Silkworms, Steak knives, Crawfish, and other Adventures of May

My room has gotten a little more crowded lately.

First of all there’s Saffton. Saffron is my silk worm. You see, last week Peter was playing with something in his desk. That isn’t at all unusual, but normally he’s messing with a pocketknife and a stick or trying to surreptitiously swigging of pepsi. On that day, however, he happened to have in his possession something else entirely—a rather large, white worm. He held it up as if hoping to scare me and then set it on his desk, wherefrom I plucked it, and, ignoring the screams of my female students, walked it over to the windowsill. I stuck it there, but it didn’t seem too happy, so at the end of class I took pity and brought her back to my room. I found out that she was a silkworm from Yiming. Malijun shrieked, pronounced it scary and ugly, and ran away. Silkworms only eat mulberry leaves. Luckily, there are several mulberry bushes quite near the school, so I ventured out once every couple days to get her a new stash. Over the weekend she built a cocoon, so in a week or two I should have my very own moth. Unfortunately, the moths only live for a few days and can’t eat or fly. Still, pets are good.

I wish Saffron was my only pet, but this is apparently fly season, which means that there are not 1 or 2 but rather at least a dozen flies buzzing about my room. This is the punishment, I suppose, for having a room that cannot ever be completely closed off from the outside. They like my computer. There are three on it as I type—no, make that four—and I’ve grown accustomed to the little colony that forms on the edge of my keyboard. Fun times.

Speaking of fun times, I’ve collected, over the course of this year, quite a few knives from my students. Most are of the pocketknife variety and are not particularly scary. Two nights ago, however, I pulled from William’s desk, despite his best efforts to divert me from it, a full-fledged steak knife. He was only cutting up the desk and not his classmates, which I suppose is a plus, but it nonetheless caught me somewhat off-guard.

As if that wasn’t enough, yesterday I walked into class to find a very big, very much alive crawfish on my desk. The boys who’d put it there tried to snatch it back, but I held onto it and brought it to the lake after class ended.

When we first arrived in Heqing last August, we had nary a day of sunshine in a good month. I remember seeing patches of blue in early October and being amazed by them. We’re heading back into the rainy season now, so there’re a lot of days that range from brightest sun to rainclouds and back. I’m taking as much advantage of the non-rainy weather as possible, biking into town a few times a week and going on walks and the like. I’ve discovered a way to town that goes along village roads instead of the main ones. There’s prettier scenery and less traffic. There’s also a whole lotta straw and other plants on the road. This is apparently the time of year when the farmers beat the seeds from last season’s crops, and to take some of the work out of the process they often lay the plants out so cars and motorcycles and people will dislodge the seeds.

Last Saturday, Mark and I went to visit three of my students in their village, about a half hour bike ride away. We didn’t know exactly how to get there and ended up biking through a lot of fields and, on more than one occasion, having to half drag, half carry our bikes between fields over these rather precarious ladder/bridge contraptions.

The thing about Chinese villages is that there are not street names or, often enough, distinctive homes and landmarks. It’s mostly a lot of fields and dirt or cement roads. Thus, when we finally reached the village, I called Malia to ask where to meet her, only to discover that clear directions weren’t in the forecast. Luckily, we stumbled upon an eighth grader from our school who guided us, on her own bike, to Malia and Molly.

The visit was fun. I got to see three of my students’ homes and get a tour of their village. They were really excited to see me outside of school too.

We’re kinda-sorta-a little bit coming into the home stretch. I have three units of new material left, followed by review time. This semester is much less demanding, time wise, than the last, when Mark and I were absolutely scrambling to fit everything in by the end. School goes until sometime in July, but whether it’s the 10^th or the 20^th or even later is still very much uncertain. This made buying a ticket home difficult, but I did. July 25^th. Beijing to Atlanta. I am ever so excited. In the meantime, I’m trying to get as much out of these final two months as possible. I may be ready to go home, but I also know that this is in some significant respects the most extraordinary circumstance I’m likely to find myself in for years.

For now, it’s Friday afternoon, which means a major room cleanup, reading time, and perhaps a trip into town for bubble tea and groceries. Weekends are good. I'm going to try to get a new batch of pictures up soon, so stay posted.

My Kids Need Glasses

This is Andy. No, he doesn't always have that deer in the headlights look. I took these shots on the first day of class so I could learn their names. It was day one of middle school and day one of being taught by an American teacher, and naturally a lot of them looked pretty silly.

