Christmas in Santai, 2007
Have had some pretty obscure Christmases over the years, some of the more notable ones include learning how to belly-dance in Turkey, and having an underwater Christmas party while scuba diving in the Red Sea ( that one was a wee bit traumatic, as I distinctly recall, since I was working as chef on the diving boat at the time, and had to prepare a 4 course meal, never having cooked a turkey myself before!) However, that challenge, as do all challenges, did pass, and I lived to tell the tale. As did all the guests who ate what I cooked, fortunately!
For those of you who have been following these tales of mine, the most recent challenge that had been causing me sleepless nights, the teachers’ training conference that I had to lead, was a success. I spent far too much time in preparation, I suspect, as I pretty much had the whole 5 hour presentation memorized by the time I had to give it. With my extremely limited computer knowledge, I nevertheless did manage to put together a powerpoint presentation, with a great deal of help from one of the teachers in our school.
I was most worried that I’d run out of things to say, as 5 hours is a really long time to talk, so had all sorts of “just in case” topics to ad lib with if the need should arise. Ad-libbed so well in fact, that I actually had more than enough information, and didn’t quite finish all my subjects. However, it seemed to go pretty well, they laughed in the right places, and stayed awake for the whole 5 hours, which I figure is a good sign! I consider it also a fortunate thing that there was a large desk to stand behind so they couldn’t see my knees knocking, and reckon I fooled them into thinking I was supremely confident!
It never ceases to amaze me, though, that for someone who always tried desperately to be sick on the days we had to give speeches in school, that I have spent so much of the past years public speaking! And it still terrifies me….wonder if you ever get over that horrible feeling of one’s stomach being hollow and hands shaking so much, I forever bless the wonderful soul who invented the clip-on microphone, so no one knows by watching the mike grasped in sweaty palms quake!
Anyway. It’s over, it went well, and I hope I never have to do it again. With my luck, next time it’ll be a national assembly I have to address.
So, Christmas. It lasted for about 2 weeks this year, as I taught a “Christmas” class to my students, and since I’ve so many classes, I didn’t start or finish til well before and after the actual holiday. The kids seemed to like the class though. Started off by telling them a bit about the traditions, stories behind Christmas, complete with tales of Sinterklaas and Zwaart Piet, no less! Then showed them two 5 minute video clips of Mr Bean’s Christmas. They went over well, slapstick humour is perfect for adolescents, and of course there’s no real dialogue, it’s all body language, so there was no stress factor for the slower students to try to understand what was happening. Then put together a slide-show of Christmas pictures from home : lots of snow, pictures of family, that sort of thing, mixed in with pictures from the internet of Christmas symbols: hololy, mistletoe, stockings, Santa Claus, interspersed with shots of Christmas around the world, St Lucia with candles on her head, Christmas crackers, etc. Went over well, so much so, that the classes I missed during my two day Christmas holiday asked to have the classes rescheduled so they could see it too. The school was nice to give me both the 24th and 25th off, so I went down to Chengdu. Earlier in the day, I spent some time wandering around the Wenshuo Street area doing some bits and pieces of Christmas shopping, and then met up with a few friends for lunch and gossip before meeting again to have Christmas dinner with friends there, an American friend of mine, who is teaching in a primary school there, her 4 year old daughter, and her mother who’d come over to visit for the holiday. A fun couple of days, then back to school to continue my Christmas class lectures on Boxing Day! The students and teachers have all been great. My table at home was loaded with cards, letters and gifts from students and teachers…have a look at the pictures! The teachers of Senior 1, the level in which I teach the majority of my classes, had gotten together to buy me a beautiful silver and jade necklace. The kids gave me all sorts of things: two hand-knitted scarves from some of my girl students, a wooden music box, various sizes of the red Auspicious Knot for good luck, a lime-green feathery wind chime, fluffy pink socks,
A stuffed panda that came complete with batteries (and sings an extremely loud pop song!), a packet of REAL (!) ground coffee beans, a carved wooden frog with a stick which when rubbed down the corrugations on its back, sounds like it’s croaking…and all sorts of hand folded origami flowers, animals and stars. One class, bless ‘em, got together to make a necklace of 74 little origami stars, one for each student. You can see Marco in the photo wearing it! Was invited out for multiple Christmas dinners, and on the Friday following Christmas, went out for Christmas/ New Year dinner with all the school English teachers! Loads of fun, we so rarely have time, as all the teachers are so busy here, especially now with the exams coming up. Dinner was a hot-pot style Chicken soup, a bubbling broth full of Chunks of chicken and vegetables, that kept being refilled. Have a look at the photos, to see some of the teachers that I work with!
After dinner, most of us went to a karaoke club, with soundproof rooms lined with couches and a large TV set hooked up to a computer, so we could sing our hearts out, a glorious mixture of English and Chinese songs. Again, you all know what my voice is like, the mixture of Endhoven/Ouwehand genes not being overly conducive to melody, however, it was fun just to hang out and laugh together. The teachers in our school are really very friendly, and it was nice to have time away from work to talk together.
Then back to Chengdu the next day, to help a few friends with some translation they are doing for a book, and to sort out my train ticket for Xining. Not long now before the Spring festival holiday begins – early for me, as I can leave once the kids start exams – and off I go to travel and visit friends in Qinghai. Looking forward to a bit of travelling again….So that is it for the 2007 blogs…unless something wildly exciting happens before I go, the next blog will be a travel story! So have a Happy New Year everyone,
Best wishes and prayers for peace and happiness in 2008.
Monday, December 31, 2007
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Xiping epic, part one...will get the rest up ASAP!
Just back from the trip out to Xiping town, an hours drive away from Santai, on winding semi-paved roads through some beautiful countryside, the verdant hills of Sichuan rising on either side as we wended our way past terraced slopes with fields of rice and all sorts of vegetables. It reminded me of India in many ways, the smell of woodsmoke drifting on the air, and chickens and dogs in the road, but even more so passing through the villages. Though the older, more traditional homes here are have roofs of black tile instead of thatch, they also nestle among the hillsides as though they’d grown up from the very earth, in contrast with the more “modern” block-style houses of cement and cinder block.
As the others in the car chattered away in Chinese (one good thing about not speaking a language is that you can tune out and noone is offended, or expects you to keep up the conversation, which is always nice on trips when I’d far rather be looking out the window!), I was at liberty to look out the window. It’d would be wonderful to bring an easel and paints out into the villages, and try to catch the mist-wreathed old houses with their mud bricks and tiled roofs half hidden by stands of bamboo, with ropes of yellow corn cobs hung to dry under the eaves, woven baskets standing along the wall, and bright green patches of garden vegetables beside the front door. Of course, one would have to bring an invisibility cloak a la JK Rowling as well, in order to get any actual painting done, as foreigners are scarce in these parts, and most villagers have never seen a foreigner before.
I was invited to Xiping by the headmaster of a private English tutorial school there. She had contacted me through the teachers at the junior school I teach at on Saturdays in Santai, and talked me into giving an “exhibition” class to young kids. I agreed rather reluctantly, I have to admit, teaching little kids is still not my best thing in the world, and I grew more concerned as time went on before this event was to occur, and each time I asked how many kids, the number went up, until it ended up I was to teach 200. And I was never terribly clear about exactly how long or what I was to do: was told it was outside…it sounded worse and worse, but as it happened, I was pleasantly surprised.
After my morning classes on Saturday, we drove out to Xiping, and arrived to a crowd of kids who swarmed the car to greet me, bless them! They are all village kids, who’d never seen someone from another country, and were extremely cute and friendly, more than happy to practise what English they knew! I had multiple kids hanging off each arm, chattering away the questions they had learnt. Met the other teachers of the school, all young-ish girls in their twenties: Laurie, Sissy and Michelle. Most Chinese kids are given English names in their junior schools, and it does make it easier to remember at least some of them!
After an hour or so, I was taken to have a walk through the old part of the town, with its ancient cobbled streets, and traditional wooden houses with front walls that dismantled! They are made up of boards that slot into a rack at top and bottom of the wall, so open into shop fronts during the day, and can be closed up at night. You can see it in the photo I’ve put up, with the old people sitting out in the street watching the world – and a foreigner!- go by.
We stopped by an old man selling what looked like wicker-work baskets, he had such a contagious grin, I wanted to stop and have a look at his baskets. They turned out to be traditional coal-burners to warm your hands and feet. One of the teachers, Laurie had gone with us to act as translator, and she told me that only older people use them nowadays, but the craft of making them continues. Have a look at the photo on the side!
I also stopped and talked to a woman making brooms, rakes and ladders out of bamboo.
We walked down the uneven cobbled street, the wooden houses pretty much unchanged from hundreds of years ago, and the photographer with us, Oscar, who works for Santai TV and was filming “A foreigner’s view of Xiping!!!” pointed out the eaves, built entirely out of interlocking wood pieces, and no nails. Through Laurie’s translation, he told me that such houses could withstand even earthquakes, and were much stronger than the more modern buildings of concrete.
We all went out for dinner that night, the ubiquitous hotpot of course, but this time of freshly caught and killed fish. Very fresh…there was a big tank out front, with a chef balancing precariously on a board over the water wielding a large net. I have to admit to being too squeamish to watch the catching and killing…oh the days of vegetarianism…!
There is a certain knack to eating a fish hotpot, which I have yet to master. Chunks of fish are thrown into the bubbling spices and oil, complete with bones, and the Chinese seem able to put the entire piece into their mouth, move it around a bit, and spit out a pile of bones. It took me much longer…spitting out bone by bone, and trying really hard not to swallow any. This is, as you can perhaps imagine, really difficult to do gracefully! Fortunately, the Chinese are also very good at allowing one too keep face, and carried on their conversation regardless of my facial contortions! After dinner, I was to spend the night in the teachers’ flat. The three girls had a room each, but it was not nearly as nice as my “foreigner” flat, with its tiled floor and posh furniture. They had bare cement floors, a rudimentary kitchen with water-stained walls, and it was cold!!! But they were really friendly, set up an electric blanket for me, and made me very much at home. They were up in the wee hours, getting ready for the pageant, and left for school early. I and Laurie left at the more sensible hour or 7am, and went off to the school office, she to dash about madly like the others getting everything ready, me to sit nursing my hot soy milk and watching the kids getting made up assembly-line style. Two teachers had a pile of make up on the table, and were liberally be-daubing the kids one after the other with lipstick on mouth and cheeks. A few of the girls who were dancers had their ponytails bound with red ribbons to stick out from either side of their head, Pippi Longstocking style. Looked a bit like Christmas TV antennas to me, but they seemed quite pleased with the result!
