Teaching - More than just Teaching.

Teaching English is an Adventure. A new one every day. Sorry I've been laxidasical in producing a new post - but I've been quite busy! Over the past two and a half weeks or so, we have been spending much of our time getting into something of an actual rhythm here at school. I have been teaching High School Grade 1 and 2 (which is proportionate to Freshmen and Sophomores in High School back home) - which comes out to about 16 classes full of 40-50 Chinese teenage adolescents. Who are for the most part... awesome. Having never been a teacher before in my life (obviously) this entire 'teaching' thing was weighing on my mind pretty heavily, as I'm sure it has been on the rest of the foreign teachers minds. But after my first week of classes, my mind was put at ease. The students are so unbelievably eager to learn ANYTHING from me, that it is almost silly to be a part of. They clap at anything entertaining you do (which I apparently do quite a bit - I get a lot of claps). They ask every question they can figure out how to form in English. They want to be your best friend.

That's another thing about the Chinese school system vs. the American school system. In China, the Teacher/Student relationship is much closer than at home. A few students here refer to David, our best friend teacher, as their brother or as family. The teachers will loan the kids money frequently, go out to lunches and dinners with their parents, tutor the students for free, whenever they need it, talk about current events and gossip with them, talk to the students over QQ (which is the Chinese equivalent to AIM), give them their phone numbers, and generally just be THERE for the kids at all times. Which makes absolute sense, considering the teachers life aprox. a quarter mile away from the students - or in the same apartment/dorm buildings. It is kind of heart warming, actually.

This brings to mind an instance the other day. It was my first week of classes, and I was in my office, idling at my desk, when I saw two students come into the office and stand next to Mr. Lee who is one of the Chinese language teachers at school - funny guy, but doesn't speak a lick of English. The students looked at the floor, and Mr. Lee stared at them for a minute or two. Then Mr. Lee began speaking to them slowly and precisely in Chinese about things I couldn't understand. The two students (boys, English names Sweet and Kobe, they are in my Class 5 Group) answered Mr. Lee's questions in short manner - dui.. bushu.. (yes, no), etc. One of them was starting to cry a little by the end of the 30 minutes speech Mr. Lee gave them. I was bewildered as to what was going on, so I asked David after the two boys had been dismissed by Mr. Lee. He said that the two boys were caught swearing during class, and not paying attention to the lesson. He then also went on to explain that Mr. Lee was talking plainly and with great concern for the future of the kids. He was asking questions about why they wanted to ruin what could be a great future for them if they concentrate in school, and why they want to waste their time with the rubbish of curse words while in class. Of course this started to make some sense with me, seeings how the Chinese school system works something akin to this (I think): You go to Middle School, and test out of High School to get to University. If you do very well on the High school exams, you have the chance to go to a good University. If you test out of University and do well on your exams, you can get the chance to get a great job. If you can get a great job, you can get out of China and do whatever you want.. otherwise you're goin' no where fast. Mr. Lee wasn't punishing his students - he was looking out for them. School is something real serious around here, and as much as I have fun and joke around with the students, I want them to have as many opportunities to learn from me as possible. Plus, they really are good kids, at least the ones I've gotten to know somewhat well so far.

I know this is dragging on, but real quick.. My lesson this week is so fun that I need to share. I've been teaching my students MUSIC from AMERICA. They eat it up. I start with Blues, explain it, play Stevie Ray Vaughn, then move on. Country is next, explain, and play 'Sweet Home Alabama' while showing them the words on a Powerpoint. Soulja Boy is next. Yes, I explain Rap. Yes, I do the Soulja Boy dance. Yes, I teach them, and yes we do it as a class. It's a riot. Then Rock a la Van Halen and The Darkness (with a rousing Air guitar solo by yours truly.. I usually drop down to the Jimi Hendrix guitar explosion while on his knees - a clapping worthy performance), the Beatles, Incubus 'Aqueous Transmission' for it's Traditional Chinese instruments in it, then finish off class with Westlife, "My Love". The Chinese have a bizarre fascination with anything Boy Band. We still can't quite figure it out, but they love Backstreet Boys, Westlife, Enrique, etc. Any who, I'm sweating and smiling by the end of every class, and each one has lasted an extra 5 minutes due to a chorus of "TEACHAA, NOOO, STAY!" when the bell rings.