Anyway, he's a good kid. Not the brightest bulb in the box, so to speak, but he's usually paying attention during class and does his homework about half the time. He seems to like English, when he's not too tired to focus on it. I feel bad, because he's got a pretty thick accent and I usually have a difficult time understanding his Chinese, but, at any rate, he's a good-natured soul and I'm rather fond of him.



This is Andy during class. No, he's not sleeping, although he does from time to time. Usually I tap him on the shoulder and say "Andy," and he looks up blearily and smiles sheepily, as seems appropriate for the sensation of opening one's seventh grade, rural Chinese eyes to the sight of one's very not Chinese English teacher.

No, this is Andy trying to take notes. Andy, you see, has terrible eyesight. He sits in the front row but still can't read the board. Andy has glasses, but they don't do him much good, it would seem. I asked him how old they were and he didn't seem sure how to answer.

Andy needs new glasses. I'd like to buy some for him, but I don't really know how to do that, and, even if I could pay for them, I'm not sure it'd be appropriate to give a student something so (relatively) expensive. Instead, I'm wondering if any of you fine folks who follow or stumble upon my blog know anything about organizations or other means of acquiring glasses of the proper prescription both for Andy and for some other kids. He's the extreme case in my classroom, but he's not unique. I bet across the school there are dozens of students whose grades could improve dramatically if they could, y'know, see.

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.)

"Who Needs a Master Key When You Have a Good Snap Kick?" and Other Stories

Here is what I’m wearing right now:

Sweatpants, a T-shirt, a knock-off North Face fleece, heavy socks, excellently absurd slippers with blue cows on them, a relatively thick hat, and freshly-knit wrist warmers (made with my first ever bought-in-China yarn).

Did I mention that living in a concrete box can get kinda cold?

We’ve come to the point in the year where, outside, sunny weather quite often means pleasant conditions and cloudy weather quite often means misery. Unfortunately, even with the curtains open, not much warmth trickles indoors. Hence my evening attire being what it is. Don’t worry; there are still layers to be added, but having been Minnesota-trained for the last five winters, I know better than to throw them all on at once the moment it gets chilly. I haven’t turned on my space heater yet (I’m aiming for post-Thanksgiving), and I have fleece PJs awaiting me.

So it’s been a good long while since my last post, mostly because my weekends have been busier than usual, and weekends are usually when I get my blogging in. But this weekend is apparently five days long and will be followed by a marathon nine days of class. Excited I am not, because we found out about our vacation a grand hour before it started, and hence there wasn’t exactly time to plan for travel. We’re probably heading to Dali for a couple days. Most of the other places of note within three hours of us are too chilly ‘til the spring, and we don’t fancy a long trip to somewhere like Kunming, because we had two ten hour bus trips last weekend (more on that in a moment). I shudder to think of how I will feel on Friday December 3^rd, after going from the night before Thanksgiving (weeks always begin with the evening class) without a day off. But what can you do?

Anyway, here are some stories of good, bad, and just plain random times in rural Yunnan.

Gate Crashers

One Saturday morning, Hallie and Arianne thought it’d be nice to ride their bikes up to the spring near our school and hang out. Mark and I, being only twenty or so minutes away, walked over to meet them. Upon arrival, Mark and I looked around for our American friends and were instead greeted by a chorus of “Good Morning, Ms. Emily!” from a gaggle of girls.

“Are those mine or yours?” I asked Mark, puzzled. He didn’t know whose students they were either, and as we drew closer it turned out the answer was neither. These were eighth graders from the area’s top middle school, and they knew who we were because they had already thrust birth

day cake and lollipops onto Hallie and Arianne. Before we had time to utter more than a “Oh, you don’t have to give us cake!” the two of us received the same treats.

The next hour or so was mostly consumed by slightly successful attempted conversation with the girls, followed by a hugely successful silly string fight (during which Arianne was pretty well walloped), followed by the washing of hair, in the spring, to remove said silly string.

Reunion

Last weekend, the reason we had two 10-hour bus trips in three days was because of this year’s first Professional Development Conference. All fifty-whatever CEI fellows congregated for about a day and a half of discussions and trainings aimed to help us work better in and out of the classroom. Since all but three of the CEI schools are in Lincang, rather than Heqing, we Heqingers got to/had to make the trek back down. That part wasn’t so bad. We got two mini van-sized cars to take us all and spent most of the time chatting and sleeping and occasionally playing word games. The conference itself was more useful than I thought it would be. There was some annoying bureaucracy involved, as always, but some of the discussions about class planning and classroom management and integration into school life were genuinely helpful.