Part 2…
So once all the kids were bedecked and bejeweled to everyone’s satisfaction, they were all herded into a long procession, at the head of which was unfurled a large red banner with all kinds of Chinese writing on it, and my name emblazoned in white letters! Have absolutely no idea what it said, but assume optimistically it was something good! It would have been funny if I was marching happily off to my doom surrounded by smiling kids and a sign proclaiming my imminent demise…! At any rate, we proceeded with great aplomb down the road in the drizzle of rain which had, typically of any such event, begun the moment we set off. Crowds gathered to watch our progress, traffic was halted as we sauntered gaily across the street, to the stage set up near the market place…the aroma of singed feathers wafting over us as we passed a group of women roasting chickens in large clay ovens.
The programme started late, as all events tend to, as the sound system acted up, the large helium banner collapsed, and various child actors took some time to locate. All crises were eventually overcome, and those of us in the shivering, slightly damp audience were treated to a progamme extraordinaire of songs, dances and short drama. The kids sang “It’s a small world” with great enthusiasm to even greater applause, and performed an extremely unique rendition of Snow White, which seemed to include some elements of Goldilocks (“someone’s been sleeping in MY bed..”), and the three musketeers ( the “prince” was garbed in a flowing cape (a red curtain) and was wielding a sword which he flourished with abandon, so dramatically in fact, that it was nearly impossible to make out what he was saying!
Then I was sent up on stage, the token foreigner,( like shops in India who hire elephants or dancing bears to perform and attract custom) to sing an English song with the other English teachers. Honestly, I don’t think I have ever sung publicly so much in my life since I began teaching ESL. There is a very good reason for this, of course, as all of you who know what my voice is like are well aware! Ah well, it seemed to amuse the crowd, at any rate. Later on, I was sent up again to “teach” about 200 kids. It was more entertainment than anything else, my job was to “attract interest” so I played a rousing game of Simon says, sang “Head and Shoulders, Knees and Toes” at great volume and danced the Hokey Pokey. Made a complete fool of myself in general, but it seemed to do the trick.
Afterwards, I was interviewed live for Santai television…pretty much an advertisement for the schools, you know, “how do you like the students?” “What do you think of our school?” with the standard glowing responses pre-set.
Then the teachers, school leaders and I headed off for lunch, a veritable feast, with the usual assortment of odd meat bits… dogs ears, duck tongues, pickled chicken feet and turtle soup, complete with an actual broiled turtle sitting in it, shell cracked so one could dig out the meat….I have to admit, that though some was put in my dish, I did actually cover it up with bits of cabbage and not eat it…!
After lunch, it was back to Santai, another beautiful drive, which since I have already described it once, will refrain from inflicting another description on you. Back in time to meet up with one of my students, a boy who calls himself J. Really nice kid, is helping me to learn Chinese, with great enthusiasm for all my badly-pronounced responses. After two hours chatting with him in a tea-shop, returned to school for a few more hours of prepping for my Christmas-themed classes this week. Am telling the kids a bit about Christmas, complete with stories of Sinterklaas and Black Piet, mistletoe and Christmas crackers…By the end of this year, these kids will know more about the world and its customs than most other Chinese kids their age, I suspect. After that, am showing them a 10 minute video clip of Mr Bean’s Christmas…they love the humour….and then a slide show of Christmas pictures from my last Christmas home, lots of pictures of my family and Christmas decorations, also pictures from Christmas round the world, St Lucia in Sweden, The Sphinx wearing a Santa hat, that sort of thing. They really love the pictures, especially of family and our house in Canada. Lots of work to prepare all that, but it has
been a resounding success. Several of the kids have told me they have laughed more since I arrived than in all their previous school years. Don’t know if that’s a good thing?!!!
A few more bits and pieces of note…went with a friend of mine, Jing Rong, for a wander
round town, and visited a school for deaf kids. They were really cute, and it was great to communicate with them through chalk drawings on the pavement! Lots of smiles all round! Am planning to go back again, once the teacher’s conference is over, and I have free time to call my own once more…
As the others in the car chattered away in Chinese (one good thing about not speaking a language is that you can tune out and noone is offended, or expects you to keep up the conversation, which is always nice on trips when I’d far rather be looking out the window!), I was at liberty to look out the window. It’d would be wonderful to bring an easel and paints out into the villages, and try to catch the mist-wreathed old houses with their mud bricks and tiled roofs half hidden by stands of bamboo, with ropes of yellow corn cobs hung to dry under the eaves, woven baskets standing along the wall, and bright green patches of garden vegetables beside the front door. Of course, one would have to bring an invisibility cloak a la JK Rowling as well, in order to get any actual painting done, as foreigners are scarce in these parts, and most villagers have never seen a foreigner before.
I was invited to Xiping by the headmaster of a private English tutorial school there. She had contacted me through the teachers at the junior school I teach at on Saturdays in Santai, and talked me into giving an “exhibition” class to young kids. I agreed rather reluctantly, I have to admit, teaching little kids is still not my best thing in the world, and I grew more concerned as time went on before this event was to occur, and each time I asked how many kids, the number went up, until it ended up I was to teach 200. And I was never terribly clear about exactly how long or what I was to do: was told it was outside…it sounded worse and worse, but as it happened, I was pleasantly surprised.
After my morning classes on Saturday, we drove out to Xiping, and arrived to a crowd of kids who swarmed the car to greet me, bless them! They are all village kids, who’d never seen someone from another country, and were extremely cute and friendly, more than happy to practise what English they knew! I had multiple kids hanging off each arm, chattering away the questions they had learnt. Met the other teachers of the school, all young-ish girls in their twenties: Laurie, Sissy and Michelle. Most Chinese kids are given English names in their junior schools, and it does make it easier to remember at least some of them!
After an hour or so, I was taken to have a walk through the old part of the town, with its ancient cobbled streets, and traditional wooden houses with front walls that dismantled! They are made up of boards that slot into a rack at top and bottom of the wall, so open into shop fronts during the day, and can be closed up at night. You can see it in the photo I’ve put up, with the old people sitting out in the street watching the world – and a foreigner!- go by.
We stopped by an old man selling what looked like wicker-work baskets, he had such a contagious grin, I wanted to stop and have a look at his baskets. They turned out to be traditional coal-burners to warm your hands and feet. One of the teachers, Laurie had gone with us to act as translator, and she told me that only older people use them nowadays, but the craft of making them continues. Have a look at the photo on the side!
I also stopped and talked to a woman making brooms, rakes and ladders out of bamboo.
We walked down the uneven cobbled street, the wooden houses pretty much unchanged from hundreds of years ago, and the photographer with us, Oscar, who works for Santai TV and was filming “A foreigner’s view of Xiping!!!” pointed out the eaves, built entirely out of interlocking wood pieces, and no nails. Through Laurie’s translation, he told me that such houses could withstand even earthquakes, and were much stronger than the more modern buildings of concrete.
We all went out for dinner that night, the ubiquitous hotpot of course, but this time of freshly caught and killed fish. Very fresh…there was a big tank out front, with a chef balancing precariously on a board over the water wielding a large net. I have to admit to being too squeamish to watch the catching and killing…oh the days of vegetarianism…!
There is a certain knack to eating a fish hotpot, which I have yet to master. Chunks of fish are thrown into the bubbling spices and oil, complete with bones, and the Chinese seem able to put the entire piece into their mouth, move it around a bit, and spit out a pile of bones. It took me much longer…spitting out bone by bone, and trying really hard not to swallow any. This is, as you can perhaps imagine, really difficult to do gracefully! Fortunately, the Chinese are also very good at allowing one too keep face, and carried on their conversation regardless of my facial contortions! After dinner, I was to spend the night in the teachers’ flat. The three girls had a room each, but it was not nearly as nice as my “foreigner” flat, with its tiled floor and posh furniture. They had bare cement floors, a rudimentary kitchen with water-stained walls, and it was cold!!! But they were really friendly, set up an electric blanket for me, and made me very much at home. They were up in the wee hours, getting ready for the pageant, and left for school early. I and Laurie left at the more sensible hour or 7am, and went off to the school office, she to dash about madly like the others getting everything ready, me to sit nursing my hot soy milk and watching the kids getting made up assembly-line style. Two teachers had a pile of make up on the table, and were liberally be-daubing the kids one after the other with lipstick on mouth and cheeks. A few of the girls who were dancers had their ponytails bound with red ribbons to stick out from either side of their head, Pippi Longstocking style. Looked a bit like Christmas TV antennas to me, but they seemed quite pleased with the result!
Part 2…
So once all the kids were bedecked and bejeweled to everyone’s satisfaction, they were all herded into a long procession, at the head of which was unfurled a large red banner with all kinds of Chinese writing on it, and my name emblazoned in white letters! Have absolutely no idea what it said, but assume optimistically it was something good! It would have been funny if I was marching happily off to my doom surrounded by smiling kids and a sign proclaiming my imminent demise…! At any rate, we proceeded with great aplomb down the road in the drizzle of rain which had, typically of any such event, begun the moment we set off. Crowds gathered to watch our progress, traffic was halted as we sauntered gaily across the street, to the stage set up near the market place…the aroma of singed feathers wafting over us as we passed a group of women roasting chickens in large clay ovens.
The programme started late, as all events tend to, as the sound system acted up, the large helium banner collapsed, and various child actors took some time to locate. All crises were eventually overcome, and those of us in the shivering, slightly damp audience were treated to a progamme extraordinaire of songs, dances and short drama. The kids sang “It’s a small world” with great enthusiasm to even greater applause, and performed an extremely unique rendition of Snow White, which seemed to include some elements of Goldilocks (“someone’s been sleeping in MY bed..”), and the three musketeers ( the “prince” was garbed in a flowing cape (a red curtain) and was wielding a sword which he flourished with abandon, so dramatically in fact, that it was nearly impossible to make out what he was saying!
Then I was sent up on stage, the token foreigner,( like shops in India who hire elephants or dancing bears to perform and attract custom) to sing an English song with the other English teachers. Honestly, I don’t think I have ever sung publicly so much in my life since I began teaching ESL. There is a very good reason for this, of course, as all of you who know what my voice is like are well aware! Ah well, it seemed to amuse the crowd, at any rate. Later on, I was sent up again to “teach” about 200 kids. It was more entertainment than anything else, my job was to “attract interest” so I played a rousing game of Simon says, sang “Head and Shoulders, Knees and Toes” at great volume and danced the Hokey Pokey. Made a complete fool of myself in general, but it seemed to do the trick.
