1,000

I was looking at my google analytic tools for this blog the other day and I realized that I had passed 1,000 hits. I know there are some websites that get a million hits a day but I'm pretty damn happy with 1,000. Doing this blog has been a lot of fun for me, even more so than I thought it would. I wasn't really sure when I started if I would have enough to say or enough to make it interesting, but I'm really happy with how its turned out so far. From the ads I put on the site I've some how managed to make about $44, which isn't much in the grand scheme of things I guess, but it's just nice to see. In China it's pretty quite on campus these days as a vast majority of the kids have gone home of the holiday. I noticed that in China you seem to see almost no students who live very far from where they go to school. About 80% of my students seem to be from Changzhou or some city really close by, and even the ones that are from further away still tend to be no more then a few hours from home. The national day is actually tomorrow so I think they'll be fireworks here in town, actually there are fireworks pretty constantly but maybe they'll be more. I e-mailed the Chabad Jewish center in Shanghai asking about Yom Kippur but I haven't heard back from them yet. I'd be curious to see exactly how people in China celebrate the holidays.

Blue Sky and Chocolate

Today the sky was blue, well sort of. It was a hazy shade of blue even at the best times, but when you saw it against the clouds it really looked blue which is better then we usually get. Josh talked about "blue sky days" in China and I had a pretty good idea what he meant, I just didn't realize they'd be so infrequent. Even at the best points it wasn't the blue I really remember. When I was younger I used to have to go with my family to what I think were my sisters soccer games, I may have had games on the same day, it was a long time ago and I don't remember it so clearly. What I do remember was even when I played soccer my patients for the sport was pretty low so I'd eventually wander off to some more remote part of whatever field or venue we were at. One time I snuck into an empty tennis stadium and walked around the courts for a while. I figured pretty correctly that even if I was caught a little kid is forgive for most things pretty quickly. What I also remember was lying on the grass looking up at the sky. Some of the times it seemed impossibly blue. I would look near the horizon at the lighter blue then slowly tilt my head up until the sky became a darker and darker shade of blue. Near the very top, when the sun had passed a little so that I could really see the blue became so dark that I felt that I could almost see into outer space. That's the sort of blue I miss. The color that the ocean is always painted but never really appears, truly dark blue.

I went down to the mall at least in part to get some of the other thing I was missing, which is chocolate. The Chineese just don't really seem to go in for chocolate, you don't see it anywhere or on anything. I figure I'm taking at least a little risk with this milk scare but the dove chocolate is almost certainly imported anyways. I also went to the DVD store and bought another ton of DVDs. I don't know why but buying them seems more moral then just stealing them off the internet. Maybe it's because I'm paying someone for them, though God knows not the companies that actually put them out. But I think it just seems more above board since it's so accepted here. It's not like I'm buying them on the streets. They have a store and a staff in the middle of the largest mall in a city of millions. I suppose it comes down to the same reason taking things from the internet is so popular, because everyone is doing it.

Foreign Expert

I got my foreign expert certification today. It's a little brown thing that sort of looks like a passport. I could not for the life of me take a good picture of it, I was either too close or too far at every angel I could think of. I'm not sure what I'm meant to be an expert in exactly. I'm not an expert teacher by any stretch of the imagination, pretty much the only requirement to get this job is being a native speaker and not having been adjudicated mentally incompetent in any state. I'm not an expert in China either. I barley know what's going on from moment to moment. Confusion is probably the number one emotion I feel in China, unless I'm crossing a street then it's just good old terror. I think the only thing I'm an expert in is being a foreigner. Yes, I'm an expert in not knowing the words for anything, an expert in getting lost, an expert in having no idea what's going on almost constantly. I am an expert in not being from here, and in China that seems to be quite the accomplishment.

I had my small class again today and for once it wasn't a disaster. I'm just glad that it's physically possible to have this class without wanting to pull my hair out. It's still a ton harder then all my other classes combined, but at least it seems sort of manageable. So far the only thing I've figured out to do is just come up with a ton more activities than I need for other classes and try to stretch them as long as humanly possible. I think being in there departments office helped since, with the exception of people still taking phone calls in class, the students were pretty well behaved. I still have this damn cold, if it wasn't for them having tea in the classroom I think I wouldn't have made it through the class. The only time I like tea at all is when I'm not feeling very well, but in China they drink tea like water. Actually, the water isn't that great so I think they probably drink a lot more tea then water.

No String of Cans

The hotel as part of it's normal hotel duties hosts, or at least provides rooms for a number of weddings. Some times you come down and see a giant picture of some couple has just been erected in the lobby. I think that they way this car is done up is the the Chinese equivalent of tying cans to the back of the newlyweds car in America. The weather here has changed dramatically in the last couple of days. Two days ago it was just plain hot, yesterday it was in between and today it is cool and it looks like it'll remain that way. People told me that cooler weather was coming I just thought it would take more then a day. The Chinese students around here must really be used to the hotter temperatures of summer because even on a 70 degree day I saw some jackets. The odd thing is this all actually makes it hotter in my room since I think the hotel cut off the air conditioning and I don't really expect it back this year. I've been sleeping pretty eradically with the start of classes and this weird class schedule this weekend and I think it caught up to me since I seem to be coming down with a cold. I took some allergy medicine in case that was the cause but it doesn't seem to make much difference. We have seven days off after tomorrow, though honestly I just want to get through one of my smaller classes without it being a train wreck. I haven't been able to find anyone who wants to travel around here with me, some people are going camping and some are staying around here, so I might just go to Nanjing by myslef if I can get a train ticket. I talked to one of the German girls who said she wanted to go to Sujou in a few weeks so I'm putting that off for a while. It'd be nice though to go to Nanjing and check out the french guy's restaurant.

