Back to China

So, if you’ve been reading my blog lately, it might seem like I’m not in China anymore. This is not so. I am most definitely still in China. So here are a few things about me in China.

Teaching has been going better (sort of) the disorganization with our classes is apparent, frustrating, and disruptive to our ability to be good teachers. This is not the case for all of the SSTers, but most of us teach at Eastern Campus, and it’s just not a good setup. On friday we were told that we were going to teach 4 straight periods of 45 min each. Then Thursday we were told that we would still be doing this, but that we’d have half our class for two sessions and the other half for the remaining two. Then the next day some people didn’t have any class, some only had part of their class at 4, and I had about 13 students at 2 when we were supposed to start. My lesson plan (which I had made twice, once for 4 periods, and then revised for only 2) had to be completely thrown out the window. I ended up going over a dictation from the week before, highlighting key mistakes, mostly in vocab, but feeling like this was kind of useless because most of the students there probably didn’t make those mistakes. Than I listed 11 life values
money
extended family (parents, sibs, etc)
politics
education
marriage
arts
travel
children
sports
national identity
religion
and asked the class to pair up and rank them as a pair from most important to least. Then we discussed. Then I had them rank them by what they thought was most important to an average American. That was interesting. Money, religion, and national pride all ranked high in the American list, although it varied. Others that appeared high were education and travel. During the break I wrote up the list in my order
marriage
children
religion
travel
extended family
arts
education
money
politics
national pride
sports
Then we played “would you rather” from some questions I had whipped up while they were working in groups. I also asked them to create their own, and we went over those. There were some really interesting ones, like if, after you were marriage for a number of years, you found that the passion had gone out of your relationship, and you meet someone else who you did have chemistry with, would you get a divorce or stay with your spouse. Alot of the questions had to do with would you rather be rich or …., would you marry for money or love, would you marry for looks or personality, etc. It was fun. It got them talking, and I learned more about them in the process. Every little activity with them is like pulling teeth though. It’s not that they don’t understand. They do understand! I can tell, but the don’t like to participate. Going first is their definition of torture. Sooo…. teaching is interesting in China.
Also, I’ve been living in the dorms at East Campus for the past 2 weeks. More about that later. I like it.
This weekend we traveled to see a giant Buddha, and then a mountain. I’ll get you the names of them later because I can’t remember the spelling now, but the Buddha was cool although anti-climatic and overcrowded, although I had fun hanging out at a tea house with some of the people in the group. Then today we climbed up part of a Buddist mountain, and saw some monkeys that stole the sugarcane I had bought (long story). We were climbing alongside a mountain river that was so clear and really green and deep at someplaces were it narrowed into falls. Beautiful. Probably the most beautiful place I’ve seen in China, although the landscape you see while hiking the Great Wall rivals it. After climbing for a while most of us turned around and about 9 of us hit another tea house, shared all the snacks we had brought along for lunch, ordered bottomless tea and played cards and joked around for about 4 hours. The tea house was right next to a waterfall, and there were some amazingly large butterflies or moths that would float by once in a while. It was cool, but the tea was warm, and the company was superb. This evening I had supper with Jess, Meryl and Zach and then spent the rest of the evening talking with Sarah and Anna and then Sarah and J.D. All in all, today has been one of the best on SST. Smiles.

Endnote: While today was fabulous, the past couple days have been hard. I’m not exactly sure why. This whole week has been overshadowed by the knowledge that Jesse and Suzi are dating (or whatever they chose to call it). I’m hurt that I had to ask. Would they have told me? I’m hurt that he’s moved on. I’ve actually known about a mutual attraction since about 2 weeks after Jesse broke up with me, but that doesn’t stop finding out that they are actually dating any less painful. I’m sad that I can’t live in the apartments. I really was looking forward to it. I’m sad that I can’t live with Crystal, and that I’ll never really become friends with Suzi now, those were things I was looking forward to as well.

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