Week 10 of 19

It's Sunday, October 28, the beginning of week 10 of 19 total weeks I will be in China.  It's half over already!  I've been here two months, which doesn't sound that long, but two more months until I get to eat chocolate and pizza again seems pretty long.  I have thoroughly enjoyed most of the food I've eaten here.  Now I'm running into the dilemma of eating too many carbs and too little protein.  I know that once I return home I'll miss a lot of the food here, and I may never get the chance to eat the authentic stuff again.  Whenever I get feelings of homesickness for my family or friends, I need only to walk outside to regain an appreciation for where I am.  Even after two months sometimes I will be walking down a crowded street and suddenly stop and think, "wow, I'm really in China."  It's still surprising sometimes, like I've been dreaming this whole time.  I never imagined I would be here.  It's a humbling and amazing feeling to be surrounded by things you could never imagine in your wildest dreams.  It's like a different world, and it makes me happy just to know it's here, living and thriving just a few thousand miles away from home.

This is such a short experience in my life, but it has already convinced me of the beauty and variety of people, and it's convinced me that diversity and new experiences are the most important things in life.  I've been understanding the following line from the book Into the Wild: "The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun."

Planning lessons each week is stressful because there are so many factors to consider, but the time I spend with my students is amazing.  They never cease to surprise me and they make me smile and laugh every day. They are extremely social, often holding hands and linking arms in the halls (always with their friends of the same gender).  I was told that the students aren't allowed to have "boyfriends" and "girlfriends" in school.  I suspect that they do, but keep it secret from the teachers.  They are in middle school and high school after all.  But there is definitely a lot of love between friends, and they are very supportive of one another.  Though they are never afraid to laugh at each other during class, but it's always out of love.

Some new observations...

Yesterday I walked down the street and saw two toddler boys pull down their pants and pee into a sewer together and then run back to their mom who was working at their family store.  I've seen this act before but it was still slightly surprising at first.  It was a normal act for them, as toddlers are expected to do their business in the street when they're not in a building with a bathroom.  They seemed very proud of themselves and obviously not embarrassed at all.  It made me smile.

My students are can be shy when they are asked to raise their hands and answer questions in English, but they aren't shy after class!  I played games with some of my 7th grade students last week and we had to sing a song when we lost a game.  They were not embarrassed to sing in front of their peers, which was so cute.  They were so happy and energetic, it was contagious.  Though the students spend most of their waking hours in school and will gladly complain about how much work they have, they are usually in very good spirits.

Parents are constantly teaching their children.  It's common for a parent to encourage their small child to say hello to me in English when we're near each other on the subway.  I've also heard them practicing numbers, letters, and colors in English.  The picture below of two little girls was one of the cutest scenes I've witnessed yet.  I was waiting to meet someone at a bus stop and one girl was waiting with her grandparents.  The next girl walked up with her parents and the adults encouraged the two tiny strangers to shake hands and introduce themselves.  They immediately became friends and started playing games together and posing for pictures for us.

Pictures

Here are a few pictures so far...

apartment building near campus

on campus at South China Normal University

Chinese lanterns hang from trees lining the streets

green courtyard on campus at True Light Middle School

front gate of True Light Middle School

Street and bridge outside True Light Middle School

Chen Clan Academy- tourist attraction with traditional architecture and artwork

With friends outside Chen Clan Academy

The famous Statue of Five Goats in Yuexiu Park in Guangzhou

Week 9

It’s hard to believe it’s been 8 ½ weeks since I left home.  In the first month I’ve had many ups and downs, but I feel like I’ve pretty much adjusted to life in Guangzhou.  We’re still discovering new great places to eat around our apartment.  Just this week we found a place down the street that serves great noodles for less than a dollar.  One of the only complaints I have is that the temperature has not changed since we got here.  It’s still 90 degrees and humid most days so I’m missing fall weather at home. 

Clearly I’ve been busy because I’ve been neglecting my blog.  My teaching schedule changed many times at the start of term and I still get surprises in my schedule that are teaching me to just roll with everything.  One observation I have of the Chinese, at least the teachers at this school, is that they tend to be vague when explaining and answering questions.  One of the most important part of social Chinese culture involves “saving face,” a concept I’m still learning to understand.  The Chinese are extremely social and also very concerned with the greater good and putting the larger society before themselves.  Some evidence of this in everyday social interactions can be witnessed on public transportation.  Most people use the public buses and subways to travel around the city, thus there are all ages and types of people.  Young people ALWAYS give up their seats for elderly people, small children, and pregnant women or women carrying children. 