More importantly, it was awesome to connect with everyone again after almost three months apart. Our situations are alike in that we’re all dealing with challenged populations, and the American fellows all have some sort of language barrier, but of course every school and every team of fellows is different, and the casual chats/rants about individual schools were great. I was also able to start probing into people’s plans for our month off in January and might—fingers crossed—be putting some things into motion. Details to come when I’ve got ‘em.

On the somber side, being with everyone really hammered in for me how much I wish I was closer to other folks. I like this place, but the 6-10 hour distance from other places stinks. Case in point: if I weren’t 6-10 hours away from everyone, guess where I’d go visit this weekend?

Who Needs a Master Key When You Have a Good Snap Kick?

This story is actually super old news, but I forgot to write about it and it’s way too good to not share.

Sometime in October, I left my room with a key-shaped lump in my pocket, pulled my door closed, went to the bathroom, and traipsed back up to my room only to find that the lump was, in fact, a wadded up post-it. Oops.

Not really sure what to do, I was lucky to immediately run across the teacher who lives next door to me coming up the stairs. She got the maintenance guy. Prepping my very best “不好意思” (I’m sorry/Oh, I’m so embarrassed) face, I got ready to thank him profusely for walking up here to unlock my door. Thus, I was puzzled when, rather than taking out a master key, or a set of keys, he started examining my (very much closed and locked) window. At this point, I was beginning to suspect that there was, in fact, no master key, and that the only two keys to my room were both inside. How this could possibly be the case made no sense to me, as in the city you can find key copying people on many a street corner, and copies cost 2-3 kuai a piece.

Anyway, at that point another teacher arrived, and Ma LiJun came out to help me translate. Her services were swiftly rendered unnecessary as the other teacher’s foot engaged in the cross-cultural language of kicking—kick

ing out my lock, that is. The maintenance guy then spent an hour replacing and installing a new one. Of course, they had all the parts necessary to replace a whole lock. The next time I went into the city, I got copies made, so I now have my own “master key” in the form of four keys—one to carry around, one spare in my room, and two in Mark and Ma LiJun’s rooms. And I still have an awesome footprint on my door.

My Kids are Crazy!

This is less an anecdote than an ongoing saga, but these last few weeks have been particularly notable behavior-wise. Heqing students are, generally speaking, closer to sane than some of their Lincang-ian counterparts. I have never had a student set a desk or his/her own hair on fire in the classroom, and I’ve never caught a student coming to class drunk. At other CEI schools, this has in fact happened. But the Pengtun kids are, on the whole, the least cooperative of the three Heqing schools, and hence we’ve got our own issues. Mostly, these issues arise in the form of talking—lots and lots of talking. Then there’s cheating—lots and lots of cheating. On their Unit 5 test a week ago, I caught no fewer than ten students talking or cheating. Not fun.

The problem is that these kids are very much used to being hit, and I will neither hit them myself nor send them to be disciplined by teachers who will hit them. Thus, my own discipline system needs to replace the fear of being hit with a wooden stick with the fear (or hope of) something else. I’ve tried to make this work through carrots like free time and candy and games, and metaphorical sticks like holding the class back for ten minutes just before lunch so they’re last in line, giving out extra homework, and making particularly naughty kids stand just outside the classroom in 40°F weather for an hour and attend class through the window. Unfortunately, nothing’s come to work properly just yet, and now some of my least cooperative students have a new trick: crawling out of the window as soon as class ends. Mark’s having a similar issue, so we’re planning on switching off being “window guard” for the other.

Anyway, I’ve talked discipline tips with other CEI fellows and my parents, but if anybody else has tips on how to handle the velociraptors (as one of last year’s fellows so aptly titled them) I would love to know.

A New Day

After my last post, people really stepped up to offer comfort. So thank you for the comments, for the emails (of which I still have half a dozen lacking replies), for the e-hugs. It’s amazing to remember just how much I’m loved.

Just over three months ago—July 15^th—I stepped off of a plane in Beijing. Since then there have been a good number of moments where I wanted nothing more than to step back on. That’s to be expected, but, frankly, I think I need to be done with that stage. I need to choose between feeling sorry for myself and feeling committed to Pengtun, between resentment towards the relative ease of my family and friends’ lives in the States and acceptance of the simple knowledge that for the next two years life is going to be harder than what I’m used to.

