Friday, December 17, 2010

December 17th

It’s December 17th, 2010. (My kids actually just learned how to say that. Supposedly, at least.) I don’t remember what I was doing on December 17th, 2009 or on December 17th, 2008, but December 17th, 2007 was quite literally the longest day of my life.

December 17th, 2007 began with karaoke. There was a student deal for the place near my campus in Beijing: if you entered after midnight, you could have a room for 60 kuai a person until 6 AM. So, around 12:30, my American friends and I made our way over to meet up with our Chinese roommates. Our roommates had moved out of the dorms the previous day, but we all wanted to see one another once more before heading home. We sang, we danced, we hugged, we took pictures aplenty, and, around 4, we started wandering back to our dorms to catch a couple hours sleep.

The morning was full of last-minute packing, a cab ride to the airport, and hours of waiting. Many of the kids in my study abroad program were on the same flight to Chicago, from where we’d split up for our domestic legs. We left Beijing in the afternoon and got to Chicago, according to the clocks, a couple hours later. In China, of course, it was already the next day. The flight was a bit delayed, and customs took awhile, so after I got through and transferred to the domestic terminal, I only had enough time to grab a tall-skim-lite-whip-peppermint-mocha at a Starbucks kiosk before boarding my next plane. America hit me in all of its holiday glory (and a huge boost of caffeine).

The flight to Atlanta I don’t remember in the slightest, but I do remember finding my parents. They were waiting for me at the place where most people exit security. My plane, however, had landed elsewhere, so I came up on them from behind. We drove home. I went to sleep eventually. It had been December 17th for almost 36 hours. Christmas Eve was a week later. I felt I’d been gone for so long, and I was happy to be home.

It’s December 17th, 2010. I’ve been in China for just over five months—almost a month and a half longer than my entire semester abroad—and I’m not on a plane right now. I’ll be on a plane in a month, but that plane will be to Thailand (!) and I’ll be back here about 5-6 weeks later for another semester that won’t end until mid-July.

It’s hard to be gone during the holidays. I’ve skipped Thanksgiving a lot, and there have been years when, due to how early Hanukkah’s fallen, I’ve been at school the whole time. But I’ve never skipped Christmas. Yes, I realize that I’m Jewish and that I’m considering rabbinical school, but Christmas to me has never been a religious thing. Christmas is fresh pine needles, our Christmas Eve candlelit tea party (more aptly described as a cookie party, though, to be fair, we do always have a cup or two of tea with our huge platefuls of sweets), singing carols around the piano (yes, we actually do that), being woken up by my sisters and tiptoeing to the living room hearth to experience that once-a-year feeling of a fully stuffed stocking.

I’m still not sure what I’m planning on for grad school (it’s down to either Rabbinical School or a masters and maybe Ph.D in early American history), but I do know that people matter to me more than I’d realized before. For a variety of reasons, I’m not visiting the States over the semester break, but once I get back home more permanently I’m going to make a much greater effort to travel and see people I care about. Obviously finances and obligations like school/work will make it impossible for me to travel whenever and wherever I like, but I’m considering trying to live within driving distance of my folks, and, if I have a year before grad school, I’m determined to spend it somewhere where I already have family or at least one close friend.

Although I won’t be home for Christmas this year, nor will I be alone. All of the Heqing fellows are headed to (surprise surprise) Dali, where some Lincang fellows will apparently be rendez vousing as well. I’m sure it’ll be a nice weekend, that we’ll eat good food (like cheese!) and walk around and enjoy ourselves. The Heqing fellows are doing Secret Santas as well, so that’s always fun. Our big break, however, doesn’t come until mid-January, so it’ll be back to school on Monday December 27th. I suppose in the states there are plenty of people in a similar boat who won’t get a month off later, so I still consider myself quite lucky.

There’s no doubt that I’m doing better here than I was a couple months ago. My language still isn’t improving at the rate I’d like, in my classroom I’m still having discipline and motivation programs galore, and relationships with the other teachers are rather slowly forming, but I know there’s been progress. Ultimately, I see next semester as a chance to start again, at least with my kids. There are some things I really, really need to establish better, and I think a new semester will be a great chance to do that. For now, I’ve got just shy of a month to get through two and a bit more units and review like crazy for the Final. Earlier this week, I made each kid write down his or her goal for the Final and gave them my goals. Surprisingly, most of my students seemed to get what I was after, aiming neither too high nor too low. I made them write their goals before I showed them the ones I had in mind for each of them, and most were within 10% of each other. We’ll have to see how it goes. The Mid-Term was a disaster grade-wise, but I’ve changed my teaching and testing styles fairly dramatically since, so hopefully that will prove helpful.

