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.