Every day, I need to remember that I’m here. I’m here for reasons that I chose and for the possibility of reasons that would reveal themselves to me only after arrival.

I’m here to teach, not only expanding my students’ knowledge of English but opening their eyes to a part of the world they might otherwise never encounter. I’m only one American, it’s true, but that’s one more than most if not all of my kids have met before, and it’s one more than they might ever have met depending on where their lives take them. The same is true for some of the teachers, and for many of the farmers and other workers in Pengtun. Barely a day goes by when I don’t encounter curiosity or confusion from locals. Elderly women in traditional Bai clothing smile and shoot me thumbs up as I jog by the lake. Construction workers call out “Hello!” on my way to (and back from) the shower. Small children standing on the back of their parents’ and grandparents’ motorcycles stare and whisper. I educate by my mere presence. As the only non-Chinese woman in a very Chinese place, locals’ opinions and views of the Western world, and the women who call it home, are affected by their interactions with me.

I’m here to teach the teachers, too. I can’t change the system of Chinese testing that’s meant to lure top kids to the surface and leave the rest drudging along lake bottom. I can’t fix the local English teachers’ pronunciation if they aren’t interested in practicing, and I can’t improve their classroom technique unless they want to make changes. However, I can show them that there’s more than one way to run a classroom—that, even while preparing students for their tests, you have the option to prize independent thinking and understanding over rote memorization. I can show that I don’t tolerate cheating and that I won’t accept the notion of my lowest ten or twenty kids just not being able to learn. I can express my discomfort with the use of corporal punishment and affirm that I will neither hit my kids nor send them to be disciplined by another teacher who will.

I’m also here to learn. I’m here to acquire Mandarin proficiency and to figure out how to interact in a place where I can’t communicate fluently or even consistently conversationally. I’m learning about how to be an effective teacher, and every day I’m learning more about just how crazy my native tongue is. I’m seeing how most of the world lives. I will never be Chinese, and despite the adjustments I’ve had to make in my life I will never experience the same kind of existence as most people in this place, but I do get a taste of it. I’m learning to make due, not necessarily with less, but with different. One really can get almost anything in the States, and in rural Yunnan there are many products that aren’t available—hence care packages containing cocoa powder and dried basil, and baking adventures replaced with rice cooker adventures. Ultimately, most of what I’m learning I’m probably still not aware of myself. I imagine it’ll take some time after I return home to process, sorta like I processed Mac last year.

I’m here to explore my own limits—to see how far I can and want to push my comfort zone. Never in my life have I been so consistently surrounded with situations that make me uncomfortable. I’m shy with people I don’t know well under the best of circumstances, so the fact that here I not only spend much of my social time with people I don’t know well but with people I don’t know well and with whom I have trouble communicating is terrifying indeed. Whenever I want anything, be it directions, advice, or a price; I have to ask with a language that doesn’t come naturally to me. At this point, I don’t have the vocab to order my usual small skim lite-whip mocha at a coffee shop. That’s fine, as there are obviously no coffee shops around here, but it’s just an example of how a simple interaction—something I never, ever have to think about in the States—transforms into a task that I would have to plan for in advance or use an obscene amount of gesturing and explaining to accomplish. I’ve lost my Stateside anonymity: the ability to be out and about without the eyes of others focused upon me. I am, in a very real way, a Pengtun celebrity. While from a young age I sought the spotlight (acting, anyone?), as a young adult I’ve loved situations where I can just be. I can do that here, but knowing that while I’m being me I’m being watched takes some adjusting to.

I’m here for awhile but not forever. That’s a big one. I’m here for two years—a long time, perhaps, considering that I’m all of 23, but not a lifetime. I’m not an immigrant, seeking better than the place I left, knowing that a return to familiar surroundings is almost certainly out of the cards. Ultimately, I’ll be going home, back to the States, back to comfort and ease and all of the things I’m missing now.

Of course, it won’t all be comfort and ease; in fact, if things go as planned I’ll be hitting the books once again, in one field or another. Life there will have its challenges and its shortcomings too, and I expect there will be moments, many of them, when I want nothing more than to step back on the plane again. But I’ll deal with that when I get to it.

