Tidbits

I’ll try and paint a picture of my typical day in China for you all. Not because I’m an egoist necessarily, but more because its filled with so many random little moments, that when I condense it down into blog form, it may actually seem exciting. Kind of like reality television.

3 days a week my first class is at 8:40, which means I must wake up at 6:30. Anyone who knows me well, realizes what a struggle this must be for me, and its true, it is. But, I am still in that new job phase where I wake up every few hours in the middle of the night to make sure that I haven’t overslept my alarm. Either that or my bed is so uncomfortable that I sleep really light anyways. I think the former makes me sound more responsible, though. I first walk 20 minutes to the metro station. All along the way there are street vendors with all sorts of randomness. The typical dishes seem to be 1) fried dough with some egg and herbs 2) Deep fried bread, sprinkled with a little sugar (I think) 3) Fried dumplings (which are delicious, I just can’t get comfortable with the idea of eating lots of pork at breakfast). Clearly, the theme with the choices is the deep frying, which is odd considering how skinny Chinese people are. I tend to choose something called JianBing, which is sort of like a chinese breakfast burrito, except not really at all. It has a paper thin layer of pancake-like batter spread upon a circular, coal-fired flat grill, whereupon an egg is cracked and cooked on top. Cilantro, and some other unidentifiable spices and herbs and pickled things are sprinkled in. It is then flipped and has more unidentifiable sauces rubbed in, and another unidentifiable crunchy thing is added, which soaks up all the sauces and makes the whole thing kind of gooey and delicious. I realize that no one still has any clearer picture of what I’m talking about, but I’m doing the best I can here. Then I get a can of Iced coffee and a bottle of water, and I still haven’t spent a dollar.

I arrive at the Metro stop, and make my way down a few flights of stairs, where the station still is not quite full at 7:15. I go about 5 stops to the East side of Shanghai, where I get off and transfer to a bus. Nothing exciting usually happens, except that I do feel good that the people handing out the free “Express” newspaper give me one as well, even though it’s in Chinese. I think this is more due to the fact that they are only paid if they get rid of all their papers, but I like to think they have confidence in my Chinese abilities. I usually ride the bus for another 30 or so minutes, which tends to be uneventful, unless there happens to be another white person on the bus (which has only happened once so far). I’ve gathered from this interaction that the standard greeting is “Hello, white guy,” whereupon a conversation ensues, whereupon stares are garnered from bewildered Chinese commuters.

I teach between 4 and 7 35 minute blocks at the school each day, which usually consist of me having a plan for what to teach, realizing that nothing is working, and explaining directions doesn’t work for first graders with a limited vocabulary, and then me reverting back to chanting and singing and repeating dialogs, which everyone seems to love anyways. Its loud, and chaotic, but I generally feel good about the fact that they have learned something- anything at all. The bell the school utilizes is sort of an electronic version of Fur Elise, which strikes a surprising amount of fear into everyone, and gets them into their seats pretty quickly.

I eat lunch at the school because I can’t pass up free food, even if it is practically inedible. I LOVE Chinese food, but this is elementary school Chinese cafeteria food, which just isn’t as sexy as it sounds. The other day it was seaweed and egg soup, coupled with a hot dog (no bun), hardboiled egg, some sort of spinach, and little bits of meat that were mostly bone. I usually end up dipping my rice in the meat’s sauce, and just making do with that. I have learned the Chinese diet secret, which I think partially explains why everyone is so skinny, even though they seem to eat more oily, fatty foods. Here it is, and I’m not even going to charge you for this: Fruit for dessert. Always. It really does pretty much satisfy the sweet craving, though I realize this may not be feasible advice for a culture that supports deep fried twinkie and snickers stands at the county fair (in Oregon anyways).

That’s pretty much my working life thus far. I only teach 28 35-minute classes each week, but with commuting and breaks and such, it seems to be about the equivalent of a little more than part-time. Which just feels right to me.