It's a good life, so far. I've taken a short hiatus from picture taking, my apology for that. The only new ones I have are of Neha's little Kindergarten babies playing in a big indoor playground they have. It's adoreable. But I'll save the pictures for another day.

Hope America is having fun with Election Fever!

Shenyang Extravaganza!!

So our trip to Shenyang was phenomenal. It began with a long train ride (that we absolutely lucked on on - as we managed to buy tickets that are hard sitters for the ride, which we never should have got due to the national day travelers) that was just as much part of the journey as anything. We met a family; father, mother and daughter, traveling to Shenyang on vacation just like us. They didn't speak much English, but what we could figure out (and have David translate) was all we needed. We befriended each other, they taught me the number system in China very accurately, found that the young woman (daughter) was a reporter for the Tongliao news station, got invited to the father's hometown some day, exchanged email addresses, then took shots of Bai-joe... ON THE TRAIN to commemorate our new friendship. All in all it was a solid ride.

Once in Shenyang, we were met by one of David's friends from his hometown (Hohhot) that lives right outside Shenyang. He spoke absolutely no English, but he was one of the nicest guys we've met since being in China. He took us out to lunch, cheers'd Katie's Birthday, then found us a nice little hotel that cost aprox. $20 a night to stay at. We then hit the mean streets of Shenyang for the night and found ourselves on this CRAZY central street that has been blocked off for cars, so people could go to all the shops and stores along it. It reminded me a lot of Wangfujing street in Beijing. After checking out some shops, we found a European style restaurant that dealt heavily in pizza, so we obviously had to have dinner there. The night was a success, and we made our way back to our hotel - now visitors of Shenyang.

The next morning we woke up early and made our way to the Imperial Palace of Shenyang. The place was absolutely breathtaking - as many of my experiences in China have already been to date. It is one of the lesser renovated ruins of China, and therefore has a lot of the ancient remnants as close to their original state as possible. The architecture and artwork at and inside the Palace was mind blowing. From the emperor's throne, to the officer's desks of the 8 banners of china, to the back gardens, and to the emperors' and empress' sleeping quarters - the entire trip was a memory I will not soon forget. Everything was so intricately designed, so painstakingly carved and painted that it is almost unfathomable to think that artisans and workers from hundreds and hundreds of years ago, without a breath of the technology we have today, accomplished such beautiful works of art and landscape with nothing but dreams and dilligence. The empire of China is something wonderous to behold, and I need to keep reminding myself that I am in a new part of the world and that it's history seeps back in time so much further than anything I've experienced back at home. It is something awe inspiring and literally jaw dropping. This country is very old, and that makes it intrinsically impressive.

After the seeing the palace in it's entirety - and it's conjoining museum of artifacts - we found a rest at our hotel, then made our way back into downtown Shenyang for some shopping and food. After dinner we walked past the palace (it is closed at night) and ran into a few interesting characters along the way. A couple of them were actually playing a sort of hackey-sack game that I got in on for awhile. I wasn't very good at it, but it was fun! David later told me that the game is very popular amongst the students at school, so maybe I'll have a chance to get better at it. Ultimately, we found ourselves waiting outside this famous concert hall in Shenyang at about 8pm at night, as there is a nightly performance outside of it for the public to view for free! We decided, hell, why not. After waiting about a half hour in a crowd of people waiting for it to begin, I pulled out my phrase book and asked a guy next to us what time it was starting. He said 10pm, so we pulled up a seat on a nearby set of stairs and chatted about our journey into China thus far. It was a nice little moment to reflect on everything we have been doing and going through. The show, when it finally happened, was bizarre. It was like a big Mariachi band behind glass, with this guy dancing behind a donkey that walked around a mill, and a girl dancing behind the guy. It lasted like 15 minutes. And I'll never have those 15 minutes of my life back again. What a shame. All in all, we ended the night there, and hit the hotel.

