Teaching
Teaching has been a wonderful experience for me. For my entire life I have been a student. Now, I have finally been given the opportunity to see the classroom from a different point of view. It is an extremely gratifying experience for me.
The students are the best. They have a lot of respect for their teachers and they are diligent workers. Their dedication is very surprising to me. I know that there are lot of dedicated students in America, and I like to think of myself as a dedicated student. However, the students that I have met at Jinjiang College are extraordinary. The students will take any opportunity they can in order to better their English.
I teach seven classes in total. I teach one senior class, one junior class, and five freshman classes. The juniors and seniors speak english very well. Most of the time I don't really teach them that many new things; instead, I give them an opportunity to practice their english skills with a native speaker.
The senior class that I teach is a very small discussion class. There are about 10 students in the class. For the class, I typically bring in a current event news article that I find online. The students take turns reading the article out loud. Their English is almost flawless. Very rarely do I have to fix any grammatical errors. The articles are not particularly complex; however, they are long and challenging in some ways. The point of these articles is for the students to learn about Western culture and to also think critically about it. They analyze the articles and we discuss the articles for the entire class. The senior class is easily my favorite class.
The junior class I teach is fun, but not nearly as fun. The title of the class is Introduction to Western Etiquette. I basically have to teach the students certain aspects of Western etiquette. I typically don't like to just lecture to the students; however, in this class there really is no other way for me to teach the students about etiquette. The class is a little boring, but I try to make it as fun as possible. Recently, I showed the class a lot of clips from Seinfeld, Curb Your Enthusiasm, and other clips I could find that portrayed Western etiquette. As you can imagine, the clips from Seinfeld and Curb showed pretty bad etiquette and the students learned what NOT to do in social situations. They loved it, and I'm glad.
The freshman classes that I teach are okay. The freshman just love to have a Western teacher, and for many of the students, I am the first Western person they have ever seen in their entire lives. I love going to the classes because they are all so excited to see me and learn from me. However, I teach them listening classes and they just sit and listen to these tapes of British people speaking simple English phrases. I make the class fun when we go over what has been said in the tapes. They definitely love the class and I am glad. I personally think its a little boring because they just sit and listen to these different tapes. During the first class I had with the freshman students I gave them the opportunity to ask me any questions about myself and America. I got some of the same questions from each of the five classes. They went like this:
Why are you in China?
Do you like China?
Do you have a girl friend? (when I answered no, the students were completely shocked)
Do you like Chinese girls?
What is college like in America?
I love the last question. I love telling about the students about my college experience in America. First off, I start with telling them about our living situations. The dorms for college students at Jinjiang College are ridiculous. The dorms for the students each have 6 people crammed into them. They have two desks, 3 people to a desk, and a bed for each of the students. The dorms are about the same size as the dorm that I had in college, but our dorms were for only two people... The students always give me a great reaction when I tell them this. I tell them many more aspects about college life in America, but the part I just described is always the best.
The school always keeps me very busy. The classes take up about 14 hours of my time a week. On top of that, I have to have office hours for 4 hours a week. Most of my time is spent lesson planning. Lesson planning takes up a lot of time. I always spend at least an hour and a half a day, usually more, planning lessons for future classes. The school asks the foreign teachers to participate in an English corner ever Monday and Wednesday. This lasts for an hour and half and students come to the school quad to talk to us. It's always pretty fun, but by now its getting a little boring and redundant. The foreign teachers also must give two lectures each semester. I just gave my first lecture last week. Fortunately, we get to choose the topic, so I chose to talk about swimming and water polo in America. About 80 students or so showed up to hear me give the lecture.
And finally, the school anniversary celebration. This actually happened on October 8th, my birthday. The administration asked us (basically required) to give a performance during the celebration. We chose to do a dance to several different songs. This was quite an experience. About 15,000 people showed up to the celebration and we had to do a dance in front of all of them, pretty ridiculous.
Here is the video:
On top of all of this, yes there is more, I have Chinese lessons twice a week. Every Monday and Thursday I have Chinese lessons for an hour and a half. The same students that we teach in some of our classes are our teachers for the Chinese class. They are great teachers and are helping us immensely. My Chinese is really coming around and I can have very simple conversations with people, know enough to get around town, and take cab rides where ever I need to go.