Afterwards, I was interviewed live for Santai television…pretty much an advertisement for the schools, you know, “how do you like the students?” “What do you think of our school?” with the standard glowing responses pre-set.
Then the teachers, school leaders and I headed off for lunch, a veritable feast, with the usual assortment of odd meat bits… dogs ears, duck tongues, pickled chicken feet and turtle soup, complete with an actual broiled turtle sitting in it, shell cracked so one could dig out the meat….I have to admit, that though some was put in my dish, I did actually cover it up with bits of cabbage and not eat it…!
After lunch, it was back to Santai, another beautiful drive, which since I have already described it once, will refrain from inflicting another description on you. Back in time to meet up with one of my students, a boy who calls himself J. Really nice kid, is helping me to learn Chinese, with great enthusiasm for all my badly-pronounced responses. After two hours chatting with him in a tea-shop, returned to school for a few more hours of prepping for my Christmas-themed classes this week. Am telling the kids a bit about Christmas, complete with stories of Sinterklaas and Black Piet, mistletoe and Christmas crackers…By the end of this year, these kids will know more about the world and its customs than most other Chinese kids their age, I suspect. After that, am showing them a 10 minute video clip of Mr Bean’s Christmas…they love the humour….and then a slide show of Christmas pictures from my last Christmas home, lots of pictures of my family and Christmas decorations, also pictures from Christmas round the world, St Lucia in Sweden, The Sphinx wearing a Santa hat, that sort of thing. They really love the pictures, especially of family and our house in Canada. Lots of work to prepare all that, but it has
been a resounding success. Several of the kids have told me they have laughed more since I arrived than in all their previous school years. Don’t know if that’s a good thing?!!!
A few more bits and pieces of note…went with a friend of mine, Jing Rong, for a wander
round town, and visited a school for deaf kids. They were really cute, and it was great to communicate with them through chalk drawings on the pavement! Lots of smiles all round! Am planning to go back again, once the teacher’s conference is over, and I have free time to call my own once more…
Monday, December 3, 2007
Late November to Dec 3rd 2007....
Yet another couple weeks have flown by, and I’ve been getting complaints as to the lack of news, so here it be!
Classes continue to go well, individual students are beginning to stand out from the throng, and I even have quite a few names down. Most Sunday afternoons I spend with one group of students or another, and last Sunday I went off with a group of girls to paly badminton and volleyball at a sports ground on the outskirts of town. Well, theoretically we went to play, in reality we played for about an hour, and sat chatting for two! I think having a female foreigner in the school has been particularly good for the girl students,
As they are really shy in class, but off by ourselves, they chat up a storm, something that they were less able to do with the previous male teachers. Makes a change for me too from teaching in the monastery where my whole world was male.
This past weekend though, I took off and went to Chengdu to meet up with an old student and friend who came down from Xining to visit me en route to Beijing. Lhungrik was probably my best student in Dharamsala, and it’d been about 10 years since we’d met, so
it was lovely to catch up on all the latest gossip in each other’s lives, and to hear about mutual friends. Who’s doing what, with whom, and where! I left Santai after classes on Friday morning, and stayed in Chengdu til Sunday afternoon. It was a weekend full of coincidences as well, met a guy called Jamyang, a friend of Lhungrik’s, who, after chatting for a while, turned out to have met me in India, and had been a roommate of one of my best friends in the school.
The small world phenomenon continued as I met an American girl called Yeshi Dolma, whom I’d met in ’99 in Majnu ka Tilla (Delhi) when I’d been there making masks for the monastery, and ran into her on the street, newly arrived and lost as to where to go or stay. Helped her out, we had breakfast together, saw her off onto the bus to D’sala, and never heard from her again til this weekend. Met some other friends as well, Nyima, who’d been in Loseling years ago, and who knew several of my friends, and a few foreigners, Lisa and Fiona.
Wandered around Chengdu with Lhungrik and Jamyang, amusing ourselves with some lifelike statues of tourists, and chatting endlessly the entire way, until it was time to go back Sunday afternoon. Still enjoy the bus ride to and from Santai to Chengdu. As Sunday was relatively clear, and the sun was actually visible for a change, several shops had tall racks of noodles hanging to dry in the sun, and outside every teashop were groups of people soaking up the sun’s feeble rays and playing cards or mah jong.
As I’ve had more comments on the culinary delights I’ve mentioned in my blog than anything else, I figure I’d better keep them up to date. One of my latest ventures was deep fried chicken feet soaked in chilli sauce. During the course of wandering with some students, this was their idea of a snack, and I couldn’t refuse, bless them. Not one of my favourite dishes though, I have to admit. A bit like eating sticks covered in hot sauce.
Have been out for several more hotpot dinners, (huoguo) and though I have stopped asking what kind of meat I’m eating, there were several suspiciously tentacle-ish looking bits at the last one, and I was told that another bit, with a rubbery texture and lots of short spikes on it was the stomach lining of a cow. Ah well. At least I never get sick from anything I eat and most of it is pretty tasty! The pictures alongside of the hotpot dinner are from a party for the teachers of the school where I teach on Saturdays. The girl sitting on my right I’ve given the English name Kerry, as she calls herself my little sister!
The Saturday classes are still pretty chaotic, as I’m not at all experienced teaching little kids. My strategy now is to run them ragged until they have to sit still! Problem is, that I’m absolutely knackered by the end of the class as well…
And on that note, I’ve ended up getting myself into yet another event that I know I’m going to regret. Not only am I still preparing frantically to be the guest speaker leading a teacher’s conference on December 22, but I also agreed for some unfathomable reason to do a class demonstration for a junior school in Xiping, a town some distance from Santai. It was only after agreeing that I found out it was to be an exhibition class for the parents and other teachers to attend, and is to be a class of 100 primary students. Madness.
100 highschool or adult students, no worries, but primary kids!
And it’s December already. Hard to believe that all of you out there are preparing for Christmas, when it couldn’t feel less like it here. Having said that, there are the occasional signs of it around, more in Chengdu than here in Santai of course. In Chengdu, many of the bigger shops were decorated with Christmas trees and wreaths. I don’t think we even have a day off for it here, though I might go to Mianyang for Christmas with some of the foreigners there. See how things evolve. I am looking forward to travelling north to Xining for the New Year in mid January/February.
Classes continue to go well, individual students are beginning to stand out from the throng, and I even have quite a few names down. Most Sunday afternoons I spend with one group of students or another, and last Sunday I went off with a group of girls to paly badminton and volleyball at a sports ground on the outskirts of town. Well, theoretically we went to play, in reality we played for about an hour, and sat chatting for two! I think having a female foreigner in the school has been particularly good for the girl students,
As they are really shy in class, but off by ourselves, they chat up a storm, something that they were less able to do with the previous male teachers. Makes a change for me too from teaching in the monastery where my whole world was male.
This past weekend though, I took off and went to Chengdu to meet up with an old student and friend who came down from Xining to visit me en route to Beijing. Lhungrik was probably my best student in Dharamsala, and it’d been about 10 years since we’d met, so
it was lovely to catch up on all the latest gossip in each other’s lives, and to hear about mutual friends. Who’s doing what, with whom, and where! I left Santai after classes on Friday morning, and stayed in Chengdu til Sunday afternoon. It was a weekend full of coincidences as well, met a guy called Jamyang, a friend of Lhungrik’s, who, after chatting for a while, turned out to have met me in India, and had been a roommate of one of my best friends in the school.
The small world phenomenon continued as I met an American girl called Yeshi Dolma, whom I’d met in ’99 in Majnu ka Tilla (Delhi) when I’d been there making masks for the monastery, and ran into her on the street, newly arrived and lost as to where to go or stay. Helped her out, we had breakfast together, saw her off onto the bus to D’sala, and never heard from her again til this weekend. Met some other friends as well, Nyima, who’d been in Loseling years ago, and who knew several of my friends, and a few foreigners, Lisa and Fiona.
Wandered around Chengdu with Lhungrik and Jamyang, amusing ourselves with some lifelike statues of tourists, and chatting endlessly the entire way, until it was time to go back Sunday afternoon. Still enjoy the bus ride to and from Santai to Chengdu. As Sunday was relatively clear, and the sun was actually visible for a change, several shops had tall racks of noodles hanging to dry in the sun, and outside every teashop were groups of people soaking up the sun’s feeble rays and playing cards or mah jong.
As I’ve had more comments on the culinary delights I’ve mentioned in my blog than anything else, I figure I’d better keep them up to date. One of my latest ventures was deep fried chicken feet soaked in chilli sauce. During the course of wandering with some students, this was their idea of a snack, and I couldn’t refuse, bless them. Not one of my favourite dishes though, I have to admit. A bit like eating sticks covered in hot sauce.
Have been out for several more hotpot dinners, (huoguo) and though I have stopped asking what kind of meat I’m eating, there were several suspiciously tentacle-ish looking bits at the last one, and I was told that another bit, with a rubbery texture and lots of short spikes on it was the stomach lining of a cow. Ah well. At least I never get sick from anything I eat and most of it is pretty tasty! The pictures alongside of the hotpot dinner are from a party for the teachers of the school where I teach on Saturdays. The girl sitting on my right I’ve given the English name Kerry, as she calls herself my little sister!
The Saturday classes are still pretty chaotic, as I’m not at all experienced teaching little kids. My strategy now is to run them ragged until they have to sit still! Problem is, that I’m absolutely knackered by the end of the class as well…
And on that note, I’ve ended up getting myself into yet another event that I know I’m going to regret. Not only am I still preparing frantically to be the guest speaker leading a teacher’s conference on December 22, but I also agreed for some unfathomable reason to do a class demonstration for a junior school in Xiping, a town some distance from Santai. It was only after agreeing that I found out it was to be an exhibition class for the parents and other teachers to attend, and is to be a class of 100 primary students. Madness.
100 highschool or adult students, no worries, but primary kids!
