Steve

Steve invited me and some of the other Americans over to his house again today, this time Dave insisted that if his wife didn't join us for dinner we are all going to leave. Steve is a pretty interesting guy. He's an English teacher, which partially explains his interest in hanging around with Americans, but it's more then that. He really makes an effort to get to know all the new Americans, and given how often people change here, that's really saying something. In a country where most people are pretty shy, he's fairly outgoing. When we play poker he seems to get very excited. The first time I thought it was because he had three beers, a lot for him, but he didn't drink as much this time and was still probably the most rowdy one at the table. English is also an interesting career choice in a country where all English is essentially taught like ESL back home. If you took a course in Spanish at a university in America it would be more about Spanish literature then how to speak Spanish. Therefore it would matter less if the teacher was a native Spanish speaker or not. But here English is taught more like ESL is taught in high school, the focus is on speaking and grammar. I'm just not sure how many non-native English speakers teach ESL in America.

Steve also isn't treated as well by the school as the foreign teachers are. If were a little late for class nothing happens, hell nothing really happens if we miss a class altogether. But Steve said he was once about three minutes late for a class and was worried the school would fine him something like a months pay. I'm sure partially because he hangs around Americans so much his English is better then pretty much anyone I know here, a fact he really enjoys when you point out. His wife has a masters degree of some sort but I've never really spoken to her much. I'm pretty sure she was the only woman Steve ever dated, which is pretty much in keeping with Chinese tradition. I've compared gender relations here to the US in the 50's and I think that's pretty close. Maybe the most interesting thing about Steve is how he acts as a mirror for us. It's always interesting to see what he think about what we are talking about. When Lynn visited me, her, Dave, and Steve were all sitting around talking. Lynn was talking about some creepy guy who was hitting on her so the conversation sort of turned toward sex. Steve out of no where asks what we thought was the correct thing to say to his son about masturbation. I was completely floored, but to Steve this conversation seemed related to talking about sex where no American ever would have made that jump. Oddly it was Lynn, who had only known Steve for about 30 minutes, who could pull herself together enough to actually give Steve anything like an answer. It just shows how many little cultural assumptions there are that we are not even aware of.