For the first few weeks I have been teaching 11 classes of 7^th and 8^th graders, observing three high school science classes, and teaching six classes of elementary school each week.  Half of my middle school classes are science and half are oral English.  I knew it would be challenging to teach science through the English language and it is.  In order to get into middle schools and high schools, Chinese students must take entrance exams.  These are the source of much pressure because they determine the quality of the school the students can attend, and thus determine their future success.  Only students with very high test scores may attend the campus where I live.  I teach some of my classes here and some classes at another campus where the students have scored lower on entrance exams.  I honestly have not noticed an extreme difference in the students of the two schools, but I also only see my students once a week and receive little written work or assessment.  Thus my experience teaching here is VERY different from any student teaching experience in America.  The added challenges and differences are no doubt beneficial, but make it difficult for me to plan lessons and assess to students’ knowledge.  I am beginning to adopt the attitude that regardless of how well my lessons are planned according to American or Ohio standards, my students will still enjoy them and learn from them.  My biggest challenge in the classroom is keeping the attention of 50 plus students and ensuring that they are all active and involved and practicing their English.  Some of the students have amazing English speaking ability, and others claim to have little to none.  I’m convinced some of those students are just nervous to speak to a native English speaker.  Once again, everything is about “saving face.”  No student wants to admit that they don’t understand something and risk losing face or being embarrassed in front of their peers.  Thus it is difficult to really know whether the students actually understand me, or just claim to understand me to save face. 

The teachers and other Chinese people I interact with sometimes use vagueness to save face.  At first I sometimes became frustrated when trying to communicate with our coordinator here because he speaks English fairly well, but I felt like he never realized or admitted that he didn’t understand something I said or made an effort to have me explain it better.  Thus sometimes I felt my questions were either ignored or answered very vaguely.   When communicating with your coordinator for living and teaching, this is frustrating.  But I have come to understand that this is really just him “saving face” and that this is an extremely important part of the culture that becomes embedded in all interactions.  It also causes everyone I speak with to be extremely nice and helpful.  I do not doubt that they are being genuine.  I’ve made several Chinese friends who are always so happy to see us.  I immediately get a big smile and a hug whenever I see them.  The girls are also big fans of linking arms when we walk down the street.  It’s so nice to feel so close to people who I just recently met.  The saving face niceness is also evident when taking part in social gatherings.  We have eaten at several nice dinners where we are served family style at a round table in a private room.  No one wants to sit down first or take food first.  No one wants to sit at the head of the table, which I learned is the seat opposite the door.  If someone serves more tea or food to themselves, they first serve everyone else around them.  Everyone constantly toasts each other, causing everyone at the table to stand up and cheers at least 15 times per meal.  Everyone we have eaten with always treats us as special guests. 

Last Thursday Livia and I started a game with the students on the soccer field during the evening dinner break.  It was pretty fun and we got a group of students who are going to play every week.  Two of them are Amy and Katherine from my 7^th grade English class.  A couple weeks ago in class they read short stories in pairs.  Amy and Katherine read “Sleeping Beauty” aloud together and at the end of the story, they hugged each other because it was “so romantic.”  Needless to say they are now some of my favorite students. 

Despite the difficulties classes have been going pretty well and I learn more each week.  The students are still excited to have me teach, even though my lessons are not always as exciting or fun as I wish they were.  I think the students have to endure boring lecture-style lessons too much, so I want to make mine as interactive and interesting as possible.  This past week I finally succeeded.  In English I taught a lesson on the Titanic.  When I asked what they knew about Titanic, they all said “You jump, I jump!” and several started singing “My Heart Will Go On.”  Celine Dion is apparently very popular here.  After I let them tell me about the movie Titanic, we learned about the real ship.  The students watched a video on the sinking and learned about what happened and why so many people died.  Then they listed as many jobs as they could think of and had to decide which five people they would save first in their lifeboat in small groups.  At the end we took a class poll and decided on a class lifeboat and they had a discussion on why they chose certain people.  It was educational for me and interesting for them.  More students were willing to speak and were less shy because they were enjoying the topic.  Most classes chose pregnant woman, child, sailor, doctor, farmer, cook, and inventor for their lifeboats.  The pregnant woman was chosen because “we can save two lives in one” and also because “children are the future of the country.”  The others were chosen based on how useful they were to the rest of the people.  The “best” jobs or jobs that make the most money were thrown out if they weren’t helpful.  Although one student did want to save the lawyer because they could get money from the crash.  They decided that I wasn’t helpful because I am a teacher, so I had to die to save someone else.  I acted really hurt and they all laughed.  They all agreed that women and children should be saved first and that the captain should go down with his ship.  

more to follow this week...