And it’s December already. Hard to believe that all of you out there are preparing for Christmas, when it couldn’t feel less like it here. Having said that, there are the occasional signs of it around, more in Chengdu than here in Santai of course. In Chengdu, many of the bigger shops were decorated with Christmas trees and wreaths. I don’t think we even have a day off for it here, though I might go to Mianyang for Christmas with some of the foreigners there. See how things evolve. I am looking forward to travelling north to Xining for the New Year in mid January/February.
Monday, November 19, 2007
epic #5
It’s been over a week since I last wrote, so there’s some updating to do. Last week Wednesday evening, after class, I headed out back to Chengdu, as the paperwork for my residence permit hit another glitch. Oh the joys of bureaucracy! At least in India, a bit of “baksheesh” worked wonders; doesn’t work that way here. So I had to go and get some of the medical tests redone, apparently they weren’t clear enough. So from Wednesday night I had to fast til Thursday morning when the Xray was retaken, more blood was drawn, and then they wanted to take a urine test. Yeah sure, after telling me not to eat or drink anything, then they want me to produce urine on demand! So I sat downing cup after cup of water in the sitting area trying to ascertain exactly how long it’d take to drain down to bladder level, wondering in amusement how many other people throughout the world had spent time at that same occupation. With me were Fiona, the girl from the agency in Chengdu who had employed me, and one of their other teachers, a girl called Gina from London. Eventually did manage to provide the aforementioned sample, and we left for the panda base. Fiona and I had been, but with little time to spend, and Gina, though she’d lived in the area for over a year, had never been. Fortunately, I had Marco in tow this time, as I suspect he and the girls would never forgive me if I left him behind again! So he rode around in my pocket much to the amusement of the school groups visiting the pandas. Returned to school Thursday evening. It’s a two and a half hour drive, which I quite enjoy, as it passes through villages and the town of Deyang, where there’s a beautiful hilltop temple. One day, I’ll have to get off in Deyang and check it out, climb all the stairs to the top and accumulate some more merit towards the next lifetime, and get some good cardio exercise at the same time!
Every square inch of land in this area seems to be in use. Even the patches of earth along the roadsides are planted with vegetables. Between the towns and villages, the hills are terraces of rice and vegetable fields, in which the farmers crouch, gathering or planting, dots of colour in a green and brown sea of fields.
Mixed among the traditional homes with black-tiled roofs are newer concrete structures, much uglier, and in common with India, everywhere there are crowds of people. On bicycles, in three-wheeled rickshaws, shopping in the markets or sitting outside tea shops playing cards and mah jong. Driving along in the bus is like watching a play, a panorama of life being acted out as one sits apart in the audience and watches. As we near home, I can pick out the characters for “Santai”, and amuse myself with seeing how often I can spot it on the signboards and shop names.
Friday morning, had a leisurely cup of coffee (or what passes here for coffee, I’m not convinced there’s been a single coffee bean used in it’s creation, but it’s hot and smells like coffee, so it’s all good!) and meandered down to the teacher’s office, where I discovered that there were actually classes being held! I had been told that Friday and Saturday were to be the monthly tests, so I’d have no class, but apparently that had been changed on Thursday to take place on Monday and Tuesday. So apart from my Saturday efforts at teaching the young kids, I was free until Wednesday. Unfortunately, without a passport, one can’t travel as foreigner in China, or I’d have gone to visit Leshan or somewhere else for a few days. But my passport is still in Chengdu, so instead, I decided to spend the days wandering around Santai, see if I can work out which road goes where. Not as easy as it sounds, as, though the roads are clearly named, both in Chinese characters and pin-yin, several roads have more than one name. So my method is to get thoroughly lost, and then try to find my way home. Since I can say the name of our school in Chinese, at least if I get completely lost, I can take a rickshaw back.
So far, I’ve managed to get back on my own, though I am sure by a very circuitous route! Those of you who know what my sense of direction is like (!) know that my directions are based on the surrounding landscape. The other day, I carefully took note of the shops I passed, and felt quite sure I would know the way back without problem. This was an excellent philosophy, and I am sure would have worked very well, except that at noon, the majority of shops close down for two hours, and pull large shutters across the shop fronts. So my theory failed abysmally, but I wandered along giggling to myself at my feeble attempt. Will try a trail of breadcrumbs a la Hansel and Gretel next, see if that is any better!
Now that I’ve recovered from the shock of having to sing in public one day, run a 100m relay mere days later, and then take part in a volleyball tournament (all of which runs very much against my genetic capabilities) the next thing which I am growing slightly stressed about is having to not only take part in, but lead an upcoming teacher’s conference! It continues to both amuse and perturb me that people think I am a “real” teacher. I am expected to lead a day’s seminar for teachers from the whole district, in the morning, discussing teacher training and methods in the West, and in the afternoon, talking about my own teaching style, methods and experience. Little do they know that my teacher training consists of a 5 day ESL course, and my experience comes from making it up as I went along for 10 years in a monastery school! Ah well, I guess at this point I speak authoritatively, gesture imperiously, and continue to make it up….!
As I had free time this weekend, Sunday afternoon I met up with one of my students, a 16 year old girl with the odd name of Fishel who wants to learn to draw. Her English is quite good, and we actually had quite a long and involved discussion about life.
Most of the kids ask me things like, “Are you married” or, “Are you going to the Olympics in Beijing?” This girl’s first question was, “How can I find out the meaning of life?” And on it went from there. We wandered down to the river, sat on rocks drawing, talking and eating oranges. I asked her about her unusual name, and she explained that the Fish is her astrological sign, and to make it a bit different, she chose the suffix “el” as it was the ending for most angelic names.
Couldn’t fault her reasoning, sounds like something I’d dream up! Back to school in time for her evening classes, and for me to go help coach a student who is to go this week to take part in an English competition in Mianyang, representing our school. The competitors are given 4 words, a noun, a verb, an adjective and a phrase and 30 seconds in which to come up with a coherent story using the 4 words. Not easy even for a native speaker to do, but this boy did an excellent job, and I’m looking forward to hearing how he does. Students from Mianyang have an edge though, as it’s a much bigger city with many foreigners, whereas most of our students in Santai come from the countryside, and most had never met a “real live” foreigner before.
With still more free time yesterday, I met up with my “chinese sister” a girl whose English name is now Kerry! She told me she was my sister, and asked me to give her an English name, so the logical name was Kerry. She was thrilled to hear that she now has the same name as my sister in Canada. She’s only been in Santai for a few months herself, and knows the city little better than I do, so we wandered around lost together, chatting away with use of her dictionary until evening.
En route home, I stopped at my local supermarket for eggs and milk, chatted for a while with the shopgirls, as we entertain each other with our inability to communicate. A week or so ago, I tried to buy soy sauce, and stood gazing at the large display of bottles, all written in Chinese characters, trying to figure out which would logically be the right kind. Finally decided (by the infallible eeny-meeny miny-mo method) upon one, confidently paid for and took it home, happily splashed some of it into the noodles I was making, and discovered that it is most certainly NOT soy sauce! Don’t know what it is, but it’s very fishy tasting and extremely hot! Ah well, once this bottle’s gone, I will venture forth on another attempt, see what I get next time!
Every square inch of land in this area seems to be in use. Even the patches of earth along the roadsides are planted with vegetables. Between the towns and villages, the hills are terraces of rice and vegetable fields, in which the farmers crouch, gathering or planting, dots of colour in a green and brown sea of fields.
Mixed among the traditional homes with black-tiled roofs are newer concrete structures, much uglier, and in common with India, everywhere there are crowds of people. On bicycles, in three-wheeled rickshaws, shopping in the markets or sitting outside tea shops playing cards and mah jong. Driving along in the bus is like watching a play, a panorama of life being acted out as one sits apart in the audience and watches. As we near home, I can pick out the characters for “Santai”, and amuse myself with seeing how often I can spot it on the signboards and shop names.
Friday morning, had a leisurely cup of coffee (or what passes here for coffee, I’m not convinced there’s been a single coffee bean used in it’s creation, but it’s hot and smells like coffee, so it’s all good!) and meandered down to the teacher’s office, where I discovered that there were actually classes being held! I had been told that Friday and Saturday were to be the monthly tests, so I’d have no class, but apparently that had been changed on Thursday to take place on Monday and Tuesday. So apart from my Saturday efforts at teaching the young kids, I was free until Wednesday. Unfortunately, without a passport, one can’t travel as foreigner in China, or I’d have gone to visit Leshan or somewhere else for a few days. But my passport is still in Chengdu, so instead, I decided to spend the days wandering around Santai, see if I can work out which road goes where. Not as easy as it sounds, as, though the roads are clearly named, both in Chinese characters and pin-yin, several roads have more than one name. So my method is to get thoroughly lost, and then try to find my way home. Since I can say the name of our school in Chinese, at least if I get completely lost, I can take a rickshaw back.
So far, I’ve managed to get back on my own, though I am sure by a very circuitous route! Those of you who know what my sense of direction is like (!) know that my directions are based on the surrounding landscape. The other day, I carefully took note of the shops I passed, and felt quite sure I would know the way back without problem. This was an excellent philosophy, and I am sure would have worked very well, except that at noon, the majority of shops close down for two hours, and pull large shutters across the shop fronts. So my theory failed abysmally, but I wandered along giggling to myself at my feeble attempt. Will try a trail of breadcrumbs a la Hansel and Gretel next, see if that is any better!
Now that I’ve recovered from the shock of having to sing in public one day, run a 100m relay mere days later, and then take part in a volleyball tournament (all of which runs very much against my genetic capabilities) the next thing which I am growing slightly stressed about is having to not only take part in, but lead an upcoming teacher’s conference! It continues to both amuse and perturb me that people think I am a “real” teacher. I am expected to lead a day’s seminar for teachers from the whole district, in the morning, discussing teacher training and methods in the West, and in the afternoon, talking about my own teaching style, methods and experience. Little do they know that my teacher training consists of a 5 day ESL course, and my experience comes from making it up as I went along for 10 years in a monastery school! Ah well, I guess at this point I speak authoritatively, gesture imperiously, and continue to make it up….!
As I had free time this weekend, Sunday afternoon I met up with one of my students, a 16 year old girl with the odd name of Fishel who wants to learn to draw. Her English is quite good, and we actually had quite a long and involved discussion about life.
Most of the kids ask me things like, “Are you married” or, “Are you going to the Olympics in Beijing?” This girl’s first question was, “How can I find out the meaning of life?” And on it went from there. We wandered down to the river, sat on rocks drawing, talking and eating oranges. I asked her about her unusual name, and she explained that the Fish is her astrological sign, and to make it a bit different, she chose the suffix “el” as it was the ending for most angelic names.