This Episode Brought to You by the Letter m (and i l y o h e n )

As I’ve written on a number of occasions, my language woes here are many. I have trouble articulating myself properly, speaking to my students, making small talk with teachers, etc. Just last week my banzhuren (the woman in charge of my class) came over to me saying something about a book and 25 kuai and I, to this day, do not understand what that was about. Apparently, however, I was not supposed to pay the 25 kuai (that much I could ask and understand the answer to), but two days later she showed up with a copy of a review book for me and the news that my students would be receiving theirs over the weekend. Why, and who’s paying for them? Mysteries both.

So that’s a classic case of language barrier in action. Another comes pretty much daily, when I stand in front of my class and say something in Chinese (like “last name”) that results in fits of giggles from my students. At first, I ignored these outbursts, but now I’ve started to question them with: “我说什么错了？”(What did I say wrong?) Sometimes the kids will tell me, and other times they won’t. I suspect that when they won’t it’s because I’ve said something inappropriate, but, again, mystery reigns.

Every Monday, I am obligated to attend two meetings: a full faculty meeting at 3 PM, and an English department meeting at 10:25 AM. The full faculty meetings are usually long (although not painfully so) and dull, as much for the local teachers as for us CEI fellows. I sorta try to pay attention, but my language skills do not allow me to glean full comprehension of anything and do not even let me catch the gist of some topics. I always bring my little vocab notebook and scribble away; sometimes this allows me to acquire such useful words as “lawn” and “bonus;” at other moments, my listening skills and the speakers’ accents combine in such horrifyingly inaccurate ways that my dictionary spits out engineering and computer science terminology. I keep trying though.

The English meetings are both nicer and scarier, because they are smaller. There are perhaps ten English teachers at our school, all of whom speak English with varying degrees of success. A few try to engage Mark and me in English conversation, while others will utter a word of English only under extreme duress. These meetings are casual, with teachers throwing around various questions and ideas for the classroom. Mark and I have been mostly quiet so far, except when practicing English with those teachers who have shown interest. We try to follow along as best we can, and when conversation moves slowly enough we sometimes can at least get the main ideas. However, the English teachers truly like to talk, and sometimes a particular topic gets them fired up, and everybody starts to talk at once. When this happens, I’m screwed. It’s a cacophonous mess, the universe’s sense of order ripped into spheres of utter chaos. If I can ever come to understand those moments, I will feel as though I am the best non-native Chinese speaker in existence. For now, Mark and I just wait for passions to cool.

So those are all distinctly language-based examples of communication difficulty, but there’s other sorts of communication too. I have two excellent stories for you that nicely illustrate this point: The Wuzixi (Noon Study) that Wasn’t, and The Bank Account Debacle

The Wuzixi (Noon Study) that Wasn’t

So, last Thursday I was to teach my usual noon study. It’s only a 35-minute class and quite casual. I normally just let the kids have a study hall, and that was my plan for Thursday too. However, when I arrived at my classroom, I saw that it was already quite occupied, and not with my students but with my banzhuren and what looked to be my students’ parents. I remembered YiMing saying something about there being a parents’ meeting on Thursday during lunch, but this description had not included the idea of there being fifty adults in my classroom when I expected to be able to use it. Lunch ends, after all, at 1:20, which is the time my class was to begin.

At first, I assumed the meeting was just running late, and I tried to keep my kids (congregated in the hallway just outside the door) on the quiet side. However, with 1:30 quickly approaching and my kids growing ever-more-antsy, it was clear I needed to take more drastic action. There was nowhere to go but outside, so that’s where I took them. I lost a few of my boys along the way, but it couldn’t be helped. After all, my class was one of two or three without access to their rooms, and I had an assortment of not-my-students tagging along, bringing my count of 49 up to at least 60. So I led the kids out and we made a circle, and I improved like mad. We did chants and songs and name games. I shouted myself hoarse and then some. All the while, I kept an eye on our room, in the hopes that at any moment the door would open, the parents would leave, and we could return to normal. No such luck. At 1:55, the time my wuzixi was scheduled to end, I let the kids go and I went back to drink some tea and soothe my poor throat. My banzhuren never said anything to me, so I guess that’s what I was expected to do?

The Bank Account Debacle

Last Sunday (I know, banks are open on Sunday! What a concept), Ma LiJun, Mark, and I went to the Agricultural Bank of China to open accounts. Our school does direct deposit, and because we hadn’t yet opened bank accounts we hadn’t been paid for September. Ma LiJun’s account should have been pretty straightforward to set-up. She would just need her government ID card and a couple of other easily-acquirable things. Mark and I, being Americans, required our passports and an official note from our school stating that we were employees there.