Typhoons are Wet

For each thing that impresses me about China, there usually seems to be about 6 things that just sort of make you roll your eyes and think, wtf? Like on every sidewalk there are these little textured pathways, like braille for the feet, for blind people to walk on. They faithfully zigzag around trees and fire hydrants, but inevitably lead to a perilous demise when the person must actually cross the insanity that is the street. Right turns are allowed on red, and pedestrians I believe are treated like those little poles that you see those dogs weave in between in agility races on TV. Come on, you know what I’m talking about, I’m not the only one who has happened upon those shows. Right? Right? I’ve already seen too many accidents on the side of the road to count, and witnessed a motorbike hit a cab. There was a bit of yelling that ensued, but everyone went on their way.

In my school, they gave me an “office” in this little room complete with a few couches and a desk and computer. The sign on the outside says “Mentality Consult Room,” which I later deduced meant Counselor’s Office. There is this nice young woman who mans the room all day, faithfully. It only took me three weeks, but I finally deduced she is blind, because she doesn’t recognize me until I speak, and lets be honest, I’m sort of unique at this point. Anyways, the school must just let her be as some sort of service, because no one ever comes in to get their mentality consulted, and we pretty much just nap on the couches. Sometimes I have to bang on the door kind of hard to get her to wake up and open the door. It’s like one step forward, and eleven steps back, but it’s China, and it’s ridiculous, so whatever.

Or on the nice, new subway system, which is actually quite extensive already, and adding new stations practically everyday. Yet, someone has obviously made the conscious decision to only run enough trains so that they are completely 100% packed at all times. I mean, I understand the economics behind it, but it just seems a bit oppressive at some point. If its after rush hour at 9, you still have to wait 6 minutes for a train, that will inevitably be packed to capacity. The Public Safety Bureau has posted helpful signs everywhere saying things like, “Beware of those who press against you designedly.” And “Keep your goods snugly.” And my personal favorite “If you are stolen, call the police immediately.”

So I woke up today to a very rainy, grey day. Checked the weather, it said rain for the next few days. And by rain, apparently it meant Typhoon, which I found out about by my boss later in the afternoon. Apparently they had already been evacuating the parts of the city closer to the coast, but I live on the 8th floor, so I guess I’m not worried. They said its the worst to hit the city in more than a decade, and will be something like a category 2 hurricane, so we ended up getting the day off tomorrow. So, I have a Typhoon Day. Sooo much cooler than a snow day. I’m just saying…

I’m a Child Farmer!

I’m a Child Farmer!

Originally uploaded by Long Hai

My host family says I should tell the headmaster what the sign really says, but I’d like to keep my job…

A Few Thoughts on Teaching, Life

Its been two full weeks of teaching now, and I already have way more respect for my elementary school teachers that I thought I ever would. There is so much crap to put up with, ie: kids wetting themselves, undiagnosed learning disabilities, unruly children with no sense of respect, etc. And that was just first grade for me. But really, as much as the kids are frustrating and noisy sometimes, and impossible to discipline, they always make it worthwhile.

I found out yesterday that the kid that I had been calling Hill this whole time (that’s what he told me his name was the first day), is actually named Hell. And I really don’t know how to approach that situation, because he really seems set on that. I think I’ll just call him Shell instead. Or maybe Bell. And the kid whose name I thought was ironically Tiny (he’s obviously taken a liking to McDonalds), is actually named Tidy.

We spent most of the week reviewing Hello, how are you? And, Nice to meet you, too. Also they sing me this Good Morning song everyday which makes me feel really good, and loved, even though I’m forcing them to sing it. I teach 7 different classes of first grade at one school, and was really impressed with my first 3 classes that I had on day 1. Then I got to my last 4 classes, and found them to be quite a bit more unruly, not bright, not paying attention, etc. It turns out that they take some sort of test to see where they will be placed, and they really do just rank them in order of overall brightness. This means I have to have about 10 different activities ready for the last few classes because they are all so severely ADD inflicted. Nothing holds their attention for more than 4 or 5 minutes, which makes for some interesting days.