Couldn’t fault her reasoning, sounds like something I’d dream up! Back to school in time for her evening classes, and for me to go help coach a student who is to go this week to take part in an English competition in Mianyang, representing our school. The competitors are given 4 words, a noun, a verb, an adjective and a phrase and 30 seconds in which to come up with a coherent story using the 4 words. Not easy even for a native speaker to do, but this boy did an excellent job, and I’m looking forward to hearing how he does. Students from Mianyang have an edge though, as it’s a much bigger city with many foreigners, whereas most of our students in Santai come from the countryside, and most had never met a “real live” foreigner before.
With still more free time yesterday, I met up with my “chinese sister” a girl whose English name is now Kerry! She told me she was my sister, and asked me to give her an English name, so the logical name was Kerry. She was thrilled to hear that she now has the same name as my sister in Canada. She’s only been in Santai for a few months herself, and knows the city little better than I do, so we wandered around lost together, chatting away with use of her dictionary until evening.
En route home, I stopped at my local supermarket for eggs and milk, chatted for a while with the shopgirls, as we entertain each other with our inability to communicate. A week or so ago, I tried to buy soy sauce, and stood gazing at the large display of bottles, all written in Chinese characters, trying to figure out which would logically be the right kind. Finally decided (by the infallible eeny-meeny miny-mo method) upon one, confidently paid for and took it home, happily splashed some of it into the noodles I was making, and discovered that it is most certainly NOT soy sauce! Don’t know what it is, but it’s very fishy tasting and extremely hot! Ah well, once this bottle’s gone, I will venture forth on another attempt, see what I get next time!
Sunday, November 11, 2007
and my athletic career begins and ends with one race...
I spoke too quickly when I said in the blog yesterday that I'd escaped having to take part in the sports activities! I was innocently minding my own business (as I ALWAYS do...!) standing with a bunch of students to watch the teachers' 400m relay and cheer them on, when I was spotted and discussed by a group of teachers. not that I'm fluent in Chinese by any stretch of the imagination, but I can usually pick out my name and "Janata" (Canada in Chinese) and figure I'm being talked abuot. Happens fairly frequently. So I smiled cheerfully at them, and continued chatting to the students. A few minutes later I was dragged off, had a number tied on me and sent off down the track at a jog to take part in the race. It was arranged that I was part of the final leg, finishing in front of the grandstand of course! They just don't know the limitations of the Ouwehand genes! They've had me singing and running in public...
However, to my own amazement, I came third, behind the male teachers, but first in the women, running in jeans and leather shoes no less. However, it was the beginning and end of my athletic career...until of course, I was invited roller skating with a group of students. I'd not been rollerskating since grade 10, and even then my strategy was to go until I had to crash into something to stop. However, off we went, to the local "rink" about a quarter of the size of our usual skating rinks, with an uneven wooden floor. Having said that, it was packed, mostly with students from my school, to my mortification. Got off to a wobbly start, trying mainly to stay upright and not fall over my own feet. Of course, had an instant audience! But after half an hour or so, could at least get round fairly well, still have to stop with the aid of a wall or other such inanimate object though! Had loads of fun, and some of the students were excellent, performing all sorts of acrobatics. Ended up being dragged along in a few "conga" lines, whizzing roudn the room and doging pillars and other skaters at an alarming speed! Good thing I've got medical coverage. Hope it includes the breakage of limbs.
However, to my own amazement, I came third, behind the male teachers, but first in the women, running in jeans and leather shoes no less. However, it was the beginning and end of my athletic career...until of course, I was invited roller skating with a group of students. I'd not been rollerskating since grade 10, and even then my strategy was to go until I had to crash into something to stop. However, off we went, to the local "rink" about a quarter of the size of our usual skating rinks, with an uneven wooden floor. Having said that, it was packed, mostly with students from my school, to my mortification. Got off to a wobbly start, trying mainly to stay upright and not fall over my own feet. Of course, had an instant audience! But after half an hour or so, could at least get round fairly well, still have to stop with the aid of a wall or other such inanimate object though! Had loads of fun, and some of the students were excellent, performing all sorts of acrobatics. Ended up being dragged along in a few "conga" lines, whizzing roudn the room and doging pillars and other skaters at an alarming speed! Good thing I've got medical coverage. Hope it includes the breakage of limbs.
Saturday, November 10, 2007
Am beginning to recognize individual students now out of the general masses, but am struggling with the names. They of course, all know my name, but don’t seem to understand that there’s one, very distinct me, and several thousand of them! Many of them have given themselves English names though, which makes life slightly easier. Have pretty well settled into the school life, hang out with the teachers between classes, and don’t get lost on the way back from market as often!
This week the whole school has been a flurry of activity and excitement getting ready for the Arts Festival, held every three years. It’s a combination of art, calligraphy and poetry exhibitions, sports competitions, and an evening programme of songs, skits and dances. Friday morning was the official opening ceremony, with the students parading in class by class to music, assembling in a great horde on the school playing field. Then the games began, mostly track and field events such as various lengths of races, shot put, long jump and high jump.
All students had to choose at least two activities in which to participate, and points were added up for each class. Interestingly, most of them did their sport in their normal clothes, running 800m, for example, in jeans and a jacket! As each student took part in an event, the rest of their classmates rallied round to cheer them on, shouting Jai-o, jai-o (come on, come on!) to encourage them.
Not only the students, but the teachers were also each required to pick a sports event to take part in. Fortunately, as the newcomer, I was excused. With my luck, I’d end up running the 3km race or some such thing. I was less lucky, however with regard to the programme. A mere two days before, I was told I should perform, and was urged to dance. Yeah right. I don’t dance, at least not sober, and certainly not in public, so I opted for the slightly safer option of singing. Now, I have survived such trials before, in Mundgod, but learned the hard way from that experience that it is far better to sing badly in the language of the locals, than to sing badly in English. I’ve found that foreigners are all expected to be amazing singers and dancers, a fairly logical conclusion as the knowledge most of these kids have of westerners is via Hollywood movies and pop singers. So I’ve developed the defense of learning a short song in the local language, which at least amuses the audience, and they give you credit for trying, rather than focusing on my off-key voice!
However great the plan, I’m always literally quaking in my boots before and during being on stage, but once it’s over, my contribution made to display the foolishness of the foreigner, I can settle in and enjoy the rest of the show.
My chosen song this time round was “happy new year” in Chinese, (to the tune of “Oh my Darling Clementine”!) For all those who wish to have a go, here are the words in pin-yin:
( a system adopted in 1958, where Chinese characters were to be replaced by the adaptation using the Roman alphabet. The replacement never happened though, and apparently the use of pin-yin is even starting to die out)
Xing ni Hao, xing ni hao, zhu fu da jia xing ni hao
Wo-men chang-ge wo-men taio wu zhu fu da jia, xing ni hao!
The programme last night had been in planning for two months, and the sound and light equipment was all hired in from the nearby city of Mianyang, so it was quite posh, with strobelights, clouds of dry ice smoke, fireworks and the occasional burst of soap bubbles, not to mention all the other technical gadgetry which seemed to fascinate whoever was operating it all, as there were frequent and startling displays of flashing, spinning and whirling coloured lights and smoke, and bursts of flame from spouts at the front of the stage.!
Each class had prepared at least one performance, complete with elaborate costumes. Unfortunately, I t was to dark to take photos, because it was an extremely colourful affair. Performaces ranged from Indian-style dances, with girls got up in glittering saris to skits taken out of the Beijing opera, with the traditional costumes and elaborate makeup, headresses, fans and martial arts demonstrations. There were English rap songs done by groups of guys, who did all sorts of athletic feats of breakdancing a la Michael Jackson (who’s still something of a hero here) and even a skit of Sleeping Beauty (in English, bless them!) and flamenco dancing.
There was a “fashion show” in which all the clothes were made out of plastic, paper and tinfoil, and were modeled by the students who’d created them to the pounding beat of a modern pop song. The whole thing took about 2 and a half hours, and was very professionally done.
The kids here have such a heavy schedule of classes and study, that they very rarely have free time to themselves. So when they do, they make the most of it.
A typical day for a student here begins when the first bell goes at 6:20am. This is followed by all the lights going on in all the dorms, and loud music being played over the school speakers. The kids have 10 minutes to get up and clothed before they have to head down to the sports field for morning calisthenic exercises done to the beat of blasted music and some extremely annoyingly loud person with a megaphone. Then off to breakfast, and to first class at 7:30. Classes continue til 12 noon, then a 2 hour break for lunch. Classes again all afternoon til 6pm, then dinner. After dinner, evening classes go from 7:30-10pm, during which the students have time to do their homework, and back to the dorms before the lights go out at 10:30. This goes on 6 days a week, and Sunday morning. They have Sunday afternoons off, but many students stay in the classrooms and cram for the exams.
There is a monthly test/exam held monthly in each subject, after which there are parent-teacher meetings. It’s a hectic schedule, but there is immense pressure on students here to pass the university and college entrance exams held each July. Because of the huge population in China, competition for spots in schools is fierce, and more so for a good job afterwards. Once one has taken a job, apparently, you pretty much stay there for life, as there’s no guarantee of finding another if you decide to leave the one you’re in. Many of the students have told me they envy me my life and wish they could travel, but the way life is set up here, they’ve very little chance. If they wish to have a secure future of any sort, the way lies through university and connections to find a good job. So the results on their entrance exams pretty much determine the course the rest of their life can take. Scary thought at 17!
The way the educational system is set up is hard on teachers as well. Chinese teachers are responsible for their students’ performances in the exams, and their salaries are affected by how well their students do. I can see the basic logic in this, trying to motivate the teachers to teach well, but if one is unlucky, and has a class with less academically gifted students, it makes life hard. Also, the best teachers tend to be given the better classes. As I wrote before, the students are sorted into classes according to their grades, with classes 1-10 the highest in the school, and ranking downwards from there to 30. There is a huge amount of material to be gotten through in the term as well. So both students and teachers are extremely pressured to do well. This explains why the students were so excited to have the arts festival, and three days “off” in which to play and decompress. I spent much of my time hanging out at the playing field, because it gave the students a chance to talk and practice their English. They are so busy with classes otherwise, I never have much chance to meet them other than in class. Good for me to practice my Chinese too! My vocabulary is growing in leaps and bounds, though I forget as fast as I learn. I know how to ay all sorts of useful words: peanut, relay race and cheers, and that always useful phrase, "I don't understand"!