The next day we spent in Shenyang going back to some shops and streets that had interested us previously, and bought a few trinkets and memories of the city. I got a large poster painting of an ancient chinese warrior guard to put up in our apartment. The legend of the guard is that if you put him up in a home, that evil spirits and bad tidings will not be allowed into your home and life, as he will defend your home from such effects. We then took a pair of taxi's to a chinese super market (always a death defying experience - both the taxi rides and the supermarket) then got ourselves to the train station in the nick of time to catch our train (1:15pm) back to Tongliao. It was a quiet ride home, extremely uncrowded (we bought standing tickets, but got to sit the whole ride due to there being only a few people on the train) and played chinese card games taught by Honey most of the ride back.

After getting off the train, we all headed to this killer dumpling restaurant that one of my student's mother's actually owns. The food was unbelieveable, and the service just as good - and we celebrated Meg's birthday! There was plenty of Pi-joe to go around, and we actually bought her a cake from a wonderful bakery just a few blocks away before getting to the restaurant. In china, they whip up the cake RIGHT in front of you while you wait! It's beautiful to watch. We told David that it was so fun to watch the baker's make the cake right there - and he was shocked to find that they don't, or at least VERY rarely, do that in the states. It was just another happy little note about China, I suppose. After dinner we made our way back to our little apartments and settled back in, knowing we were home.

It was a very strange feeling coming back into Tongliao and calling it 'home'. But it was actually the first time I thought of it as home. Shenyang was a fantastic city to visit, but I feel so much more comfortable here in our little Tongliao. It is less hectic, the people are warmer, and it is familiar already. I'm happy to be here and to call our little city and big school 'home'. Happy indeed.

The Weekend of David and Honey

So David and Honey are our best friends. Literally. Since we've been in China, we spent one day without seeing them at all, and we almost went insane. (We made search parties, scoured the school, sent up flares, the whole bit.) Long story short, we owe them our lives. They help us take care of everything in China. They are our translators, warm friends, cultural aides, brother, sister, father and mother while we're here. Plus, they love to go out on the town. Which makes them cooler than we are, because we can only speak 1 language as of late, and they know two. (Three in david's case, he knows some Japanese). Anyhow. Some of our adventures thus far are worth mentioning. To kick things off, David decided that he wanted to cook for us the night after the sports meeting - so we all piled into David and Honey's quaint little apartment at around 7. We brought the Pi-Joe (beer), and he cooked up a storm. He LOVES potatoes, and that showed in the cooking, but he also made a dish with tomatoes and eggs that was unreal, and now Neha's favorite dish in china. She'll order it wherever we go. Literally. The night was great, we ate a ton, then played a few card games with beer until everyone got too tired to laugh, and hit the bed. The next day, we decided that since David and Honey wanted to cook us a nice Chinese dinner - we would cook them a nice AMERICAN dinner! So after some deliberation and blind luck at the supermarket - we managed to eek out some weird version of french fries (christina chopped the potatoes, boiled oil, and plopped 'em in) which came out damn good, and I tried to cook up hamburgers with some beef - which ended up becoming a new sort of sloppy joe (we had to improvise like crazy) served on potato bread. Not bad! To top it all off we chopped up a watermelon, made some of the easy mac I brought from the US of A, and washed it down with cold beer. They were estastic with the night, and so were we - because it gave us a chance to really give back and show David and Honey how appreciative we are of everything they do for us.

On another night, we went to this muslim restaurant out in Tongliao.. the name escapes me, but it was home to a form of dinner I've never experienced, but can't WAIT to do again. It's calling 'Hot Pot'. Here's how it works: You choose what flavor hot pot you want, which is like a bowl of soup that is heated up to boiling and sits next to your dinner plate. The soup's flavors go from tomato, to curry, and so on. Once heated up, you choose from a large array of raw foods on the round table in front of you.

By the way, the tables in China are awesome. They are round and fit at least 10 people around them, but the kicker is that there is a large glass plate in the middle that all of the food goes on. It works like a giant lazy susan, and rotates to give everyone a shot at each dish, allowing you to make up your own plate of whatever it is you like. I love it. America really needs to invest. But I digress.

