Mid-Week Musings

Life is strange these days. I think I’m just getting to the point of understanding that this is not a vacation--that I have, in fact, moved here. Of course, I haven’t yet gotten to Heqing, to the school where I’ll be living and teaching this whole year. (It hasn’t been decided whether or not fellows will be switching schools for the second year. CEI plans to continue to expand pretty dramatically—currently they’re planning on 150 fellows for 2011-2013—so the number of schools will also presumably grow. But in any case, Heqing will be my base for a good long while. ) We should be moving up there in a little over a week—probably next Thursday or Friday. I’ll be sad to leave the friends I’ve made here, and to get away from most of the native English speakers in my life, but at the same time I’m really itching to start my life. That’s hard to do when I’m living in a dorm room, eating all my meals at the cafeteria or restaurants, and generally keeping my possessions to a minimum. Actually, I guess that doesn’t sound so different from my first two years at Macalester, but I was 18 and 19 then, not 23. I hadn’t lived in houses for two and a half years.

Anyway, my brain’s been involved in some serious acrobatics over the last week or so. I keep thinking about people and things in the states and realizing just how long it’ll be before I see any of them again. I’m doing what I can to live day by day, to cherish each new experience as it happens, to approach every moment with a tremendous sense of possibility.

There have been amazing moments—many of them—and there have been very “human” moments that remind me how similar people all over the world are, wherever they are. Yesterday, for example, I was going to the Post Office and I saw a little boy, maybe 2 or 3, playing with a toy truck. A long truck, larger than most of those seen on these streets, came rolling by on the road, and suddenly he was pointing at it, yelling and looking between it and his mother. Little boys+trucks=love, here or anywhere else.

Teaching has been getting generally easier, I suppose, although I still have good days and challenging ones. On Friday each class will give a performance for the rest of the summer school. We’re doing a short chant, followed by what will hopefully be a rousing rendition of “A Whole New World.” Should be fun, or at least hilarious. I spent the last hour doing a word-by-word translation of the song, since the Chinese version isn’t all that similar to the English one. Now it’s in the hands of my co-worker, Malijun, for corrections. Judging by how long she’s had it, I’m thinking there’re a lot of corrections.

Today and yesterday we had lessons with Colin (who will be my ongoing support manager), discussing the format and general situation of the Chinese testing system. It’s pretty crazy. The tests seem unreasonable in that they sometimes test material not covered in class, they sometimes include grammatical or spelling errors, and they sometimes have multiple choice questions with multiple correct answers (or no correct answers.)

Case in point:

1) _______________. Is this your pencil?
a. Hello.
b. Hi.
c. Wait!
d. Excuse me.

While it’s true that “Excuse me” seems the most plausible, all four answers could work and the idea of non-native speakers getting the difference is pretty extreme!

Colin also told a few stories about his experiences teaching last year. These were all hilarious until, of course, you realized that they could very easily happen to you. For example, “The kids don’t really bathe. They wash their feet and their hair and their hands, but everything else not so much. So in the winter it smelled so awful that we had to open a window.” Or, “After every test they call the best kids to the office and praise them, and then the call the worst kids to the office and cuff them and scream at them and you have to watch and it’s really awkward and uncomfortable.” Or “You will probably have access to showers, which will probably be hot unless it’s not sunny. So on cloudy days in the winter you probably won’t shower.”

You gotta hand it to China on the solar energy front. Solar heated hot water is common and, in general, a great idea. But I feel like there should be some kinda backup for monsoon season.

Very soon (probably tomorrow or Friday) I’m gonna put up a post about the things I’m used to here and the things I’m not used to, because that’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot. For now, have a lovely Wednesday, everyone.