This week the whole school has been a flurry of activity and excitement getting ready for the Arts Festival, held every three years. It’s a combination of art, calligraphy and poetry exhibitions, sports competitions, and an evening programme of songs, skits and dances. Friday morning was the official opening ceremony, with the students parading in class by class to music, assembling in a great horde on the school playing field. Then the games began, mostly track and field events such as various lengths of races, shot put, long jump and high jump.
All students had to choose at least two activities in which to participate, and points were added up for each class. Interestingly, most of them did their sport in their normal clothes, running 800m, for example, in jeans and a jacket! As each student took part in an event, the rest of their classmates rallied round to cheer them on, shouting Jai-o, jai-o (come on, come on!) to encourage them.
Not only the students, but the teachers were also each required to pick a sports event to take part in. Fortunately, as the newcomer, I was excused. With my luck, I’d end up running the 3km race or some such thing. I was less lucky, however with regard to the programme. A mere two days before, I was told I should perform, and was urged to dance. Yeah right. I don’t dance, at least not sober, and certainly not in public, so I opted for the slightly safer option of singing. Now, I have survived such trials before, in Mundgod, but learned the hard way from that experience that it is far better to sing badly in the language of the locals, than to sing badly in English. I’ve found that foreigners are all expected to be amazing singers and dancers, a fairly logical conclusion as the knowledge most of these kids have of westerners is via Hollywood movies and pop singers. So I’ve developed the defense of learning a short song in the local language, which at least amuses the audience, and they give you credit for trying, rather than focusing on my off-key voice!
However great the plan, I’m always literally quaking in my boots before and during being on stage, but once it’s over, my contribution made to display the foolishness of the foreigner, I can settle in and enjoy the rest of the show.
My chosen song this time round was “happy new year” in Chinese, (to the tune of “Oh my Darling Clementine”!) For all those who wish to have a go, here are the words in pin-yin:
( a system adopted in 1958, where Chinese characters were to be replaced by the adaptation using the Roman alphabet. The replacement never happened though, and apparently the use of pin-yin is even starting to die out)
Xing ni Hao, xing ni hao, zhu fu da jia xing ni hao
Wo-men chang-ge wo-men taio wu zhu fu da jia, xing ni hao!
The programme last night had been in planning for two months, and the sound and light equipment was all hired in from the nearby city of Mianyang, so it was quite posh, with strobelights, clouds of dry ice smoke, fireworks and the occasional burst of soap bubbles, not to mention all the other technical gadgetry which seemed to fascinate whoever was operating it all, as there were frequent and startling displays of flashing, spinning and whirling coloured lights and smoke, and bursts of flame from spouts at the front of the stage.!
Each class had prepared at least one performance, complete with elaborate costumes. Unfortunately, I t was to dark to take photos, because it was an extremely colourful affair. Performaces ranged from Indian-style dances, with girls got up in glittering saris to skits taken out of the Beijing opera, with the traditional costumes and elaborate makeup, headresses, fans and martial arts demonstrations. There were English rap songs done by groups of guys, who did all sorts of athletic feats of breakdancing a la Michael Jackson (who’s still something of a hero here) and even a skit of Sleeping Beauty (in English, bless them!) and flamenco dancing.
There was a “fashion show” in which all the clothes were made out of plastic, paper and tinfoil, and were modeled by the students who’d created them to the pounding beat of a modern pop song. The whole thing took about 2 and a half hours, and was very professionally done.
The kids here have such a heavy schedule of classes and study, that they very rarely have free time to themselves. So when they do, they make the most of it.
A typical day for a student here begins when the first bell goes at 6:20am. This is followed by all the lights going on in all the dorms, and loud music being played over the school speakers. The kids have 10 minutes to get up and clothed before they have to head down to the sports field for morning calisthenic exercises done to the beat of blasted music and some extremely annoyingly loud person with a megaphone. Then off to breakfast, and to first class at 7:30. Classes continue til 12 noon, then a 2 hour break for lunch. Classes again all afternoon til 6pm, then dinner. After dinner, evening classes go from 7:30-10pm, during which the students have time to do their homework, and back to the dorms before the lights go out at 10:30. This goes on 6 days a week, and Sunday morning. They have Sunday afternoons off, but many students stay in the classrooms and cram for the exams.
There is a monthly test/exam held monthly in each subject, after which there are parent-teacher meetings. It’s a hectic schedule, but there is immense pressure on students here to pass the university and college entrance exams held each July. Because of the huge population in China, competition for spots in schools is fierce, and more so for a good job afterwards. Once one has taken a job, apparently, you pretty much stay there for life, as there’s no guarantee of finding another if you decide to leave the one you’re in. Many of the students have told me they envy me my life and wish they could travel, but the way life is set up here, they’ve very little chance. If they wish to have a secure future of any sort, the way lies through university and connections to find a good job. So the results on their entrance exams pretty much determine the course the rest of their life can take. Scary thought at 17!
The way the educational system is set up is hard on teachers as well. Chinese teachers are responsible for their students’ performances in the exams, and their salaries are affected by how well their students do. I can see the basic logic in this, trying to motivate the teachers to teach well, but if one is unlucky, and has a class with less academically gifted students, it makes life hard. Also, the best teachers tend to be given the better classes. As I wrote before, the students are sorted into classes according to their grades, with classes 1-10 the highest in the school, and ranking downwards from there to 30. There is a huge amount of material to be gotten through in the term as well. So both students and teachers are extremely pressured to do well. This explains why the students were so excited to have the arts festival, and three days “off” in which to play and decompress. I spent much of my time hanging out at the playing field, because it gave the students a chance to talk and practice their English. They are so busy with classes otherwise, I never have much chance to meet them other than in class. Good for me to practice my Chinese too! My vocabulary is growing in leaps and bounds, though I forget as fast as I learn. I know how to ay all sorts of useful words: peanut, relay race and cheers, and that always useful phrase, "I don't understand"!
Monday, November 5, 2007
message for the girls from Marco
Hi small lunatics! Aunt Kristel took me with her to visit a temple today, up on a mountain overlooking the city we live in. So I forgive her for forgetting to take me to Chengdu with her to see pandas. We walked around the temple, and sat for an hour talking to a really old man who didn't speak any english. So we drew pictures, and laughed alot! Then two of Aunt Kristel's students came to the temple, and translated for us, so we saw many things.
You can see in one of the pictures, me with a big stone pot of water. There is a story that many years ago, a famous scholar came here, and cured a sick person using water from that pot, so now it is said that this water can cure any sickness. But I don't know, I had a look and it didn't look very clean!
Then we climbed up the hill, and Aunt Kristel took a picture of me looking at the city. You can see a little of the temple roof in the picture. There was a garden on the hilltop too, and I climbed up in some bamboo to see if I could find any pandas, but didn't see any. Now I am trying to learn to speak and read Chinese but it is very difficult! Look at the picture and see how different the letters here are from English! Did you know that to write Chinese really well, you have to use a paintbrush, not a pen or pencil!
I looked all over the temple, and found a small statue of Mary and Jesus on a Buddhist altar. Don't know why it was there, but I wanted to eat some peanuts anyway, so went and had a look.
Aunt Kristel's students showed us the big bell, and told us that all the writing on it is names of people and families who have sponsored the temple over the years.
After about an hour, we walked home again, but I had quite a fun day, and now I am writing to tell you about it, and so you can see some of the photos we took!
You can see in one of the pictures, me with a big stone pot of water. There is a story that many years ago, a famous scholar came here, and cured a sick person using water from that pot, so now it is said that this water can cure any sickness. But I don't know, I had a look and it didn't look very clean!
Then we climbed up the hill, and Aunt Kristel took a picture of me looking at the city. You can see a little of the temple roof in the picture. There was a garden on the hilltop too, and I climbed up in some bamboo to see if I could find any pandas, but didn't see any. Now I am trying to learn to speak and read Chinese but it is very difficult! Look at the picture and see how different the letters here are from English! Did you know that to write Chinese really well, you have to use a paintbrush, not a pen or pencil!
I looked all over the temple, and found a small statue of Mary and Jesus on a Buddhist altar. Don't know why it was there, but I wanted to eat some peanuts anyway, so went and had a look.
Aunt Kristel's students showed us the big bell, and told us that all the writing on it is names of people and families who have sponsored the temple over the years.
After about an hour, we walked home again, but I had quite a fun day, and now I am writing to tell you about it, and so you can see some of the photos we took!
Saturday, November 3, 2007
November 1-4
It turns out that each month, I get two extra days off in addition to my Sunday holiday, because the Senior 3 students have monthly exams, and since there are several thousand of them, all the classrooms are used. So in that time, I made a trip to Chengdu to wander round on my own, see how I got on with the language!
The bus trip was easy and uneventful. I learned the characters for “Chengdu” and “Santai” (the city I live in) so I could read the bus destinations, and off I went. Strolled round Jinli street, a reconstructed section of road near Wuhou Temple and the Tibetan area of town. It has been rebuilt in the old fashion of Chinese buildings-lots of dark carved wood and latticing, and full of shops selling all manner of traditional crafts and foods. Some examples of the traditional crafts are shadow puppets, scroll paintings on bamboo, folk toys, carved lucky gourds and masks (!! And no, I have not yet purchased one, Mom!) The kids would have loved the stall with the man blowing candy animals. He wadded up a translucent blob of stretchy candy gel, folded it into a tube, stretched a long piece and as he blew into it, pulled and pushed at various parts of the blob to create pigs and dragons, horses and birds. The whole process took no more than a few minutes.
I strolled along, camera at the ready, and let myself be carried along by the crowd. Incense wafted in the air, along with the smells of the open snack stalls selling traditional foods, very colourful and aromatic, and swarmed by hordes of Chinese tourists from various provinces in China. There were also some very westernized eateries, Starbucks and TCBY no less, looking quite out of place in among all the cared wood and lanterns. I had also forgotten that it was Halloween, and was jolted back into the western calendar by jack o’lanterns on the tables of a bar, and pumpkin lanterns hung among the bright red paper ones for good luck and prosperity. Couldn’t resist photos of those!