This weekend will mostly be a working one, but I’ve got Christmas music galore, I’ve bookmarked “Love Actually” on one of the movie streaming sites here, and I’m learning how to knit toe-up socks. I’m also greatly anticipating not one or two, but, at last count, four holiday packages currently winging their way across the Pacific. I am so loved. And once I get my parents’ peppermint extract, peppermint hot chocolate and mochas are so happening.

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Why I (Pengtun 7th Grader) Want to Study

First of all, I posted two new batches of pictures—one a general update of the last couple months (Yes, crazily enough it’s been that long), the other a compilation of some of my cooking/baking adventures. Both can be found at http://anamericaninheqing.shutterfly.com. Enjoy, and onto the main event:

About a month ago I made all my student write me essays, in Chinese, about why they wanted or didn’t want to study. The kids weren’t doing their homework and weren’t really studying much in general, and I wanted them to reflect on how they were doing and how they could do better and why any of it mattered. When I gave directions, I reiterated, oh, about fifty times, that I wanted them to write how they really felt and not what they thought I wanted to hear. Some of my kids seem to have taken that to heart and others not, but, at any rate, here’s a list of reasons for studying, courtesy of rural Chinese 12-14 year olds and my translation/paraphrasing skills. (Commentary, naturally, can be found in the parentheses next to each reason.)

-“I can get lots of knowledge” (This was the first sentence of many an essay, so I guess getting lots of knowledge is rather important to these youngsters.)

-“There are opportunities to get to know teachers and classmates.” (And beat up classmates, and pass notes to classmates, and laugh at classmates….)

-“I can understand life principles.” (Not sure exactly what you’re getting at there, but I appreciate the thought)

-“I can understand English and the differences between English and other languages.” (Impressive, Molly, impressive….)

-“Because Zhou Enlai said so—you should study for the people and devote yourself to the motherland.” (Motherland—a new and useful word for the Chinese vocabulary of Emily Cohen)

-“I want to repay my parents and my teacher. I can’t fail them.” (A common sentiment in theory, but, unfortunately, a lot of my kids still fail to study enough to repay anybody. And yes, Amy, that includes you.)

-“Studying changes destiny.” (Go forth, young padawan, and control your destiny.)

-“Now is the information age.” (Perhaps so, Peter, but I’m not entirely sure how your English textbook is helping you play with the internet.)

-“Studying makes me smarter. We should all value time and want knowledge.” (And yet in class you seem to most enjoy sleeping and goofing around with your little friends….)

-“I can expand the limits of knowledge” (Not your knowledge, Jake, but knowledge in general? That’s lofty of you.)

-“Everyone only has one life and to make it more valuable we should study more knowledge.” (And then do what with it, exactly?)

-“Knowledge is important for the whole society and so I don’t become a stupid person.” (Yes, William, it is. Unfortunately, you spent half of tonight’s evening class with your eyelids flipped inside out, looking at the wrong page of the text book. So you might need to work a tad bit harder on that front.)

-“Knowledge allows us to understand more things so that when we grow up our lives will be more wonderful.” (I would like a more wonderful life. How does one go about achieving that?)

-“Everyone should respect the nine years of compulsory education.” (I believe you already do, Zoe, but, please, get the rest of your class on board)

-“Education is everyone’s right and everyone has to go to school.” (And yet, Freddy, you seem to most enjoy far-from-subtle whispered conversations with friends halfway across the room)

-“Studying is our wish and our duty. It’s an activity that delights us and makes us happy.” (I’m sure it does, Sophie, especially when you cheat on every other test.)

-“Books are our best friends and our best teachers.” (I thought that was dogs?)

-“I’m stupid, so I like to study and I like your class.” (Well, Barry, I’m not really sure how those connect, but good for you)

-“When we start middle school our thoughts are more mature than in elementary school and we should know that our reason is to learn knowledge, not play.” (Ellen, considering that your current average is around a 90%, I’d say you’re doin’ pretty well on that front)

-“Science and technology are really developed and connected to life.” (Sure, Nate. This connects to English how exactly?)

-“I don’t want to study because I’m afraid of your bad list of names and responding incorrectly.” (Leia, sweetie, you are not the smartest child in the world but I know you care because you always do your homework and when I ask easy questions you very shyly but hopefully raise your hand. You will never get on my nonexistent bad list of names.)

