Loaded Question

In almost every class so far when I've asked them to ask me questions at some point I have to stop and explain to them what a loaded question is. Unlike so phrases it's pretty easy to explain because I can just tell them it's a dangerous question and they get it. I've gotten some like "Which do you like best America of China," which all the students can recognize has no good answer, so I just usually stop and explain loaded questions to them. In one class a student asked what I thought of Chinese Communism and Marxism. Again I thought it was pretty funny since he was clearly just asking the most loaded question he could come up with. People here don't exactly expect you to toe the party line but I'm not exactly going unload in the Communist Party in the middle of class. There are times when you know that your getting close to a mine field, any time someone mentions Tibet or Japan, there's just a lot of cultural baggage around these issues. But I think this was the first time that if I said something dumb enough they might just kick me out of the country. One CIEE trainer told a story about a person who got kicked out in like a week for taking a guitar to class and just singing Christian Missionary type songs about Jesus for an hour. Now that person has to know that doing that probably isn't going to just slide even in a pretty laid back place like China.

I had 3 classes today, 6 hours, and besides being tired it was pretty easy since it was just the same thing 3 more times. Some of the jokes I use feel pretty stale by now and I'm not nearly as amused by what I know will be there reaction as I was the first time I did it. I know that I'll walk into class tomorrow and say "Hello" to a course of "Hello's" back. I know that when I say I'm from DC I'll get oooh's and aaah's, and I know that the girls will take pictures of me with there cell phones when they think I'm not looking then love it when I pose. While it's easy to do one class 6 times, it also gets a little boring. I just found out that apparently we have class this Saturday and Sunday to make up for 2 of the days we're missing next week. In usual fashion they told us at the last possible minute. It's fine, I just wish I'd known earlier. All the foreign teachers who knew just canceled classes for the weekend. I don't mind the ones on Saturday that much but I have the small class yet again on Sunday because of this. I'll try to cancel it, but the little smart alec's will probably throw a fit. The girl in class who most steadfast refuses to participate was the one who objected last week when I tried to end class a little early. Joanna posted in the comments of the last entry that she thought getting her little kids to participate in Hebrew school was sort of like pulling teeth also, and that's exactly what it's like. The students are sort of like little kids in a lot of ways. They want to show off, they want attention, but they don't really want to participate they just want to talk with there friends, and some of them are a little bossy.