Once we arrived at the bank, we discovered that Ma LiJun could not, in fact, open an account, because her old credit card number was from a different province and thus they couldn’t find a record of it. Why this makes any sense at all I really don’t know.

Then it was Mark’s turn, and mine. Nervously, we handed over our passports and the note. At first they were confused as to how to use a passport rather than a Chinese ID card as a proof of ID. Once they figured that out, the real problems began. American passports, you see, list one’s surname on one line and follow it up on the second with one’s first and middle names. Our note from the school had our first names first and last names last and included no middle names at all. We tried to explain that middle names were not important in America and that only the first and last names mattered, but they wouldn’t budge. Much more important than the lack of middle name, however, and even the fact that the names were written in different orders, was the fact that while our passports had our names written in all caps, our school note had only the first letter of each name capitalized. MAJOR issue! Big, big problem! As Mark and I spent our first weeks here teaching the alphabet, we were able to explain, using proper terminology, that in English there’s (in this situation) no difference in meaning between big and small letters, but according to our teller that was absolutely not true, and having all caps versus just the first letter in caps meant that our names were entirely different on one form of ID than on the other. BIG problem.

So, in short, none of us opened accounts that day (don’t worry—we got a new note and opened them two days later).

On Recognizing One’s Own Limitations—Or, How I Ended up with 49 Chinese Essays

So, funny story. On Monday night, my students had their first test. We’d had a quiz before, during which I caught five cheaters. I was disappointed, but I figured it was the first major assessment, and that, after seeing the pretty rough consequences faced by said cheaters, the problems would diminish rapidly.

As I had before their quiz, before Monday’s test I discussed, in great detail, the consequences for cheating and what exactly constitutes cheating. This includes looking anywhere but at your paper or straight up, having anything on your desk aside from a pen and your test paper, rummaging in your desk, etc. My kids also have to put their English books and notebooks on the floor where I can see them too. I don’t take chances. I want to create “testing barriers” of sorts to erect around each student, but I haven’t found manila folders or something similar yet. I’m on the lookout.

Anyway, the test was going just fine for perhaps twenty minutes. Then, in the very back row, two very, very good students put their heads together, looking at the same paper and whispering.

I didn’t want to do it. Every part of me wanted to believe that they weren’t cheating, that Alanna was just asking Caroline a question for clarification, but ultimately it didn’t matter. Ultimately, they’d heard the rules the same as everyone else, and I knew I had to follow through.

I made my way slowly to the back row, sighed not for dramatic effect but because I really, truly didn’t like what was about to happen, and ripped up both of their test papers. I informed the class that those two students, and their team (my class is divided into four teams), would lose five points. The two girls would also, naturally, get a zero for the test.

After that, the test continued without further incident, but I was most displeased and did not pretend otherwise. This is where the problems came in.

Each evening class runs for two hours. I’d given the kids the first half hour to study, they tested for about half an hour, and then I still had an hour left. My original plan was to play an English name game. No no. Instead, after collecting the last test paper, I decided it would be an excellent idea to lecture the kids (in Chinese, naturally) about why cheating was wrong. Never mind that I couldn’t do it properly, with the nuance and emotional appeal I could put into an English speech. Never mind that I had not planned out, at all, what I was going to say. Never mind that I was relatively sure the two girls whose tests I’d taken probably hadn’t cheated at all. I take cheating very, very seriously, and my class needed to be told exactly why.

I drew diagrams on the board, I asked rhetorical questions, I presented them with the stoniest face I can muster. Fifteen minutes, and probably 50,000 mistakes later, I was done. But there were forty-five minutes of class left. This is where I should have stopped. I should have had the kids do some mindless English copying or sit silently or something. Instead, I decided I may as well forget about that fact that, in addition to not being able to speak Chinese, I cannot read it, so I informed my students that they all needed to write me essays about why cheating was wrong. They were to be silent, and writing, for the remainder of class.

I was brutal. Every time I heard talking, I deducted points. They’d never seen me go without smiling for half as long. At 8:25, I collected their papers (some of which were mercifully short), dismissed them with a “You should think about how to make tomorrow better” rather than with my usual “Thank you, class,” and swept back to my room.

Then I laughed, because I realized that I now had 49 essays, in Chinese, that I needed to read. This took hours but went better than expected. Five or so essays I simply could not decipher, because whether in the states or in China, middle school boys can have some darn awful handwriting. While reading the rest, however, I learned new words, like “shameful” and “look down on,” and I even had two students ‘fess up to having cheated on the evening’s test. (The two girls whose papers I’d taken, as expected, had not, but I still had to give them zeros for breaking the rules.)