-“My ideal is to work in America, so I must study.” (Yes, Alanna, and stop cheating. Because, you see, if you only pretend you can speak English when you get to America you might have some problems.)

-“We can have contact with the world, impact society, and understand a lot.” (True, Mike, true.)

-“To get good grades and make the teacher happy.” (Y’know what would make me happy, River? If you’d do your freakin’ homework and not do homework for other subjects when you’re in my class!)

-“Go to college and make foreign friends.” (Miguel, you are a smart kid, and if you tried you could almost certainly get to college. However, you are also insane, so I’m not sure how that’s all gonna work out for you.)

-“Because I want to lay foundations for the future and not be illiterate.” (Luke, I don’t want you to be illiterate either, and English can help you lay foundations for the future, but somehow I don’t think it’s gonna help your ability to read Chinese all that much.)

-“To increase culture.” (Hate to break it to you, Amelia m’dear, but I’m afraid you’ve lost me there. Whose culture are we talking here?)

-“Without English we have no future.” (This would be funny, Ariel, if it wasn’t more or less true, at least as far as education is concerned. English is worth more on your high school entrance exam than any other subject, and you, unfortunately, are averaging a 25% on your tests.)

-“I don’t like to study English, but it’s important for testing.” (Yes, Connor, it is. And I think its importance is stupid, but unfortunately I don’t control the tests.)

-“To get knowledge, wealth, and happiness for myself and my family.” (Laura, considering that you are among my very best students, I’d say that’d a distinct possibility.)

-“The most afraid people in the world are the people without knowledge.” (You must be positively terrified then, Leland, considering how many of my classes you sleep through.)

-“Studying can change impulsive hearts, sharpen dull hearts, and get hearts that know nothing to know lots. It gives people meaning.” (From most students, I’d just think this was weird, but from you Sam, I’ll actually take it at face value.)

-“Because teachers teach lots, especially foreign teachers.” (Is this a good thing for you, Serenity, or a bad thing? At any rate, that is my goal. To, y'know, teach lots.)

Friday, December 3, 2010

Grocery Run

This morning after class I went into town—Heqing City. I didn’t need anything special, so I was in and out within an hour and a half. A trip to town always begins with walking a block from the school gate out to the Dali-Lijiang road that connects those two tourist spots and goes right past Heqing. Actually, from what I understand (although I could certainly be wrong), today's two-lane highway more or less follows the path of the "Horse and Tea Road," which some folks might better recognize as the "Southern Silk Road." There are two kinds of vehicles, both costing one yuan, that shuttle people to the city: 19-seater buses that I would say hold up to 40 when things get really crowded, and what I think of as “Oregon Trail” cars—five seater cabs with an arched wagon-like piece of canvas covering two benches in the pick-up truck style back. These benches hold 3-4 people each, but often there are also 5-6 people (or 3 people and a couple bikes) crammed into the small standing space between the benches. Kinda hard to picture, perhaps. I’ll try to remember my camera next time.

You flag down either kind of transport by sticking your arm out, and it’s a short ride—5-10 minutes, depending on how many times we stop to pick up or drop off more passengers. This morning I had to wait more than 10 minutes before a bus arrived. Normally, they’re much more frequent, and it was kinda chilly. I was wearing my fleece and an excellently warm alpaca scarf, but I haven’t broken out my hat or mittens much. Gloves are pretty common here, but we’re talking cute little skin-tight gloves or motorcycle gloves, not my Norwegian snowflake mittens. And, for whatever reason, I don’t see a lot of hats except for those worn by the Bai women, and those aren’t winter-knit caps. However, I’ve decided that I don’t care. Minnesota-trained or not, my hands and head are chilly.

Anyway, when I go to town, I almost always need to go both to the market and to the supermarket. Today I go to the market first, which is on the far side of town (keeping in mind that the “far” side of town is all of a 10-15-minute walk from the closer side). Once off the bus, I first have to walk through the meat and fish sections. There are two wheelbarrows full of pig heads. I have no idea why. There’s a lot of blood on them. There are always pig heads (and feet and legs and everything else), but there are not usually wheelbarrows fully devoted to the storage (display?) of pig heads. It’s really quite upsetting. So glad I don’t eat pork. In the fish section I try not to look at the flopping and suffocating piles, but peripheral vision—what can you do? Again, so glad I don’t eat fish.

