分秒不放松，善始善终，（下课铃响之前都要保持良好学习状态）

Then I have my consequences with my favorite being the home visit. That’s right, if you misbehave too much I’m coming to your house. And I’m not bringing presents.

1．Non-verbal Warning-非口头警告
2．Verbal Warning-口头警告
3．Write Self-Criticism-书面检讨，检讨自己的错误。次日，你在你的同学们前面必须作报告
4．Refer to Banzhuren-去班主任 (who might beat them so kids really don’t like this punishment)
5．I will call your parents-我会给你的家长打电话 (who are most likely to beat them)
6．I will visit your house-我会家访 (I will not beat them)

Oh yeah, and if my kids want English names, they will have to earn it

I’m not going to just give kids English names , they will have to answer two questions right in class and then I will help them choose one
If kids don’t care, I will call them “Thing 1” up to “Thing 60” if I have to. But probably not really though

Won’t teach for 2-4 weeks

So there was a snafu somewhere in the process and I was informed 6 days before school starts in Guangdong that I won’t be teaching for 2-4 weeks

I was fine with it because the day before they announced our “tentative” placements which meant that they tried to put people in teams and out of the 12 teams I was put in one of the two “TBD schools” which when you plug it into google maps it’s a school in Los Angeles, California, USA

Then our boss said, “So in regard to your tentative school placements you got yesterday, you can expect…no I guarantee you will see changes”

So at least when I get to know what school I’m put in it’ll be a welcome relief because then I’ll know I wasn’t laid off from Teach for China

At least we’ll have more time for planning

Right now I’m not quite clear on what my vision will be but I’ll try to make it something simple like “Work hard for yourself, work hard for your loved ones, work hard for your country”

And then at the end of the meeting, they gave us nice t-shirts which were actually made out of really nice fabric and a welcome gift after such heartbreaking news

Batman

`That was worth the 50 RMB to watch the movie

It was explosions and violence, which is exactly what I needed after being informed I won’t be teaching 2-4 weeks after I started

I really like the mall that we watched the movie in (observations made by a friend so I claim no originality in this whatsoever)

It’s like a Chinese guy went to America, saw how awesome the malls are, and came back to China and said, “Guys we have to make one of these” but just got a few details wrong

The grand staircase is on the outside of the mall instead of inside
Instead of the IMAX movie theater being 6 stories tall they put it on the 6th floor
All of the nice shops (wine, leather, etc.) are on the outside of the mall in little tent huts

Can we just obey one traffic law?

In Shantou there’s apparently been a two week suspension of all traffic rules because I’ve almost been hit a couple of times by cars who go off of the road and start to drive down the sidewalk

I think police officers here could make 1 million RMB a weekend if they just sat in a lawn chair on the corner of the street and just waited

After our Batman movie we had to take a taxi back because it was 1 in the morning, and so we just hopped in and didn’t think much of it

He had to pull out of a parking lot and cross traffic on a busy road (they drive the same direction in China that they do in America) in order to get going in the direction he wanted to go, so instead of just waiting for the traffic to clear to turn left, he decides, “Ah screw it” and drives on the wrong side of the road for 2 blocks
And then instead of going to the right side of the road, he decides it’s more convenient to drive on the sidewalk (still on the wrong side of the road) for another two blocks and then he finally crosses back over to the wrong side of the road

My friend said, “You know what, next time I’m getting in a taxi I’m going to offer him double if he can keep on the sidewalks the entire time”

Chao’an county visit

So instead of moving to our placement schools, TFC had done some quick planning and booked us a bus to go on a tour of one of the counties that TFC places teachers in for Guangdong
We visited a 5-story home of one of the more well-off students where they had a home factory on the top floor where they made the lace for bras

One person brought up the fact that it really brings into focus the issue of, “Why would English be relevant to this kid as a third-grader because he sees that he doesn’t need English and he’s 8 years old so telling him how this will help him get into a good school doesn’t work”