Beside the winding alleys of Jinli lies the Wuhuo temple enclosure. No longer used as a temple, it is now a museum with a beautiful garden and fishpond. Since Mao’s time, of course, religion of any flavour has been discouraged, and most of the school kids I talk to say they are not of any religion, though many say their parents or grandparents are Buddhist. Still, there are working temples around, just yesterday, a couple students invited me to go with them to see the Buddhist temple in Santai, which is a gem of a place set up on a hilltop, with about 100 monks. I hadn’t even realized it existed, as most of my tour guides have been concerned with showing me the shopping and eateries of the town! I’ve spent more time in restaurants in the past two weeks that in the 10 years I spent in India I think! The temple here is from the Tang dynasty, and is in the process of reconstruction, as it is admittedly a bit tatty looking. But it made me all nostalgic to hear the temple drums and gongs, and smell the incense in the chapels. I even recognized some of the deity statues, which quite impressed the two girls I was with. Lots of drawing potential, and I plan to head back up on my own sometime for a few hours. The draw also is that there is a small restaurant attached to the monastery, and it’s vegetarian, glory be! I have become used to the food here, not hard, as it’s delicious, and very spicy. Apparently Sichuan is renowned through-out China for it’s hot and spicy food. The huoguo (hotpot- like a fondue with a bubbling pot of spices and loads of plates full of various vegetables, meat, mushrooms and seaweed bits which get dumped into the pot and one fishes them out with chopsticks) that I went to last night was a pigeon soup full of all sorts of mushrooms and fungus of different types, as well as all the squishy meat bits, this time, I was told, including dog tails, which as a delicacy, were mounded on my plate…Not bad, a bit like dark chicken but very bony.
But I digress…that was last night, and I’ve yet to write about the highlight of my weekend! After I returned from Chengdu on Thursday night, I got a phone call from the office there which was in the process of arranging my residence permit, telling me that I needed to come to Chengdu! So back I went again on Friday, a 2.5 hour trip by bus each way, to go to show my face at the PSB office. That done, the office worker, Fiona, and I went to visit the panda breeding base on the outskirts of Chengdu. She had never been there, and was as eager as I to see the pandas. Cost 30 yuan to get in, which works out to about 7$, and the park was huge, cobbled paths wending though tunnel-like towering stands of bamboo to the various areas of the park: the museum and research labs, and panda movie, all of which we skipped to head straight to the nursery! There we saw a 3 month old panda, about the size of a 1 year old child fast asleep in a wooden crib, paws and stubby tail twitching in its dreams. We were of course spellbound, and uttered all the usual cooings over its cuteness, before heading outside to the play enclosure for the panda “kids”. There were about 10 of them, in a big open-air area with trees and a jungle gym of logs and bamboo. The pandas acted just like kids, playing and fighting and rolling around, climbing and falling, chasing each other around. Could have stayed there all day, and used up all my film!
Unfortunately, we didn’t have as much time as we’d have liked to stay, as we had to get back to have lunch with the rest of the agency workers, so we made just a quick trip to have a look at the red pandas, which look nothing like pandas to me, but rather more like large red cats with slightly fox-like faces and bright orange-red fur. Next time I’ve a day off, I could spend a whole day just watching pandas…!
Now I’m back in school, taught a few primary classes on Saturday, which didn’t enthrall me particularly, never having taught so many small kids before. They of course didn’t know any English at all, so the class was pretty much chaos. Ah well, have to come up with a different strategy for next week. Play games and sing songs, I guess. Or tie ‘em all down and gag them! After dinner last night, I was taken out to learn to play Mah Jong, the national pastime of the Chinese, and particularly in Sichuan. Apparently people win and lose huge amounts of money at theis, and can play non stop all night. I threw in the towel at midnight, and retreated to my room, though as a beginner, I wasn’t expected to make any wagers, fortunately. It’s a fiercely fast and competitive game, and the players get all worked up and excited about it, slamming down the pieces and shouting at each other.
The bus trip was easy and uneventful. I learned the characters for “Chengdu” and “Santai” (the city I live in) so I could read the bus destinations, and off I went. Strolled round Jinli street, a reconstructed section of road near Wuhou Temple and the Tibetan area of town. It has been rebuilt in the old fashion of Chinese buildings-lots of dark carved wood and latticing, and full of shops selling all manner of traditional crafts and foods. Some examples of the traditional crafts are shadow puppets, scroll paintings on bamboo, folk toys, carved lucky gourds and masks (!! And no, I have not yet purchased one, Mom!) The kids would have loved the stall with the man blowing candy animals. He wadded up a translucent blob of stretchy candy gel, folded it into a tube, stretched a long piece and as he blew into it, pulled and pushed at various parts of the blob to create pigs and dragons, horses and birds. The whole process took no more than a few minutes.
I strolled along, camera at the ready, and let myself be carried along by the crowd. Incense wafted in the air, along with the smells of the open snack stalls selling traditional foods, very colourful and aromatic, and swarmed by hordes of Chinese tourists from various provinces in China. There were also some very westernized eateries, Starbucks and TCBY no less, looking quite out of place in among all the cared wood and lanterns. I had also forgotten that it was Halloween, and was jolted back into the western calendar by jack o’lanterns on the tables of a bar, and pumpkin lanterns hung among the bright red paper ones for good luck and prosperity. Couldn’t resist photos of those!
Beside the winding alleys of Jinli lies the Wuhuo temple enclosure. No longer used as a temple, it is now a museum with a beautiful garden and fishpond. Since Mao’s time, of course, religion of any flavour has been discouraged, and most of the school kids I talk to say they are not of any religion, though many say their parents or grandparents are Buddhist. Still, there are working temples around, just yesterday, a couple students invited me to go with them to see the Buddhist temple in Santai, which is a gem of a place set up on a hilltop, with about 100 monks. I hadn’t even realized it existed, as most of my tour guides have been concerned with showing me the shopping and eateries of the town! I’ve spent more time in restaurants in the past two weeks that in the 10 years I spent in India I think! The temple here is from the Tang dynasty, and is in the process of reconstruction, as it is admittedly a bit tatty looking. But it made me all nostalgic to hear the temple drums and gongs, and smell the incense in the chapels. I even recognized some of the deity statues, which quite impressed the two girls I was with. Lots of drawing potential, and I plan to head back up on my own sometime for a few hours. The draw also is that there is a small restaurant attached to the monastery, and it’s vegetarian, glory be! I have become used to the food here, not hard, as it’s delicious, and very spicy. Apparently Sichuan is renowned through-out China for it’s hot and spicy food. The huoguo (hotpot- like a fondue with a bubbling pot of spices and loads of plates full of various vegetables, meat, mushrooms and seaweed bits which get dumped into the pot and one fishes them out with chopsticks) that I went to last night was a pigeon soup full of all sorts of mushrooms and fungus of different types, as well as all the squishy meat bits, this time, I was told, including dog tails, which as a delicacy, were mounded on my plate…Not bad, a bit like dark chicken but very bony.
But I digress…that was last night, and I’ve yet to write about the highlight of my weekend! After I returned from Chengdu on Thursday night, I got a phone call from the office there which was in the process of arranging my residence permit, telling me that I needed to come to Chengdu! So back I went again on Friday, a 2.5 hour trip by bus each way, to go to show my face at the PSB office. That done, the office worker, Fiona, and I went to visit the panda breeding base on the outskirts of Chengdu. She had never been there, and was as eager as I to see the pandas. Cost 30 yuan to get in, which works out to about 7$, and the park was huge, cobbled paths wending though tunnel-like towering stands of bamboo to the various areas of the park: the museum and research labs, and panda movie, all of which we skipped to head straight to the nursery! There we saw a 3 month old panda, about the size of a 1 year old child fast asleep in a wooden crib, paws and stubby tail twitching in its dreams. We were of course spellbound, and uttered all the usual cooings over its cuteness, before heading outside to the play enclosure for the panda “kids”. There were about 10 of them, in a big open-air area with trees and a jungle gym of logs and bamboo. The pandas acted just like kids, playing and fighting and rolling around, climbing and falling, chasing each other around. Could have stayed there all day, and used up all my film!
Unfortunately, we didn’t have as much time as we’d have liked to stay, as we had to get back to have lunch with the rest of the agency workers, so we made just a quick trip to have a look at the red pandas, which look nothing like pandas to me, but rather more like large red cats with slightly fox-like faces and bright orange-red fur. Next time I’ve a day off, I could spend a whole day just watching pandas…!
Now I’m back in school, taught a few primary classes on Saturday, which didn’t enthrall me particularly, never having taught so many small kids before. They of course didn’t know any English at all, so the class was pretty much chaos. Ah well, have to come up with a different strategy for next week. Play games and sing songs, I guess. Or tie ‘em all down and gag them! After dinner last night, I was taken out to learn to play Mah Jong, the national pastime of the Chinese, and particularly in Sichuan. Apparently people win and lose huge amounts of money at theis, and can play non stop all night. I threw in the towel at midnight, and retreated to my room, though as a beginner, I wasn’t expected to make any wagers, fortunately. It’s a fiercely fast and competitive game, and the players get all worked up and excited about it, slamming down the pieces and shouting at each other.
Sunday, October 28, 2007
opening of the epic
I am now the only foreigner in the entire town of Santai, 2 and a half hours northeast of Chengdu. Walking down the street causes the local population to dissolve into fits of giggles, stop their bicycles and stare, or to come running over me to practice their English.
The trip over was relatively uneventful though painfully long. Six and a half hours from Toronto to Anchorage for refueling, then another 11 hours to Hong Kong from there. The plane landed at the new airport, skimming over the waves so close that you could just about see the colour of the fishermen’s eyes. I had hoped we’d land at the old airport, as I’d heard many stories about skimming between the skyscrapers with mere metres to spare at either end of the wingtips. No such luck, the new airport is beautiful, new and efficient, with everything being updated for the coming Olympics in Beijing.
Three hours of sitting semi conscious in the airport later we boarded the plane to Chengdu. After only two and a half hours we landed in Chendu's airport, a wonderfully efficient place, I was out with my bags and checked through customs in half an hour, only to find that the agency representative was not there to meet me. I stood around waiting with my luggage at the arrival gates, watching people leave, contemplating my next option. Several tour guides were also at the gate, holding signs with the names of the people they were waiting for. One of the girls kept looking over at me, and came over to ask if I was the person she was waiting for, we got chatting, and it turned out she was a Tibetan from Kham. Next it turned out that the two tourists she was waiting for hadn't arrived, so she and the driver took me back in their car into Chengdu, where I stayed the night in the Lhasa Hotel, a marvellously posh place, though I'd little interest in anything at that point apart from a bed That night, I called the agency office, and found out that Fiona, the rep who was to meet me had been waiting at the wrong gate.