Night Life
With my busy schedule there is always time to get drunk one night out of the week. Friday night, my favorite night. There is a bar right next to campus that we always go to. Drinking for college students in China is no where near as popular of an activity as it is in the United States. Some students do go to the bars every Friday night, but not many. We always go with the senior students. They love to drink and play all sorts of different drinking games. I have learned some very cool new drinking games from the Chinese. Most of the games involve dice or simply using your fingers to throw out different numbers. These games get you pretty drunk...
The bar that we go to absolutely loves us. We get free beer all night long every time we go there. We get free beer because we are Westerners and we attract more Chinese people to come to the bar. It's great!
Another very interesting aspect about Chinese culture is the way that students will celebrate their birthday at the bar. When everyone is nice and drunk, a cake is brought out for people to enjoy. In America, people enjoy a cake by eating it. Not in China. There is a massive food fight in the bar. The point of the cake is not to eat it, but rather, to throw the cake at people and smear the frosting on other people's faces. I have experienced a handful of birthdays at the bar and it is really fun. Just this past weekend there was a birthday at the bar. The bartender, who is a good friend of mine now, ran up behind me and smeared frosting all over my face. I had to retaliate, obviously, but he ran away too quickly and I ended up chasing him up and down the street outside the bar. I finally gave up, or so he thought. I was waiting just by the side of the door in the bar and when he finally walked in, I got him. I got him good too. The bar really is a lot of fun. It also is a great time for me to practice my Chinese. I always end up speaking Chinese decently well with the people at the bar, probably because I'm drunk.
Here are some pictures that I have taken at the bar:
A drinking game that we are playing...
My face covered in cake...
Some dude throwing up the classic peace signs...
Party atmosphere...
More cake on the face...
And the cake with some of the frosting taken off...
Miscellaneous
They actually have pools in Pengshan. They are not like any pool that I have ever seen in America. The pool was pretty damn dirty. Just jumping into the pool and opening my eyes, looking through my goggles, I could see dirt just floating around the water. It was pretty gross. The pool also was not heated at all, and it was pretty damn cold. But swimming was fun and Jason, our Chinese friend that took us. He was very impressed by my swimming. I showed him how to do some new strokes and helped him to have a better technique in freestyle. Here are some pictures from the pool.
The entrance of the pool. Looking pretty sketchy already...
The actual pool...
Before jumping in. Decided not to break out the speedo...
And of course, what aquatic center isn't complete without the baby pool!
Life in China is becoming more and more interesting with each passing day. I am still enjoying my time very much and loving China. I have been reading a book by Peter Hessler called "River Town" that has made me love China even more. Peter Hessler taught English in a town that is also in Sichuan Province. His life experiences are very similar to mine, they just happened 20 years before I came here. There are many similarities, as well as differences, between my experience and his. One of my absolute favorite quotes from the book describes the honking that people do while driving in China.
Hessler describes the various sounds of the city and a majority of the noise came from the different cabs that were winding through the city streets. He says:
"They honked at other cars, and they honked at pedestrians. They honked whenever they passed somebody, or whenever they were being passed themselves. They honked when nobody was passing but somebody might be considering it, or when the road was empty and there was no body to pass but the thought of passing or being passed had just passed through the drivers mind. Just like that, an unthinking reflex: the driver honked. They did it so often that they didn't even feel the contact point beneath their fingers, and other drivers and pedestrians were so familiar with the sound that they essentially didn't hear it. Nobody reacted to horns anymore; they served no purpose. A honk in Fuling was like the tree falling in the forest - for all intents and purpose it was silent."
This statement is absolutely true. When I first came to Pengshan all I could hear was the constant sound of horns when I was walking in the streets. Now, I can barely notice it. The honking is so constant, all the time, that I have become completely used to it.
It isn't only the honking that I have become accustomed too. I would consider myself to be nearly adapted to Chinese culture by now. I have gotten used to all of the differences from American culture. As the Director of the Colorado China Council, Alice Renouf, says, "Think Chinese, Be Chinese." That really is the only way to get used to life here in China. It is safe to say that all I do now is, "Think Chinese, Be Chinese."
Hope you enjoyed, until next time
Jono