Some ideas were:

You could now listen to the English commentators of the NBA
If you’re into computer games you can open up a new world of games to conquer (and program some if you’d like)

Then we got to visit one of the nicer schools that TFC puts fellows in

For lunch we were told that teachers eat (for free) family style lunches made by a chef

The classes are about 60-85 students per class for 45 minutes so a good meal will help out in those really tough days

New Computer

So my old computer is not technically dead, but neither is a man with no arms, no legs, one eye, an iron lung, and a cleft palate

Basically, both hinges on my computer have failed so I had to tape a broken ipod cable around the back of my computer to keep the screen from falling back because otherwise my computer screen would not stay up

 Of course, sometimes that wouldn’t work and so in the middle of a meeting my broken ipod cable held to my computer with purple duct tape would slip and it would make this thunderous bang on the desk that would stop the meeting dead in its tracks

Oh, and the front panel that protects the on button from the environment is completely off so I decided after five days of trying to man up and work on this computer as best I can, I was sick of looking at the double screen and holding on to the computer screen with one hand and typing with the other in order to make sure I wasn’t fired for disrupting a meeting so I finally bought a new laptop
For 3000 RMB, I got this new ASUS computer

It’s all in Chinese so I’m re-downloading Windows onto it in English, but it is really nice, the screen is only one screen, and it can support itself so I’m happy

I know a good way to torture people

I don't hate anybody, but if I did, this is what I would do to them (or just to family members to make them angry for the fun of it)

The next time I hear someone gossiping, just say to them, "Oh speaking of gossip, I know some good ones about you but I can't say because then it would make it awkward"
Someone did this to me and it has been bugging me (in a fun kind of way, like solving a hard riddle), and they said I would know what it is and so I think it's of the type, "this guy is totally dying alone" because I have a little bit of a lazy eye in my pictures sometimes but it would be nice for confirmation

I had a date

That's all I'm going to say

Thursday, August 23, 2012

On the way to Shantou

Going to Shantou

I love China Post

I learned my lesson from the previous trip from Kunming to Lincang that carrying 50 lbs. of books around with you is not a good idea so I decided to try my luck with shipping my stuff from Lincang, Yunnan to Shantou, Guangdong

I found this box to use and I packed in all of my books but China Post wanted it more perfectly fit on the inside so they themselves opened the box, clipped the corners with scissors to make the box collapse farther down, and taped everything up again with their tape for no charge
All in all it cost me 114 kuai (about $20) for 10 day service and I was extremely pleased with that price given how if I wanted to do that in America for the same distance they would have made me do all that work and it would have cost $50

Night bus to Dali

Because I had 10 days before I had to be in Shantou and this might be one of the last times that I have to go see northern Yunnan, I decided to take a bus from Lincang to Dali

I didn’t even think about it when I bought the ticket for Friday night at 8 pm that it meant that I would be getting into the new city of Dali (called Xiaguan) and I would have to make my way to the old city where all of the attractions are at 2 am in the morning and just hope a taxi cab driver wouldn’t rip me off

The drive over to Dali was pretty nice

For the most part it was quiet and it was a different experience because instead of seats it was just all beds

The beds were fine because they just so happened to be exactly the length of my body and maybe an inch or two on either side of my arms

There was only one annoyance and that was the lady behind me

I think she must have been tired because at random intervals of the trip from 8 pm to 9:30 pm she would make some kind of ridiculously loud noise with her cell phone

First at about 8:10 pm she was playing an MMORPG and it was loud enough for the entire bus to hear it so I had to get out of my bed and ask her politely to turn it down so I could focus on my StupidZombies iPad game (I didn’t say the last part).
Then at about 9:00 pm she started playing a song out loud (and keep in mind the bus driver turned the lights off in the bus because everyone was trying to fall asleep) and I didn’t even feel like getting up so I just turned around and asked her if she could please use ear phones
And literally 10 minutes later I hear her start singing. I didn’t know what to do because apparently she didn’t get the point that I asked her to wear headphones so that there would be no music because I wanted the people on the bus to get some sleep but then she stopped about 10 minutes after that so it was all good.