Its easy to see though that most of them really love English, and having the one “foreign devil” teacher in the school be all theirs. I have kids running around on the 10 minute breaks, just swarming me, saying “hello!” about 900 times a minute. I found that if I say hello back to them, it only encourages them, so I’ve taken to responding with really complex sentences like “What’s the square root of 49?” and “Iraq didn’t have WMD’s after all!” or “China’s GDP has been growing at an remarkable rate of about 10% for the last 10 years!” This is met with screams, and looks of terror, which in turns get me a few moments of peace. Plus, I’m expanding their exposure to English, so I think its win-win.

Funny Randomness:
-Girl with “I have plenty of milk. Would you like some?” Emblazoned on her shirt
-Sign at my school “Cultivating children for future.” Apparently I work at a child farm. Better than a sweatshop I guess…

Pictures now up at www.flickr.com/photos/llama

Lame Catch Up Blog

I have officially been in Shanghai for 2 weeks now (that’s 两个星期 for those of you brushing up on your Mandarin). It has been an exciting whirlwind that is really difficult to describe, but I’ll try.

The company that hired me, BSK Academy Shanghai is basically a recruiting company that places foreign English teachers in public schools around Shanghai. There are about 60 of us Westerners, ranging from kids mostly my age, to about 60, ranging from world travelers and adventurers, to creepy middle aged men who I think are here mostly to find a wife. Not sure though. We had a week of “orientation,” and I use that term loosely, because it mostly revolved around a Chinese lady named Helia, waving a blue feather pen around saying, “Controrring (controlling) the crass is the most important thing.” Picture me raising my hand asking, “What is the best way to control the class?” She replies, “Keep control of the class.”

Soooooo useful. Then we did a few skits in groups where we were given a simple topic and had to teach it to the rest of the teachers who were pretending to be the students. We were given colors, and so our lesson revolved around asking the kids to name some things that they knew were blue, and green, etc. etc. Well, that worked fine when you are dealing with other English speakers, but I soon came to find out that I would be teaching almost exclusively first graders, and instructions are pretty much useless. I find myself saying things like, “Now, say this. Apple.” And I get 40 students repeating, “Now say this. apple.” But the learning curve has thankfully been quick, and I plan a few games, some chants, and some rote repetition, and the 35 minute class periods go pretty fast.

The first day we were told to give out English names to the kids who didn’t already have them, so I gave a few out. For my family, there are now a few Patricks, Dawns, a Tiffany, and a Ryan running around Shanghai (Susan is actually a somewhat popular name here still). These are in addition to the kids who already named themselves things like, Shiny, Handsome, Horse, Disney, Mickey, a girl named Andrew, Jape, Ring, and my personal favorite, Potato.

Apart from work, I also just moved in with a Chinese family in one of the downtown districts called Jing An Temple. I was so amazingly lucky to get a great family who has given me a room for free, in exchange for appx. 6 hours of informal English lessons per week. They speak a decent amount of English, but thus far the classes have consisted of them taking me out to eat, and just sort of talking and correcting their English, and asking questions etc. Its great to have them to be able to answer all my questions about China, like, “what is that smell?” or “what kind of meat am I eating right now?”. They also bargained down a gym membership from 50 dollars a month, to 50 dollars for 3 months (but the man is going to come to the house to sign me up, because the company can’t officially that price. i think he may just be pocketing the money as well. sooo Chinese.) They are also at the same time helping me with my Chinese all the time, which is much needed. On a funny side note, I was told that I could use everything in the house- fridge, kitchen, washing machine, etc., but that I can’t wash my underwear in the machine. I almost took offense to that, but then I asked someone else about it, and they said that Chinese people think that Westerners smell like cheese and dairy, and there’s no changing their mind. I’m still waiting to see if they use the machine for their own underwear, but for now I guess I am washing it by hand.

Shanghai has about 22 million people. Surprisingly this doesn’t necessarily manifest itself as a problem except for on the subways or bus, which are literally just solid, stinky, people. Luckily I feel like I never have to shower, because it is very hard to pinpoint smells here. All in all though, its a great city, amazing skyline, tons to do, very vibrant (except for the grey, smoggy skies [today I looked directly at the sun without even the hint of a squint].
That’s all the time for now! I will post some pictures on my Flickr site once I actually take some.