Back At It

Today marked the start of another semester, and gasp! back to the “grind.” I put this in quotes, because people always seem to think my “grind” seems more leisurely than theirs, but dammit, working part time is enough in my book.

Quickly, here’s whats new before I go into further detail:

-We had a much needed month long break from teaching (read: being a white clown), while the students went of holiday for Chinese New Years. A friend of mine, and fellow teacher did a Google search “cheap flights from Shanghai,” came up with the Philippines for about $100, so that’s where we went. Much more on that later.

-Then the parents came, and we had a great 2 weeks traveling through the 3 Gorges Area and seeing the Shanghai sights.

-I have a new part time gig freelance writing for a website called www.bizcult.com – Basically there are about 5 posts a day from me and the guy who started it, dealing with doing business in China, and how it is related with cultural and current affairs. It is quick, snappy writing, so even if you don’t personally have an interest in the business climate of China, you may find it interesting as well. Check it out!

-I’ll be teaching again just part time in the afternoons now, and also taking Chinese lessons every morning for about 3 hours. I have found that I must somehow subconsciously miss the structure that school provides, because I have been looking forward to this for a while now. Who knows, maybe the ARMY is next?

So that’s the basic gist of my life, not that it affects you in any way probably. Anyways, when I pulled out my old book of lesson plans this morning, I came across something that I had meant to post earlier.

On the last day of class last semester, I was told to give a written test to my 5th graders. No guidelines or anything, they just wanted me to assign some sort of letter grade to these kids who saw me I’d say on average 30 minutes every two weeks. Needless to say, I didn’t feel very vested in their actual progress, so I thought I’d at least try to entertain myself during the test.

Here are some of my favorite responses. And don’t take this as me mocking, well, belittling their abilities, because they are half my age, and speak English twice as well as I do Chinese. Really I just found them to be creative, if not downright crafty. Case in point:

Question 6) Define “reflection”

Jimmy: “‘Reflection’. This word is in our book”

Question 10) Write a few nice things about me.

Favorite responses: “Kyle Long is very handsome, he has golden hair.” Ok, shameless ego boost, but I’ll take it where I can get it.

Rudy went in a different direction with this one, and took it a little bit more literally. “Kyle Long lives in the USA. You eat breakfast everyday. You eat dinner everyday.” Cut to me bringing my red pen out for this one.

Question 9) What types of food are healthy for you? Cindy: “I like the fish. Eat the fish are comfortable. They are nice but I usually eat them.” GOD I love Chinglish.

Last Question) If you had all the money in the world, what would you do? Ralph started down on the right path, but probably should have used an eraser, as this is what he literally wrote: “I will give Kyle Long eighty fifty thirty percent. I will give my parents 40%. I will only give me 30%” Thanks Ralph, your grade is now an A, B, D.

Alright, more posts to follow shortly. Must go study for my Chinese placement exam tomorrow.

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…

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.