She came to meet me the next morning, we had lunch and a quick wander around the city, and then the school car arrived to bring me to Santai.
Santai Middle School has about 5,000 students, aged mostly 15-18, from all over Sichuan province and the surrounding areas. Most of the students are Chinese, but there are a few Tibetans from Kham and Lhasa. Each class has about 75 students in it, and the system here is extremely competitive. The top students are in what they call the rocket class, and then the class levels go from there, with class 1 having better students, and class 30 the academically worst. Not sure how confidence building it'd be to be classified as the worst students, but that's how it's done. Each of the three levels, Senior 1,2 and 3 has 30 classes in it. I teach mostly Senior 1 with a few Senior 2 classes, and it turns out I have something like several thousand students! My job, it seems, is to provide oral English practice, and I teach 40 classes, 20 classes per week which means that I only see each class of students once every two weeks. Not great for any sort of real continuity, but I suspect I've really been hired as an attraction for enrollment. Parents like to send their kids to a school with a real live foreigner! I also don't have to prepare exams, or teach grammar, but focus only a speaking and games to get them to improve their speaking and listening skills. Easier said than done when there's 75 kids in a class, without creating complete mayhem. Ah well. I'll figure it out. I am planning to circumvent the system a bit though. Have been talking with the other English teachers. Their salaries depend on the scores their classes get on the exams, and they have a huge amount of material to teach the kids per term. So several of the teachers are planning to pre-plan and discuss lesson plans before I teach their classes, so I can use vocab words the kids have been taught, and get them to speak aloud and be able to use orally some of the words and sentence structure they have been taught.
See how it goes. Otherwise I can see the kids as writing off the oral english class as play, and pointless in the face of their preoccupation with exam scores.
The teachers here have been very friendly, with as much if not more desire to practice their English as the students. I’ve been invited out for dinner every night since I have arrived, as the Sichuanese are rightly proud of their cuisine. Unfortunately, my vegetarianism has gone out the window, and I've gone from vegetarian to extreme carnivore in mere days. There is very little vegetarian food, and when I’m invited out to eat, they wish to offer me the best of their menus, which tends to be meat and lots of it. Not only have I had to relinquish my beloved vegetables, I’ve already eaten beef throat, duck feet and congealed dog blood, along with many unidentifiable squishy and squiggly bits ( I've learned quite quickly not to ask what anything is!)which are thrown into a “hotpot”, a large pot of bubbling oil and spices on a burner in the centre of the table. Meals are an extremely social affair, with everyone dipping their chopsticks in, toasting each other every few minutes with tiny glasses of beer. The toast-er and toast-ee stand up, the toast-er proclaims a long, occasionally semi coherent toast, both glasses are drained (unless you point in advance to how much you intend to drink-I learned this one quicky, as self defense!) and both sit down again til the next toast. In between drinks and the hotpot, plates of peanuts or orange slices are passed round. Most dinners which I've attended have lasted a minimum of two hours.
My social life has taken off, and I've not actually cooked for myself once as of yet, despite having my own kitchen. My flat is big, way too big for me, after living for so long in my little room in the monastery. There's two bedrooms, one empty apart from the paraphernalia left by the last teacher (including a punching bag and boxing gloves!), a lving/dining room, another room where I keep my laptop plugged in, a bathroom complete with western toilet and shower, and the kitchen. Not only that, I've my own fridge, TV (which I've left unplugged. There is only one english channel, and it's all internal politics) and, bliss and joy, a washing machine! Got my own phone as well, and the school is getting me a cell phone (not impressed about that, but everyone insists I need one).
I have also made several forays out into the city on my own. Not speaking much Chinese, trying to shop for fruit is a bit of an adventure. I did manage to get what I needed, though since I've not quite worked out the number thing yet, instead of buying 6 bananas, I ended up buying 6 kilos! I now have enough bananas to start my own market stall...will be eating them for breakfast, lunch and snacks for weeks. However, on the optimisic side, I am finding spoken Chinese fairly easy to pick up. I've about 30 vocabulary words down pat already, and though my pronunciation often sets people off in fits of laughter, at least they know what I mean! I'm giving the written characters a miss altogether though.I 'm too old for that sort of thing.
I've also had several phone calls from friends in Xining, and plan to go up there for the New Year holiday, when the school shuts down for a month or so. Meanwhile, Sunday is my day off, for the rest, I teach in Santai Middle School from Mon-Fri, and in Long Xiang school on Saturday. Enough to keep me out of trouble for a year or so...
The trip over was relatively uneventful though painfully long. Six and a half hours from Toronto to Anchorage for refueling, then another 11 hours to Hong Kong from there. The plane landed at the new airport, skimming over the waves so close that you could just about see the colour of the fishermen’s eyes. I had hoped we’d land at the old airport, as I’d heard many stories about skimming between the skyscrapers with mere metres to spare at either end of the wingtips. No such luck, the new airport is beautiful, new and efficient, with everything being updated for the coming Olympics in Beijing.
Three hours of sitting semi conscious in the airport later we boarded the plane to Chengdu. After only two and a half hours we landed in Chendu's airport, a wonderfully efficient place, I was out with my bags and checked through customs in half an hour, only to find that the agency representative was not there to meet me. I stood around waiting with my luggage at the arrival gates, watching people leave, contemplating my next option. Several tour guides were also at the gate, holding signs with the names of the people they were waiting for. One of the girls kept looking over at me, and came over to ask if I was the person she was waiting for, we got chatting, and it turned out she was a Tibetan from Kham. Next it turned out that the two tourists she was waiting for hadn't arrived, so she and the driver took me back in their car into Chengdu, where I stayed the night in the Lhasa Hotel, a marvellously posh place, though I'd little interest in anything at that point apart from a bed That night, I called the agency office, and found out that Fiona, the rep who was to meet me had been waiting at the wrong gate.
She came to meet me the next morning, we had lunch and a quick wander around the city, and then the school car arrived to bring me to Santai.
Santai Middle School has about 5,000 students, aged mostly 15-18, from all over Sichuan province and the surrounding areas. Most of the students are Chinese, but there are a few Tibetans from Kham and Lhasa. Each class has about 75 students in it, and the system here is extremely competitive. The top students are in what they call the rocket class, and then the class levels go from there, with class 1 having better students, and class 30 the academically worst. Not sure how confidence building it'd be to be classified as the worst students, but that's how it's done. Each of the three levels, Senior 1,2 and 3 has 30 classes in it. I teach mostly Senior 1 with a few Senior 2 classes, and it turns out I have something like several thousand students! My job, it seems, is to provide oral English practice, and I teach 40 classes, 20 classes per week which means that I only see each class of students once every two weeks. Not great for any sort of real continuity, but I suspect I've really been hired as an attraction for enrollment. Parents like to send their kids to a school with a real live foreigner! I also don't have to prepare exams, or teach grammar, but focus only a speaking and games to get them to improve their speaking and listening skills. Easier said than done when there's 75 kids in a class, without creating complete mayhem. Ah well. I'll figure it out. I am planning to circumvent the system a bit though. Have been talking with the other English teachers. Their salaries depend on the scores their classes get on the exams, and they have a huge amount of material to teach the kids per term. So several of the teachers are planning to pre-plan and discuss lesson plans before I teach their classes, so I can use vocab words the kids have been taught, and get them to speak aloud and be able to use orally some of the words and sentence structure they have been taught.
See how it goes. Otherwise I can see the kids as writing off the oral english class as play, and pointless in the face of their preoccupation with exam scores.
The teachers here have been very friendly, with as much if not more desire to practice their English as the students. I’ve been invited out for dinner every night since I have arrived, as the Sichuanese are rightly proud of their cuisine. Unfortunately, my vegetarianism has gone out the window, and I've gone from vegetarian to extreme carnivore in mere days. There is very little vegetarian food, and when I’m invited out to eat, they wish to offer me the best of their menus, which tends to be meat and lots of it. Not only have I had to relinquish my beloved vegetables, I’ve already eaten beef throat, duck feet and congealed dog blood, along with many unidentifiable squishy and squiggly bits ( I've learned quite quickly not to ask what anything is!)which are thrown into a “hotpot”, a large pot of bubbling oil and spices on a burner in the centre of the table. Meals are an extremely social affair, with everyone dipping their chopsticks in, toasting each other every few minutes with tiny glasses of beer. The toast-er and toast-ee stand up, the toast-er proclaims a long, occasionally semi coherent toast, both glasses are drained (unless you point in advance to how much you intend to drink-I learned this one quicky, as self defense!) and both sit down again til the next toast. In between drinks and the hotpot, plates of peanuts or orange slices are passed round. Most dinners which I've attended have lasted a minimum of two hours.
My social life has taken off, and I've not actually cooked for myself once as of yet, despite having my own kitchen. My flat is big, way too big for me, after living for so long in my little room in the monastery. There's two bedrooms, one empty apart from the paraphernalia left by the last teacher (including a punching bag and boxing gloves!), a lving/dining room, another room where I keep my laptop plugged in, a bathroom complete with western toilet and shower, and the kitchen. Not only that, I've my own fridge, TV (which I've left unplugged. There is only one english channel, and it's all internal politics) and, bliss and joy, a washing machine! Got my own phone as well, and the school is getting me a cell phone (not impressed about that, but everyone insists I need one).
I have also made several forays out into the city on my own. Not speaking much Chinese, trying to shop for fruit is a bit of an adventure. I did manage to get what I needed, though since I've not quite worked out the number thing yet, instead of buying 6 bananas, I ended up buying 6 kilos! I now have enough bananas to start my own market stall...will be eating them for breakfast, lunch and snacks for weeks. However, on the optimisic side, I am finding spoken Chinese fairly easy to pick up. I've about 30 vocabulary words down pat already, and though my pronunciation often sets people off in fits of laughter, at least they know what I mean! I'm giving the written characters a miss altogether though.I 'm too old for that sort of thing.
I've also had several phone calls from friends in Xining, and plan to go up there for the New Year holiday, when the school shuts down for a month or so. Meanwhile, Sunday is my day off, for the rest, I teach in Santai Middle School from Mon-Fri, and in Long Xiang school on Saturday. Enough to keep me out of trouble for a year or so...
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