I've taken such a long hiatus from writing my blog. I just wanted to wait until I could say the Kansas City Royals are undefeated! Its true.
I've been a sort of funk for a few weeks. I think it has to do with all those stages of culture shock. No one tell Prof. Hunter, but I forgot what they're called. I think more than just the cultural things I'm just getting time to see myself, and think of why I came. Some one asked me if things had met my expectations. Honestly, I didn't come with many expectations. One thing that hasn't met my expectations is the schools, especially my school. You hear a lot about Asian education and how the States are behind or at least don't compare. Well, we don't go to school in the States from 7 am until 9 pm, so in some ways that is true. But you learn that students are students no matter what country they are from. They all think and act the same and want the same things. They of course hate homework and will try to get away with as much as possible. That’s just the nature of students and any teacher has to deal with that.
One of my thoughts lately has also pointed toward expectations in another way. Have I met my expectations of what I wanted to accomplish by coming here? Or in other words, have I spent my time wisely? You look back to the good old saying that people don't change. I'm still a messy person and I procrastinate like always. But there are certain things that you have to take advantage of while you're in a foreign country that I have failed to do in the ways I had wanted to, most importantly learning the language. I use the excuse that we have with us someone that took a year of Chinese in college and our local language genius, so I really haven't had to learn the language. Everyone in town and at school wants to speak English with you but you miss so much not being able to speak the language. Your conversations are so limited. I've never been great at languages and Chinese is one of the more difficult languages to learn, but that is no excuse. I have a limited amount of time left here, but I always have.
I also want to be a little more willing to trying some new foods. At the beginning of the year you eat a lot of different foods, both to make your hosts happy and to try them out. After awhile you learn what you like and what tastes funky. You get set in your ways. I want to make an attempt to break that pattern and venture out a little more while I'm here still. It is hard though, your favorite restaurants your favorites for a reason: They taste good!
Ok, enough self reflection. Let's hear about China! I will continue talking about vacation times soon. Right now I just want to put in a few random events and occurrences that have happened in the past few weeks that make me laugh of make me think of what China is.
We judged a speech competition last week. Three of us judges had students we helped prepare for the competition. During the competition they would put the score of the student who just went up on the board to show what judges gave what scores and what place the student was in. We also had about 5 seconds after each student was done to tally our scores. It was very anonymous and fair to all students. I love sarcasm! Oh, one of the questions a student was asked to give a speech on was: "Have you ever had strong feelings for a classmate, and what don't you think its important to focus on studies only in high school?" (ok the first half is a direct quote, but I kind of changed the second half, it was more like, "what do you think about dating in high school?") A little personal maybe? The next question was, "What type of music do you like?" Then a question a few minutes later was a 4 part question about pollution expecting a 35 minute exhortation. So it was overall a fair competition.
While riding the bus today I was watching the bikes ride by like usual. They have these bikes that pull little open flat beds behind them. It is not unusual to see people riding in the cart beds. Today was interesting though. Behind in the cart were a woman and her young daughter maybe about 2 or 3 years old, both very dirty. The mother might have been heading home from working, maybe at the large construction site near my school. She probably makes 20 yuan or so a day. Then I noticed the mother holding a shiny cell phone similar to a Motorola Razor and taking a picture of her daughter in the cart. After writing this all, I know this may not seem special or anything, but it seemed slightly ironic to me at the time.
Next I stepped off the bus to see a man standing, in plain sight peeing on a building. This was at about 3:30 in the afternoon. I mean, at least find some big shrubs or something!
Ok something cute after a story about public urination. On to a page out of Bill Cosby's book, "Jell-o Pudding!" Not that one, how about, "Kids say the darndest thing."
After kindergarten class a few days ago, a student walked up to the Chinese English teacher and asked, "How did he come to earth?"
Today at kindergarten I got swarmed by 15 six and seven year olds yelling, "Ni gei wo! Ni gei wo!" I had the flash cards and they sure wanted them.
In the same class last week we were teaching how to say, "Brush my teeth" and "wash my face." One of the cute kids in the front shouted out, "Wash my Automan!" (Automan is a Japanese cartoon character that all Chinese children… and high school students love. I think he used to fight Godzilla in his younger days. His English name is Ultraman. I've included a picture for you!)
One of my high school students said AIDS was a good thing, because it cuts down on the overpopulation of China.
We have a one week vacation in May that I've been trying to buy plane tickets for. I finally got through to buy the cheap tickets online. An hour later they called and said it's too early to buy the tickets. I have to wait until next month (what was a few days at that time). I think it's still too early, and we're supposed to leave in less than a month now. Have I ever said how much I love travel planning in China!
Ok, enough random things for today. I've got some Chinese to study.