And turns out that I didn’t even need to book a hotel room

I passed out at about 1 am thinking that the bus driver would just wake us up when we got there at 2 am and the next thing I remember is that I was lying in the bus bed and I wanted to see what time it was and I looked at my phone and it said it was 5 am

No one relayed this to me but it turned out that the bus driver just left everybody on the bus who was still asleep and he just went home or something because the door to the bus was open
I should have logically thought, “Oh no, I’m in an unsafe environment where there’s no locks and someone could steal my luggage from the side compartments of the bus” but instead I thought, “Awesome, I’m going back to bed” and then I woke up at 7 am.

Turns out that someone could have totally stolen my luggage from the side carriage because when I woke up I literally just lifted the handle (which was unlocked), grabbed my luggage, and went to old town Dali

I came to the realization that I love my job

When I was sitting down in that bus seat I realized that I can’t wait to start work and I haven’t had that feeling since I was a landscaper in Rockford, IL for a summer

I just thought about how every day during Summer Institute I was excited to go to work and teach kids English
I know that I’ve had troubles with some students but when I got them to bend to my will and when the good students in my class got the gist of what I was saying, it was an awesome feeling

My hostel is pretty legit

Free Wi-fi and my first hot shower in two weeks made me one happy man (and it was only 25 kuai ($4) a night)

Dali is quite beautiful

Even though the old city looks kind of like, "If Disney did Ancient China" it was actually really nice to spend a couple of days and bike around the lake

I really did like this peanut jelly they put in their noodles

The sunday market is not PETA-approved

All the employees of every store in the old town of Dali dress like this (Bai minority uniform)

Chinese children are fascinated by arm hair

I noticed this among my students in Lincang but when I got to Dali two kids were walking the opposite way of me on the sidewalk and stopped in front of me to look at my arm hair

I realize that not a lot of Asian men have arm hair but I’m not Chewbacca by any means
They asked me why I have arm hair and I politely said, “Because I’m American” but what I really wanted to say (and I just didn’t know the Chinese), “Because during the day I’m an English teacher but in my spare time I’m a Yeti”

I got SUN-BURNT

I rented a bike from my hostel for 20 kuai and I tried to bike around this (which I didn’t know at the time) humongous lake by Dali and I got really burned to the point that my forearms are red but my biceps are lily-white

In fact, it was one of those sun-burns where you can tell exactly where my watch was on my arm

I now have two goals for my time at Teach for China

1. Eliminate educational inequality in my classroom
2. Eliminate the tanning inequality on my own body

That line of white was where my watch was

This is from bickycling where the back of my hand got sunburnt but my fingertips are still lily-white

Attended catholic church for the first time in a month

Because I have a travel dispensation from my bishop for the next 2 years I haven’t attended church in a while so when I heard that Dali had a catholic church I thought I should check it out
That church was so beautiful

It’s all in the Bai architecture style and so it’s different than any other church I’ve ever seen
I wish I could have taken pictures of the inside but there were rules against it and it’s too bad because my favorite was up at the front around a picture of Jesus was written in Chinese (God is love)

I kind of wish the people took the mass a little more seriously

I had only brought jeans and t-shirts with me to Dali but luckily all 45 people attending the mass were dressed the same way
I think my favorite moment came when a lady’s phone rang and instead of the American catholic way of hurriedly trying to make it stop she got her phone out of her purse, looked at it, answered it, and had about a 2 minute conversation with someone.