Once free of the animals, I move to the potato trucks. The first time I bought potatoes, I thought they were russets and only discovered after scrubbing them in my sink that they were, in fact, red-skinned potatoes. The (mostly) ladies who sell them sit by small fires to keep warm. I buy eight—it is Chanukah, after all—and pay 5 kaui.

Then, crossing over the piles of discarded, rotting scallions and cornhusks, I make my way to my broccoli lady. I started buying broccoli from her a couple months ago, and she knows that, although I often buy other things, broccoli is always on the list. Today I supplement my large crown of broccoli with two sizable tomatoes and an eggplant, paying 7 kuai for the lot. Produce is getting a little more expensive as weather turns cooler, but there’s still plenty of it, and since it’s not hot I can buy more at one time. When I first moved here, I could really only buy veggies I’d eat within a day or two. Now I can leave food by the window and it’ll keep much longer. It’s pretty awesome.

I’ve recently rediscovered onions. Not that I’d ever not known about or liked onions, but I hadn’t really been buying them. Today I look around for one of the onion-ginger-garlic sellers. They often have other things too, but generally if people have garlic or ginger they seem to specialize in all three. I grab two red onions (I don't know if I've ever seen white or yellow onions here, actually) and 3 bulbs of garlic and pay 4.5 kuai.

The tofu lady I go to today gets into a long (because I have major accent issues) conversation with me about whether or not I can tutor her high-school-aged niece in English during the break. As over the break I won’t be in Heqing, I say I can’t do that, but who knows? Maybe next time I’ll ask if she wants me to meet with her niece on the weekend or something. At least she doesn’t seem annoyed as she cuts and bags up my 1 kuai slab of fresh tofu (about 2/3 of the size you’d get in a box in the states).

My noodle lady knows that I’m always after ersi— fettuccini-sized chewy rice noodles. I pay 1 kuai for a nicely-sized handful before moving past the many varieties of ground pepper and into the fruit lane. Here I stock up, bagging 6 or 7 clementines, 5 bananas, and 4 apples for 12 kuai.

Produce total: 30.5 yuan, or $4.50 at today’s exchange rate.

I walk past stalls bursting with socks, slippers, DVDs, and all manner of other things out of the market gate. I’m kinda hungry, so I approach a steamed bun seller and hand her 5 mao (half a kuai) for a small but warm roll, munching as I walk to the store. The market is at one end of one of the main streets cutting through town, and the supermarket I like to go to is almost at the other. It’s maybe a 10 minute walk. I pass by restaurants, clothing stores, blanket stores, convenience stores and the toilet paper store (all it sells is TP—I kid you not), as well as stands hawking papaya slices (sour and dipped in salt and chili powder, so not really my thing), spam hot dogs, and french fries. When I reach the store, I hand my backpack to the woman behind the counter (it’s not allowed inside) and grab a basket. I need a few things here: soy sauce (5.9 kuai for a 500 ml bottle), salt (1.3 kuai for a 500g bag), sponges (2.9 kuai for 4), tissues (3.8 kuai for 10 pocket packs), and sesame oil (a bit pricey at 10.8 kuai for a 180 ml bottle, but so worth it). When I reach the sesame oil aisle, I realize that I’ve forgotten the characters for it. Scanning the many bottles, I experience a brief moment of concern before centering myself and letting the characters surface once again in my mind.

Store total: 24.7 kuai ($3.71)

On my way back to the main road and my bus home, there are a few flower shops, a gaming den, and countless convenience stores. I drop into one and pick up 4 eggs for 3 kuai. Eggs are running pricey these days, but I'm a bit protein-conscious lately so I still like to keep a stock.

I wait for a minute at Heqing’s one stoplight but eventually end up jaywalking anyway, passing building supply shops, fruit and breakfast stands, and more restaurants before arriving at the seemingly arbitrary place where one can almost always find a bus waiting. Seats are already full, so I grab a handle, cushioning my eggs as best I can. This is always the scary part. I guess 10 AM on Friday is busy, because before long I find myself pushed far forward, directly behind a middle-aged gentleman and his cigarette. I'm forced to relinquish my handle in favor of the top of his seat. There are “no smoking” signs in all of the buses, but I think they’re paid about as much attention as the technical maximum capacity.

Three or four minutes after I step on, the bus sets off. We pick up two more people on the way out of town and let off a few before we get within range of my school. I yell “师傅,下车!” (Driver, get off bus!) which is, I’ve learned, the standard “Please stop” request. He pulls over and I step around people and baskets of produce to shove my not-at-all-graceful-but-at-least-efficient way down the steps. A dart across the street, a five minute walk, and I’m home again.