English Corner

The title of this post refers to the practice of having a time when students can gather in one place to practice speaking some English with foreign teachers, but before I get to any of that I have to describe what happened in my small class today. My first thought was to try to teach them some English history since they'll be going there. Besides the usual grumbling the passages I found just seemed to be completely over their heads. In fact I think I'd need a description basically for children for most of them to be able to understand it. My next idea was something Clark suggested to me. I asked them to get into groups and write a 10 minute speech on any topic, I suggested a few topics. They literally wouldn't stop complaining that this was too hard. I tried to help them break it down into smaller segments but they weren't really giving it a chance at one point one of them pulled out a cell phone and called Grace, who is basically in charge of the department that is sending them to England. Now I know a lot of things they do aren't really meant to be rude. I can tell from the way they react most of the time that they are just really direct more then rude. Honestly I'm usually pretty good with understanding that even some odd things are just cultural differences and I should let it slide, but this one really riled me up. Even if they were just looking for a solution to the class being too hard, even if this is somehow appropriate in China, I take offense to this. It's just too far to call up another teacher to complain in one teachers class.

Grace decided that the best thing to do was to have us all come to her office so we could discuss it. We all went over to the hotel, her office is on the third floor of the hotel I live in, and sat down at their conference table. It is a very weird experience to have 6 people sitting around talking about you and not being able to understand a word of it. In all the time here, with all the weird atention I get this was the most watched I ever felt. Grace would occasionally stop and tell me something or other, but I was largely in the dark. What became apparent eventually is that there level was just way to low for most real oral English work. We're going to get a book eventually and I guess were just going to have to do boring things like dialogues and what not. But it also definitly seemed like Grace was trying to explain to them that this was not just like other courses where the professor lectures at them, they were expected to talk and participate. I think they finally were starting to get it by the end and it was useful to be so close to more teachers who had suggestions and kept some order. One student, the one who had made the phone call, left really early and didn't tell me why. We also decided to have class in the hotel from now on where Grace works. I just can tell at this point that this class is going to be twice as much work as all my other classes combined. Not only do I have 6 hours a week as opposed to 2 but I haven't been able to find any good activity yet that kills time and makes 3 hours not feel like 8.

While that side of the day was annoying the English Corner was actually a bit of fun. It's held every Thrusday at 6:30 in a little park in the school. It's an odd place to hold this since it's dark and it was raining a little. I was the first American to arrive and word must have spread with the students that the American's were actually attending these things since I was basically mobbed by students. By the time David got there, who they all call by his last name, I basically never told any of my classes my last name to avoid this, I was standing in the center of a circle about 4 people deep in any direction with some students even standing on things to get a better look. I've never felt more like either a celebrity or circus attraction in my life. Even Chaz who had come with me was looking visibly nervous about all the people. I tired to talk to some of them but it seemed oddly ridiculous in a group of 60 to try to talk to one person. Eventually a couple more Americans came and the groups evened out, actually David had by far the biggest group and seems to have a talent for essentially entertaining a crowd. I just talked to a few students, one girl Catherine despite not being an English major had really good English from listening to American radio all the time and reading some pretty difficult books like Wuthering Heights. Seeing someone who learned English like that highlights why I'll never be that good at Chinese, I'll learn some, I might even become fluent, but I don't have that sort of commitment.

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.

Smart Alecs

Today I had my smaller class, it turns out it was only 5 people, there may be a 6th person who just was absent today. I was hoping that there English would be good enough that I could just talk with them instead of trying to do a series of games and such. But I learned pretty quickly that that wasn't the case. One of the girls, and all 5 are girls, spoke pretty good English but the others were not nearly on her level. 2 Of the others could speak OK when they wanted to but they didn't really want to much. The final 2 just basically kept talking in Chinese the whole time and getting them to say anything in English, even when they could, was like pulling teeth. One girls would keep getting the girl who spoke the best English to translate for her and didn't want to really try to talk in English. They were also a bit of smart alecs. We were playing hangman a little, which my other classes enjoyed, and they just at one point said that they were bored and want to move on. I was trying to explain 20 questions to them when one simply said that they didn't want to play. My options are kind of limited though since I can't really just chat with them and they don't want to do a lot of my activities. The class is also really long at 3 hours instead of the usual 2. They are supposed to go to England to study Business in like 8 months and one said that they were worried about it. Well I'm worried to there English is no where near good enough to take courses in English only. One of them can speak pretty well but I had to stop and rephrase and define words way to much with her also to think she could do well in a University level class taught only in English. I asked if there were any other students who had done this before they could ask for advice and they said that they were the first ones. Right now I feel like it's going to be a disaster. I'm also dreading having these students for 6 hours a week, but that's a whole othet story. I just don't know what to do with them. I can teach them some things about England and get them to talk in English but they're just not going to be able to do anything like what it seems is expected of them.