Happy 61st, China!

Yesterday was National Day, and thus we get time off. A whole week, as it turns out. Of course, our week off started yesterday, and we didn’t find out for sure we were getting a week until Wednesday, which made planning difficult. As it stands, Mark and Ma LiJun and I are leaving this afternoon for a village about 3 hours away and then deciding after a day or two there whether to venture elsewhere. I’m really excited. I’ve never done this sort of “follow the wind” travel before, but it should be fun. And Yunnan is so beautiful that I don’t doubt we’ll find cool things to see.

Yesterday, my first day off, I kept it local—doing a major room cleanup in the morning and then strolling out into the villages behind the school in the afternoon. My original plan was to find a back path to Heqing that I could walk along without fear of being hit by a tour bus or a tractor, but before long I stopped paying too much attention to where I was, rather just wandering indiscriminately. It’s worth noting that, when wandering rural China, you never really know where you’re going to end up or what you’re going to end up trekking upon. Yesterday’s walk encompassed nice, concrete, sidewalk-like roads; packed down dirt (and sometimes mud) paths; skinny, almost-dumping-me-into-the-rice-paddies trails; and straight up bush wacking. My tiva’d feet got a taste of the local stream, my bag picked up many friends in the form of burrs and needles, and I terrified/herded about 100 ducks before warranting the attention (and mercy) of a local farmer, who allowed me to cut through his courtyard to get back to the main road. It was, all in all, a quite lovely afternoon, despite the embarrassment and need for extreme foot washing. There are new pictures of my wanderings, as well as Lijiang and Dali, at http://anamericaninheqing.blogspot.com.

Today marks 11 weeks since my arrival in Yunnan. I wonder how long it’ll take the weeks to add up enough that I stop counting and default to months. I have been teaching for a month now, officially. In some ways it feels longer, but I still have quite a lot I need to improve upon. The kids will have their first “Monthly Test” shortly after the break. These tests are modeled off of the prefecture and regional tests students are subjected to on a quarterly basis, and they are really, really dumb. So far, my students have learned the alphabet, a few simple greetings, ways to introduce themselves and others, and a few scattered colors and nouns. Everything I’ve taught them (with a few exceptions for classroom commands like “stand up”) is in their textbook. There are other things in the book like acronyms (because BBC and UFO are really terms that first year English students need to know), and I’ve been putting those things aside in the interest of teaching them, y’know, practical English. Unfortunately, China and I do not see eye to eye on what constitutes practical English. Thus, if I want my kids to pass their test, after the break I will need to spend significant time teaching them things that absolutely are not important to first year English study. It’s quite frustrating, but everything from here builds to the end-of-ninth-grade Zhong Kao. If they don’t pass that, they don’t go to high school, so I have no choice but to bite the bullet as far as content and test prep are concerned.

I’ve been in a slump since getting back from Dali—more homesick and less motivated than usual. I’m really hoping this is just a short thing that I’ll snap out of soon, but I don’t know.

Last night, I watched “Beauty and the Beast” in Chinese. It was glorious—classic Disney fun with the added benefit of me being able to write down some vocab words. I intend to do quite a bit of Chinese Disney watching in the future.

Anyway, that’s all for now, folks. I’ll post about my 2-5 day adventures upon my return.

Student Life and Schedules

I feel like I should explain a little more about Lincang Number One Middle School and what exactly I’m doing here. Those of you who’ve seen the pictures of the school (they’re on my shutterfly site) have probably gathered what a spiffed up place this is. I’m not sure when the school was built, but I know that the facilities are relatively new. Lincang is a large prefecture in southwest Yunnan, and this middle school serves 5000 of the prefecture’s top students. Most board on campus, sharing with seven others a space that feels a little cramped with three. They attend classes from 7:30 AM until late in the evening—usually somewhere in the 8-11:30 range—and weekends don’t always mean time off. Plus their summer breaks are far shorter than our own. All the while, they’re preparing to take the 中考, the all important test that will determine not only where but whether or not they are eligible to attend high school. For students who fail the test, or who drop out before they can take it at the end of ninth grade, working life starts at fifteen.

The reason CEI focuses so heavily on middle schools (although this year they’re expanding into elementary schools) is to try to get more of these rural kids through the gauntlet and into high school. That’s why we’re training so hard, and that’s why my days are super, super busy even before school’s begun.

So my days. I wake up at 6:30, shower, get to breakfast at 7, and have from about 7:30-8:15 for either lesson prep or internet time. After that there’s class. Every morning that means three things: an hour-and-a-half long Teaching as Leadership session, a 45 minute teaching period, and a 45 minute observation period. I’ve mostly watched one of my team members teach during the observation period, but they just opened that up so that now we’re allowed to observe any CEI teacher.

At noon, we break for lunch, and the afternoons vary. This week, I have Chinese class from 2-3 and from 3-4 I have a daily lecture from this crazy Yunnanese teacher whom CEI has to get along with for political reasons. At least that’s my impression. He’s an awful teacher and most of us spend that hour doing lesson planning or other equally unrelated things. After 4, there’s sometimes a meeting or sometimes not. If not, we start lesson planning or Chinese homework. Dinner’s at six, and then the planning continues late into the evening. We have to get our lessons checked out by our OSM (ongoing support manager—the person who will be living in Heqing with us) before we’re clear to teach.

Of course, just as in college, there are many distractions and side conversations and other fun but not productive activities that get in the way of lesson planning. These include swing dancing and contra dancing, taught by American fellows, and lots of random debates involving religion, movies, politics, etc. And, just as in college, these distractions—whatever the effect on my sleeping schedule—are totally worth it.

Usually, I get back to my dorm around 10:30, journal and read or write, and get to sleep at 11:30 or 12 after chatting with my roommates. It works out reasonably well, although I do find myself more tired than I’d like to be.

The reason I’m writing this now is that I was able to get a head start on my lesson plan and am, in fact, done for tomorrow, but I’m not getting my plan checked until nine. Plus there’s no internet in my room. Or outlets. It’s ironic, because I should actually (supposedly) have better internet access in my Heqing village than in this prefecture capitol. It’s good to have things to look forward to.