Did my kids learn? I’d like to hope so. I guess next test I’ll find out.

Did I learn? Well…at least maybe if I continue to do things this stupid my Mandarin will improve faster.

First Week of Class

Alright, so clearly I never posted the second part to my “adjustments” post. I do intend to write it at some point, but this week I started classes, and I’d rather write about that.

So, last Sunday night around 9:30 PM, we got our teaching schedules. I was lucky, because my first class was not until 11:15 Monday morning; I was unlucky because in addition to that morning class I was to teach a wanzixi (evening “self study”). Now, the translation of “zixi”—self study—would imply a study hall-like setting. No, no. While the “zaodus” (morning reading periods) and “wuzixis (lunch self studies) can be used as homework time, almost every teacher teaches during the wanzixi. For me, that meant needing to plan an extra hour and a half of class for the first day of school.

Schedules in China are different from schedules in the States, but then, what else is new? Basically, each class of students here at Pengtun (and at middle schools all over the country) makes up a “ban.” Rather than switching classes like their American counterparts, a Chinese ban owns a classroom for the course of the year, and the teachers switch room to room. That much I can sort of understand, although it is too bad that students are limited to one group of peers for all of their courses. What makes less sense to me is why the schedules are different every day of the week. For example, on Monday I teach in the late morning and I teach the evening study. On Tuesday I teach the morning reading period (from 7:10-7:45), first period (from 7:50-8:30) and third period (from 9:35-10:15). I don’t think there’s a single period of the day that I don’t teach at some point. At least I don’t teach Saturdays. The ninth graders only have Sundays off, but seventh and eighth graders get a full weekend. They even get out at 4:30 instead of 8:30 every Friday. But then they have to be back at 6:30 pm on Sunday. Fun stuff.

I really don’t know who thought up the idea of keeping these kids in school from 7:10 AM-8:30 PM (or 9:30 PM, for students who live here instead of at home). It’s crazy. Granted, they have a full hour and twenty minutes for lunch, and two hours for dinner, so students who live off campus can go home if they wish—but seriously, that’s still over nine hours in a classroom every day. Homework? Only a little, because when will they do it. Extra-curriculars? Faggedaboutit.

The classes are also quite large. Pengtun has the smallest class sizes of the CEI schools in Heqing, and I’ve got 48 kids. The classrooms are no bigger than the ones I worked in last year (in fact, they might be smaller), so there’s not exactly room for the kids to get up and move about. One disadvantage to not having a classroom of my own is not being able to arrange the desks how I’d like and stick bunches of stuff on the walls. As it is, the desks are in your classic rows. I do throw the kids for a loop though, pretty much daily, by making them swing around on their benches halfway through class and face the “back” of the room. In general, it’s abnormal for teachers to move past about the fourth or fifth row of students, so the fact that I not only circulate among all the desks but make the back kids the front kids is pretty revolutionary. But whatever.

I’m slowly (more slowly than I would like) getting used to having 48 students all at once. I think the most I’ve ever had to deal with before is about 25, maybe 30. I’m used to learning names in a day or two and knowing a good bit about each of my kids. It’s going to take me a lot longer to do that this time around. It would take me longer in any case, because of the language barrier, but the number of kids compounds the difficulty. Plus, with 48 kids it’s a lot harder to monitor cheating, and cheating runs rampant at my school. I mean, we’re talking every assignment, even the ones I very, very clearly state are not for a grade. I’m cracking down pretty hard—there are harsher penalties for cheating than for any other rule infraction—but it’s still really challenging to catch everyone and to get the kids to understand why they shouldn’t do it.

I suppose one of my biggest adjustments in general is remembering that I am, for the first time in my life, a real teacher. I have had so, so many informal teaching experiences, from camp counseling to tutoring to afterschool classes to being the unofficial but defacto sub in Chinese last year, that it’s hard for me to remember just how serious this is. This is planning with units and textbooks and province-wide tests in mind. This is keeping track of grades and forming my own assessments. This is taking 48 children, some of whom have never studied English before, and giving them a super strong foundation that will (hopefully) get them through the high school entrance exam in three years. To do this means not only teaching them the material effectively but getting them invested in it—making them excited about learning English and willing to put in the work it’ll take to do it well. In that sense it’s terrifying. Of course, school is important everywhere, and at every level, but if you’re teaching seventh grade Spanish in the States, you’re not contributing directly to whether or not your students will be eligible to attend school past ninth grade. I am. And I’ve been a “real” teacher for all of five days. Hoo-boy.