Second favorite moment was the kid who just walked around in between the empty pews like he was in a maze

I can’t say that I was really paying attention either though

I had my eyes on the speaker the entire time but I might have understood maybe 1/25^th of it

Thank goodness I’m catholic though because the mass is very closely aligned with the American mass so I knew exactly when to stand and when to sit down

The Dali specialties were alright

My favorites were the "Er Kuai" chinese pancake with nuts, vegetables, hot spices, and peanut butter on a thin pita-bread like thing, the breakfast pancakes with herbs in them, and the seaweed from the lake that is near Dali

The fried dairy on a stick was an experience (it's kind of like if you wanted to eat fried butter on a stick, you do it for the experience)

Then anything that involves meat involves a healthy quantity of bone so although it was good and it looked even better, I spent more time spitting the bones out of my mouth than actually eating the food

Chengshan Mountain

Because I got absolutely scorched yesterday and I also wanted to see the top of this mountain I decided that for once I wouldn’t be cheap and take the cable car to the top

I chose the one day of the week where the cable car was closed and seeing that I had walked all the way to the entrance I thought, “Ah no cable-car, no problem” and the lady told me that I could use the old trail up the mountain instead of the new hiking trail

Horse’s lives are hard

So the old trail had become the horse’s trail and now I know what it’s like to be a horse because that was one long hike

I didn’t realize that the old trail meant the trail that is 5 km all uphill on either dirt or walking in a ditch
I am kind of glad I went on that trail because at least I knew that as long as I saw horse poop the trail might smell bad but at least I wasn’t lost

And the hike was worth it

The top is beautiful and the scenery is amazing

9 Big Torches Festival

I just so happened to be in Dali during one of the biggest Bai minority festivals and it was off the chain crazy

I almost got set on fire multiple times and it was the most fun I’ve had at a festival that I can remember for a long time

The back-story is that way back when a village was told that their houses and farms were going to be destroyed by a dragon

So the townspeople got together and lit torches outside of their village to keep the dragon away and so today every house lights a humongous torch outside of their house to keep the dragon away

But that wasn’t the fun part

So the fun part is when people take these torches and use it to try to light people’s feet on fire for kicks and giggles
What they do is they hold the torch in front of them, take a handful of sawdust, and just throw it in the direction of your feet

DOESN’T THAT SOUND LIKE FUN!?!?

The most fun came in the city center

We (a group of TFC fellows) just so happened to be in Dali the first year that they allowed these pyres to burn inside the city (because apparently this year city officials didn’t really care if this tourist mecca burned to the ground)
It was absolute chaos there

I and another foreigner who just happened to be with us just held out our torches and about 12 Chinese people would yell out “yi…er…SAN!” and throw sawdust at us and this huge flame would burst up

I need to bring this holiday to America

I don’t know how I’ll integrate the myth behind the origin (maybe George Washington thought the best way to keep the red-coats out was by using pyres) but this is an awesome celebration that I know Americans (at least the ones I know) would enjoy

Back to Lincang

So I didn’t think things through and instead of taking all of my stuff with me to Dali I left about ¾ of my things in Lincang so that meant at some point I had to go back to Lincang instead of going all the way to Shantou directly from Dali

I thought about going to Lijiang (which is the base of another minority in China) but I read that it was too touristy and Dali to me was basically what it would look like if Disney did an ancient Chinese village, so I decided to book it after only two days in Dali

I got really lucky too

I got to the train station 10 minutes before the bus to Lincang was about to leave (or else I would have had to wait for another 8 hours) and for 91 kuai I was on my way back to my hometown

I say I got lucky because there’s no way to check for the bus schedule until you actually go to the bus station in rural China so it was more luck of the draw then anything

The ride alone was worth the money

It was easily one of the most spectacular and scenic bus rides I’ve encountered and I got to soak it all in because the bus driver would stop frequently to pick up hitchhikers on the way to Lincang

I understand it’s a business but when it gets to the point where you’re letting on hitchhikers and they have to stand in the row because there’s no seats left, then you’re pushing it

Lincang was nice

Because I had no work to do (the Guangdong fellows basically got a 10 day free vacation but the Dali fellows have to work every day right up until school starts after the 21-day work week known as Summer Institute) I got to play football with my manager for about two hours when I got into Lincang
Then the next day I just practiced Chinese and how to do the Asian squat which may or may not have led to me spraining my ACL during a pickup basketball game later that night