You choose raw foods to put into the hot pot to cook for a few minutes, then you take it out, let it cool, and eat it! It's amazing! We had things from noodles, raw veggies, shrimp, chicken, pork, mushrooms, and beyond. It was truly a delectable experience. Plus, David and Honey made it all the more entertaining just by being themselves. They have a wonderful presence about them - very humble, very appreciative, and very welcoming. I wish I could stress more how integral they are to our China experience over the internet, but you really just need to meet them to understand. After our hot pots, we made it over to KTV. KTV is awesome. Period. It is a HUGE chain in China, and are found literally everywhere. KTV = Insane karaoke bar. You get your own room, a waitress to bring you drinks, and a billion songs at your finger tips. It's a riot. We started off singing Backstreet boys, and by the end found ourselves break dancing to Mongolian trance music. Perhaps some stories are to be left unsaid.

Aside from those specific instances, they have literally shown us Tongliao and how to get around the city to everywhere that is important (the malls, supermarkets, snack street and KFC to be specific). They brought us to see the school's South Campus, which is where Meg and Christina will be teaching for the next year. Also, they brought us to this food court across the street from KFC (aka, the center of town) where you charge a little card with money, then pick out whatever food you want from about 8 different little food booths, and they charge the card. The food was great too! Plus they have a wonderful bubble tea shop across from all these food shops which I gave a shot - and it is really quite tasty! Neha loves it too.

After all of these little adventures, David and Honey had to graces and (in my opinion) courage to ask us to join them on a little vacation they were planning! It was to a trip to Shenyang, and large city in China about 6 hours south of Tongliao by train. It is very big and quite Western styled, and has some things Tongliao lacks like McDonalds, Pizza Hut, and the Shenyang Imperial Palace: known as the Crown of the Manchu empire. Being absolutely thrilled with the fact that they weren't sick of us and actually wanted us to join them on such a trip, we fullheartedly agreed! The next post will be all about Shenyang!

'Sports Meeting' and Class Selection.

A few things to discuss, here. The first of these things - the Tongliao # 1 Middle School Sports Meeting. It was one of the more impressive things I've ever been spectator of. I took a jog the day before it began, and happened upon Mr. Zheng by accident, and he invited me up to his office. I mentioned that I saw a huge amount of students out on the school track practicing something and he casually mentioned that they were practicing for the opening ceremony of the 'Sports Meeting' they have every year before National Day. I asked if we could attend. He whipped out his cell phone, talked to a couple people, and told us to meet him at 7:45 the next morning at the track. We did. And we were treated like dignitaries by the school, per usual. So this 'sports meeting' is essentially a school-wide Track Meet where anyone who can qualify for a certain track and field event will participate amongst their classmates in their grade. It was outrageously entertaining to watch all the students play so many sports, and actually be amazing at them. The opening ceremonies at the meeting were nothing short of breathtaking. It was a long procession of each grade and each class, followed by a short performance (a dance or concert) from each grade (primary school, high school, kindergarten - SO CUTE - and then the ROTC program). After this, the sports began immediately. They last for two full days, culminating in the teachers sports which were a blast to watch as well. While the competitions are taking place, the rest of the student body (all 3000 some odd kids) sit in the stands of the track and watch their peers in action. I took some time to sit down with a group of Grade 1 High school students (aka, they bombarded me with questions) and ended up singing Dispatch for them. They had no idea what it was, but clapped and cheered afterwards, which is how a lot of the things we do end up getting praised. It's a strange feeling. Alas, after the sports meeting had ended, Mr. Zheng hauled us into his office and told us our official placements for teaching at the school!! I was given.. drumroll:

HIGH SCHOOL GRADES 1 and 2 ON NORTH CAMPUS!

Which is precisely what I wanted. It means I'll be teaching nearly alongside David - and I love that man. I start teaching on Monday. I am all aglow with excitement to teach these kids, mostly for three reasons. David is the first. The second is that I've actually had the opportunity to meet about 3 of the classes I'll be teaching, and they seem like wonderful kids that are extremely eager to learn and be in class with. Third, and most important - is that the kids I will be teaching will have a general ability to speak some english. Of course, the ability level will vary from student to student and class to class - that is to be expected. However, at least some of my students are able to actually hold a conversation with me. I want to get to KNOW these kids in order to teach them. To learn from them is the second reason I'm in the country - the first is to teach. Hopefully I will be able to bear fruit from the relationships I create with the students I will be getting to know for this next year - and only time will tell. But I am extremely optimistic at the moment! Wish me luck. The next few posts will outline some of the things we've been doing up until we begin teaching! Enjoy and comment please!