I’m definitely enjoying my students. On the first day, I let them all choose English names by picking three from a hat and then selecting their favorite. It’s pretty surprising how many of their names suit the personalities of the kids who selected them. Most of the names I let them choose among were people or characters that I know well. Not all of them got picked, of course, since I had about 10 more names per gender than I did students of each gender, but I’ve got my dad, a sister, an aunt and uncle, a cousin, a grandpa, college and childhood friends galore, professors/mentors from Mac, Harry and Lily and Ginny, Luke and Leia, Zoe and Simon and Serenity (the latter two of whom happen to sit next to each other), William and Leland (Adama) and Laura (Roslin), Alanna (of Trebond), Malia (as in first daughter Obama), etc. Am I a geek? Yes. But It’s pretty fun.

They’re a simultaneously shy and rambunctious group, so I’m having to push a lot of students to speak louder when they’re called on and to shut up when they aren’t. It’s a process, but I do think that most of them at least like me. It’s a start. I should have a year with them—possibly two, since it hasn’t yet been decided whether or not we’ll teach the same ban for eighth grade—so at any rate, I’ve got time.

Teaching aside, there’ve been several interesting elements to my life since my last post. The first is Lijiang. Lijiang is among the only cities in this area of Yunnan that tourists (both domestic and international) frequent. There was a major earthquake there in the 90s, and China rebuilt it to draw in outsiders. So there’s a large city with all of the modern amenities found in most Chinese cities of its size, and then there’s the “Old Town.” As someone pointed out last weekend, it’s interesting how all Chinese “Old Towns” seem to sell the same things. There were four kinds of main shops—skirts, tea, bags, and jewelry. There were also local specialties like woven scarves and shawls and walnut cakes. I did buy one of the scarves, and I also bargained for a bag, since I didn’t bring a medium-sized purse from the States. The Old Town did feel somewhat artificial, but it was also really pretty and nice to walk around, and although some of the homes were rebuilt after the quake there are others that have been around for centuries. I wouldn’t want to live there, but I can see myself spending a weekend there sometime later in the fall/winter, when I need to get out of Pengtun for a bit. (There are inns a-plenty, and they aren’t very pricey.) But yes, Lijiang has international tourists and an expat population. Thus, I saw my first non-CEI-affiliated Westerners since leaving Kunming well over a month ago. I was worse than the Chinese folks here in terms of my wide eyed staring. It was pretty funny.

We also went out for “Italian” food—CEI’s treat. The food wasn’t that good—the tomato cream sauce was nice, but my ravioli itself was pretty tasteless. Nonetheless, it was a really pleasant ambiance, with big, comfy chairs, wooden facades, a wine rack, etc. I got to use a fork and a knife…and a TOILET! Not a squat toilet, but an honest-to-God, Western sit down toilet. There was even toilet paper and soap in the bathroom. I honestly gasped when I walked in. I hadn’t used a toilet since Kunming either. It was very exciting indeed.

This week I also went into Heqing city by myself for the first time. It’s not far, but I’d still been nervous to take the bus in alone. I did on Thursday, and I found an awesome market where I bought really delicious things to cook with. Some lady even gave me a tomato, despite my attempts to pay her for it.

Oh yes. The cooking update. I am getting better at using a hot plate and a wok, but there is still much to learn. I did make a pretty excellent apple cinnamon coffee cake earlier this week, but today’s attempt at a chocolate/white marble cake was less than successful. It mean, it cooked fine, but it isn’t chocolaty enough in the chocolaty bits, and since I have no butter or vanilla extract the white bit is pretty bland. Oh well. In general, I’m getting frustrated with how many fewer palettes I’m able to play with here than in the States. I’m sure I will get good at preparing a lot of Chinese dishes, but I miss things like beans and rice and feta cheese (and cheddar cheese. And parmesan cheese. And cheese). I did, however, manage to find cumin powder last week, so that was exciting. Yay for spices.

Well, that’ll about do it for now. Happy Saturday, everyone. (Actually, Sunday, now. After 24 hours of not being able to access blogspot through my proxy, I bit the bullet and bought a VPN CEI recommended. The bad news? I’m down $60. $60 American bucks. The good news? That’s for a year’s subscription, so I should have slow but consistent access to the sites China blocks.)