I went to grab a rebound and I landed on a guy’s foot which caused by lower leg to go one way, my upper leg to go another way, and then my knee just kind of…yeah
Luckily everyone at TFC is really nice, they got me Ibuprofen, ice packs, and I think if I would have asked them to help me pack for my trip to Guangdong they probably would have helped me do that too

Tried to hide knee injury

It was kind of hard because I couldn’t wear shorts or else everyone else would notice that one calf was twice the size of the other

- And then sometimes weird things happened where I would inadvertently reveal my injury
Chinese movie day

So that same day I woke up at 6 I decided that it would be Chinese movie day because I really needed to lie in bed all day and luckily I found two really good martial arts/science fiction/historical drama movie

The first one was 龙门飞甲 with Jet Li and it was these mystically gifted ninjas who had really cool special weapons (one woman had bladed rings, one guy just beat the heck out of people with his fists, it was awesome)

I have no idea about the actual point of why they were killing people so I just made up reasons and it was still entertaining

The second one had the English name “Reign of Assassins” （Chinese name: 剑雨）and it was about this woman who was a former assassin who decides to get 19th century plastic surgery and start a new life

Then she kicks some serious butt and the bad guys figure out who she is so then she has to fight off a magician assassin, a whore assassin, and a creepy voice dude assassin and it was really cool

Then on the bus ride to Kunming we watch kids movies for the first couple of hours

After a day of watching kung fu movies I was thinking the entire time, “When is someone going to die in one of these movies?” and finally we watched Bridge to Terebithia and *spoiler alert* a girl gets runs over with a car which is supposed to be sad but all I remember saying under my breath is “about time”

Kunming

It was a really good experience with our one night in Kunming

Our hotel was booked for 3 guys to share a room with 3 beds so we called it the “Rad Bromance room”

Train ride to Shantou

We played some pretty fun games to distract ourselves from the 25 hour train ride

My favorite was Contact where one person thinks of a word and then letter by letter the other people have to figure out what it is
So the first letter is given to us and then we have to think of words that start with that letter by asking questions to our teammates, (For example, if the first letter is C then we ask out loud, “Is this a green animal with a tail?”) and if the person who’s thinking of the word says chameleon then we have to think of another question to stump the moderator but if the moderator can’t get it we well, “Contact! 1-2-3” and say the word that the person asked and if those two people were thinking of the right word then we get the next letter of the word the moderator is thinking of

We played this game even after they turned out the lights in the train and we were asked by the train attendant to be quiet but in our defense we had to compete with a really loud crying baby and people’s cell phones which had ring tones that were 30 decibels higher than they needed to be

- Then my first bad experience on a train ride in China
Got into Guangzhou

My PM (Program Manager/Boss) likes to make fun of me

So because I have a knee injury and know a lot of fluid in my calf, I now have a limp and he has been making fun of me non-stop for it (but it was all in good fun)

He was talking about how I probably couldn’t use a restroom because it was ADA inaccessible
When we got out of the Guangzhou subway he pushed me from behind so that I had to basically push away all of these Chinese women or else I would have literally fallen on top of them or just ran them over

Learned a lesson in not having your phone in hip holsters

So I noticed that I lost my phone on the subway in Guangzhou and I think someone might have stolen it
Luckily it was an old phone that I hated it and I needed a new one anyways but still, if I had a bible on me I would be thumping somebody, “小偷！小偷！” (“Little thief! Little thief!”)

Went to Shantou

Shantou was really nice, the hotels that TFC provided us were definitely satisfactory because it was the first time I had a room to myself in months

- Plus it was nice to rehab my knee here because it was right in the heart of the city and I just watched Chinese children’s episodes all day for 3 days and for the most part my limp is gone so hopefully my kids won’t notice I have a knee problem until I try to run