Day 8

8/31/12

Now we have had a whole week to adjust, and it’s going pretty well.  I haven’t gotten sick and I’ve completely adjusted to the time difference.  The food has been pretty good… it’s nothing like American Chinese food but it’s been good for the most part.  Most meals I have had either rice or noodles, vegetables, and some kind of meat.  My favorite dish so far was rice with beef, carrots, and mushrooms in a dark sauce.  Sounds pretty American now that I think about it.  I’ve already tried several new things including fried squid (tentacles and all), pig feet, and something called fish balls.  I did not care for the pig foot, but the squid was delicious.  The first night we were taken to a nice restaurant for a welcome dinner with one professor and several students from the university, which was a lot of fun.  We dove right in to traditional Chinese food and everything was great, including my shrimp that still had legs, tail, and head attached.  Throughout our four-day stay in the international dorms at South China Normal University we made several friends and spent each day exploring the city and navigating the subway system.  I was immediately shocked at the amount of people constantly in the streets and on public transportation.  We went down several busy shopping streets that all looked like Times Square on New Years Eve.  It seemed like every five meters there was a new shop or store, mostly selling clothes, all with a higher than average number of employees doing everything possible to get the attention of the shoppers passing by.  We ate dinner at a crowded restaurant that night with a menu written totally in Chinese.  Our Chinese tour guides ordered for us and we had noodles and fish balls famous in Guangzhou along with hot green tea that is only good when steaming hot.  Four of us sat at a small table with a very old Chinese couple who didn’t talk.  One of the things I’ve noticed in this busy city is that the number of people and lack of personal space really changes the whole culture.  You have to be okay with constantly being pushed past, bumped, and honked at.  In order to get where you want to go or get what you want, you have to be assertive and confident.  You have to have no shame and you also can’t be embarrassed to literally hang your dirty laundry where everyone can see it.  That’s another thing I have come to really like; there are no dryers here so everyone hangs their clothes to dry outside on their porches.  The countless skyscraper apartment buildings are characterized by their porches strung with colorful clothes.  The porches look almost like a birdcages because of the bars that enclose them that are always overflowing with plants.  It makes the countless gray buildings beautiful.  

In just my first few days I felt like I learned so much, partly from the sensory overload of walking the streets of the city, and partly from talking with the Chinese students from the university where we stayed.  Vivian, one of the students who already spent a semester in America at Shawnee State University and has since returned to South China Normal University, taught me a lot about China, Chinese schools, and the differences between China and America.  She told me the thing she misses most about America is the space, the quiet, and the peace she felt there.  The university campus here in Guangzhou had a large park in the middle that offered beautiful scenery and peace, but the city as a whole here is always loud and offers little personal space or privacy.  Vivian also told me she had to readjust more returning to China than she had to adjust when she arrived in the states.  For one thing, the beds here do not have mattresses.  At our new apartment we were lucky enough to have real mattresses, but our first four nights were spent on beds that are more common in China.  The “mattress” is really just a board with a blanket.  If I had more time, I’m sure I would have gotten used to sleeping on such a hard surface, and my back might have even benefited from it.  According to Vivian it was much easier to adjust to American mattresses than it was to go the other way around.  This seemed pretty obvious to me.  She  also said that it was harder for her stomach to readjust to Chinese food and she was sick for her first two weeks after returning home.  Luckily I have not had many problems with the food, although I can’t bring myself to eat noodles and meat or porridge for breakfast.  Luckily we found a very cheap bakery right outside our new apartment at our new school.  And by cheap I mean I bought a whole loaf of fresh bread and three buttery rolls all for one US dollar.  Not everything is so cheap, and we have definitely been gypped a few times when purchasing unmarked items in the smaller markets, simply for looking American and being too ignorant to know the difference.  For instance yesterday Livia and I broke down and bought two snickers bars at a small convenience store outside our school and they cost nine yuan.  That’s about 75 cents each, which is about the same as buying a snickers bar from Kroger at home, but we also felt like the sales woman was laughing at us when we walked out.  The prices at the bigger supermarkets are very good.  We bought a 2-liter of coke for less than a dollar and a set of hangars for 50 cents.  The food at our school cafeteria is pretty good, though it’s hard to know what you’re ordering. 

Our apartment is great, a little dirty to begin with, but we are grateful to have an American mattress and an American toilet.  Though I did use one of the dreaded hole-in-the-ground toilets at a store yesterday and it wasn’t too bad… as long as you carry your own toilet paper and hand sanitizer.  The other best part of our apartment is the air conditioner unit in the bedroom.  I haven’t mentioned it yet but it is HOT and HUMID every day here.  We’ve only had one day of rain so far, but every other day has been hot enough that you start sweating after walking outside for 10 minutes.  Our first full day at our new apartment we got a tour of the campus, which is beautiful.  Several of the buildings are very old, but there is a gigantic new teachers building where all of the classrooms are located.  The classrooms look like typical college classrooms.  Some are theater style and others have individual desks facing the front of the room where there are blackboards and projectors.  All of the classrooms have room for at least 60 students.  We haven’t started teaching yet but I now know that I will be teaching some 8^th grade biology, 7^th grade oral English, and every other week we will be taken to an elementary school to teach English!  I was not expecting to get to teach younger kids and I am very excited for that opportunity.  It might be more challenging because they have not had as much practice speaking English, but all the kids I’ve seen so far are adorable.  

The two teachers who brought us to our new school took us out for Karaoke on our second day.  I was unaware of this but Karaoke is very popular in China.  I wasn’t sure what to expect because they took us at 10:30 in the morning.  It was a really nice place and it turned out to be a lot of fun.  There were five of us and we got a private room with couches and a big screen TV, two microphones, and thousands of songs to choose from.  There were plenty of American songs we knew, and our friends chose several American songs to sing as well.  One of the Chinese guys with us sang a Lady Gaga song, which was rather hilarious.  There wasn’t much time to be embarrassed because Livia and I sang first.  Our first song was by the Black Eyed Peas, and we sang some Taylor Swift and Michael Jackson as well.  We ate lunch and ended up spending most of the day there.  It was an interesting experience, but a lot of fun.  On my birthday Livia and I took the bus from our apartment by ourselves and found a Starbucks with free wifi and coffee that’s just as good and just as expensive as it is at home, but it was a nice birthday treat.   We should have wifi access in our apartment within the next few days, which will be useful and means I will be able to post more often. 

I haven’t really been homesick yet, partly because we have been so busy and partly because everyone we have met so far has been so friendly and hospitable.  Everyone wants to get to know us and help us in any way possible.  I was sad to leave our friends at South China Normal University but I’m sure we will be back to visit soon on the weekends.  We start teaching on Monday, so I think time will start to go by even faster then. 

Until next time, zaijian. 

Day one in China

8/24/12

I feel like I have learned so much already and we have only been in China for a day.  The bus ride from Hong Kong to Guangzhou was definitely an interesting journey.  There was an assortment of people on the bus because we departed from the airport, but since the bus ride I have not seen another foreign looking person.  Interestingly, the first song played on the bus was “Don’t Happen Twice” by Kenny Chesney, which made me laugh.  The bus ride was about two hours and it seemed we were constantly driving through extremely dense population.  It was difficult to tell where the city ended and began.  It made me start to comprehend just how many people live in China.  It’s difficult to perceive what one billion people looks like, but I’m beginning to have an idea of what 11 million people looks like, which is the registered population of our city.  There seem to be endless walls of tall apartment buildings, some obviously in poor condition, others much newer and nicer, but all are extremely crowded.  Once we got off the bus in Guangzhou we had to take two taxis to South China Normal University.  After the multiple vehicle changes between the airport and Guangzhou we realized how lucky we were to have Paulson, our native tour guide from the university.  He knew how to avoid pushy sales representatives for different buses in the airport, he knew how to change buses, and most importantly he knew how to speak the language and give direction to the drivers.  Everything I have heard about driving and traffic in China so far has been correct.  It was pretty hilarious to experience driving in a bus and a taxi.  On the highways people stay in lanes for the most part, but merging and switching lanes is too hard to watch.  The rest of the city streets have too many lanes to count, mostly because lanes are mostly ignored.  There are pedestrians and bikes everywhere, and it’s a miracle that I have yet to see any kind of collision or accident. Our taxi drive during rush hour was the most exciting… hundreds of cars and no seatbelts.  It was like pushing through a crowd, only we were in cars.  Everyone we have met so far has been so hospitable and friendly to us.  Each new person we meet wants to help us carry our luggage, wants to know everything about us, and gives us their phone number so we can call them if we ever need help.  I think we will make many friends here. 

T minus one day

Tomorrow I begin my four month long adventure across the globe.  Nervousness and excitement are at about equal levels as I finish packing and preparing for departure.  So far I have received nothing but positive support and love from all my friends and family, which is what I will carry with me as I embark on my journey to China to experience a totally different culture and way of life.  I am grateful for all the support, not only because it will give me the courage I need, but also because it is that kind of positive spirit that I hope to communicate to everyone I meet abroad.  I hope to keep up with this blog as a means of communicating my experiences, revelations, and new information with all those who care to hear about my travels.  I am eager to start this adventure and to begin to experience a part of the world that has so far been completely foreign to me, but is sure to become my home in the short time I will be there.  I am excited to understand a new culture and to live amongst a society that has evolved from one of the most ancient to one that leads the worlds in many areas.  This will be my formal student teaching experience, which will both add to my nervousness and provide me with an additional set of unique experiences that I know I will carry with me forever.  I think my best piece of advice I have received so far is to keep an open mind while I'm observing, experiencing, and learning so that I can begin to understand and accept a culture different from my own without judgment, so that I may become a better person when I return home.  I hope to do just that, and also perhaps to teach others some new things along the way.  Until next time I have access to internet, zaijian!