Me student, you teacher

Vacation needs to happen soon. Sooooooner than that even. I need to escape. It is in my nature to flee the scene when the amount of stress and the amount of things that I cannot change becomes too great. When it comes to the fight or flight response, I tend to side with the "get the fuck out" mentality. That's why I wasn't sure I was going to be able to do any of this in the first place. I knew that I would be okay for a few months but right around this time, something would snag and I would feel like I don't belong. Or something would happen to make it so my love for this place is now less than my amount of frustration with this place. Thank God for guards, if not for them my weekend would have been a waste.


I'm not going to go into a lot of what happened this weekend. I already got a talking to about it and have made my descisions on several levels. No, I'm not going home. I will stick it out. I just need to get away for a while. Luckily my school will be giving me a break for a decent long time so no worries there. I think I've almost decided to go to Beijing with a group of teachers. I sort of also want to go to Hainan and if I can brave the travel by myself I might hop and skip over there and bum around for a few days. Can't be that hard, can it? I don't want to go to Vietnam and Cambodia and Malaysia. Who would? Yeah it's beautiful but I have a hard time not thinking about the history of those countries and what took place there.

I'm not really friends with my teachers. Okay, I lie, there are a few that I am friends with like Molly and Benny and Heidi. But the rest of them just sort of treat me with a mild indifference. I don't blame them actually, I would sort of be the same way. Here's this pretty girl waltzing into our school, getting special treatment and being favored by all of the students. I would feel jealousy and anger too. Plus there are some teachers who I'm sure I've accidentally burned some bridges with, but oh well. Last night Xiao Dong asked if I was friends with this one teacher and I sort of lied and said I was but I wonder if he could tell from my face that I wasn't really telling the truth. We're not friends if we're using the term friends as I know it. We're merely good aquaintances. A friend in my opinion is someone whom I'll keep in contact with even after I leave, and there are few teachers here that I feel I will still talk to after I come home. Sad thing, that.

So these people want me to perform on New Year's eve. Don't ask me how I got myself into this I don't even know. It was one of those moments where there was a time lapse or something. Or maybe I wasn't paying attention. They asked me to sing and for some god awful reason I agreed. Well they're making this whole thing way more difficult than it needs to be and I'm just ready to tell them, oh sorry I have something else to do that night, peace out. What are they going to do, fire me? Okay fine, I go back to America and pass out in an Olive Garden. No problem. And as we know, you can't really get removed from this program ::cough cough:: Chinese prostitutes. ::cough cough:: good job Willie D.

I went to visit Ian's house on Saturday. I almost didn't and I'm glad that I decided to. We mainly sat around in the living room and watched his niece and nephew run around and play. They speak Hakkanese at his house which is a messed up version of Chinese. Poor Ian was translating on overdrive, but he did a really good job. He's basically fluent in English, Mandarin, Cantonese, and Hakkanese and probably some other languages. It's crazy. I love meeting the language enthusiasts over here because they always know like 8 different languages or dialects. So impressive. I love hearing him speak Chinese too because he always speaks English with me, it's such a nice change.

Sunday night I decided to do a little grocery shopping and then go and visit my friend the guard. He always tells me he's so bored all the time, so I like to entertain him as best I can. It's weird he's the only one I can understand among all of them. He knows this too and makes sure to rub it in to the other guards. "She only understands me!" haha What's even weirder is he has, what I call, a Chinese speech impediment. Instead of shi he says si and instead of zai he says zhai and other things that are weird. His friends are always like "NO, you spelled it wrong." He is very aware that Matt is coming to visit also and wants to meet him. He has been practicing saying "Massew Bohlinzher". We've been picking on each other also. I showed him a photo of me and matt (the one aunt shelley sent) and he was like "you look so fat here, now you're much thinner." blahhhh. It's true but it's terrible haha. He was also picking on me for my lack in cooking skills. He said "We both cannot cook and therefore we are both stupid." Funny little man....
I snagged a photo of him not working. Fun times. Figure I could put a face to one of the people I've been talking about.

One of my teachers approached me this morning and asked if I wanted to teach 30 police officers English every Monday evening. Seriously? People, I am not here entirely at your disposal to teach English to all of China. I was sent on a specific mission to teach your kids. That's all that should be expected of me. If I don't want to do something I should get a look of...well....you should because that's the reason you were put on this earth. That's like asking me why I'm not currently pregnant.....cuz it's why you're here? Blahhhhhhh China. I'm giving the job to Gavin. I don't WANT anymore jobs unless they involve helping my kids in some way, that's it. Or personal tutoring. I can't do the huge classroom thing. Doesn't work. And there's no WAY I want to just be oggled by a bunch of middle-aged Chinese dudes....I get that enough on a daily basis as it is, thank you!


Until next time. Peace out.

Proving points and mistranslations

Last night after wandering around looking at clothes I didn't want to spend money on I found myself walking through the school gate for the second time. Whenever I pass the guards I always shout out something at them, usually in English. The two evening guards are my buddies. While the morning guards usually give me a nod or a smile or some simple hello, the night guards will shout something at me in Chinese. This time I decided to stop and ask them what they were doing (which was playing on their cell phones.) One of them asked me in Chinese if I wanted to chat for a little while. I had nothing better to do so, and figured it couldn't hurt to practice my Chinese. So we chatted. First about simple things, basically the same questions I get at English corner only in English not Chinese. We talked about my state and the weather, how long I'll be in China, we talked about snow also. He is from Henan which is near the middle of China but north enough that they get snow in the winter. He said that they normal got a few inches (he held his hand not far from the ground to emphasize this) to which I responded by raising my hand to the level of my knee to show how much snow Michigan gets on average. His eyes went wide. I found out his name was Dong jian dong and that his friends and the other guards call him Xiao dong which is a term used for when someone is younger (the first part of my name in Chinese means something different) so I proceeded to ask how old he was. Turns out, he's 22! A year younger than me. Ridiculous. The job of a guard just implies experience and patience and the ability to sit still for long periods of time, something that someone my age shouldn't be able to do. Then again come to think about it, I often do see the two night guards running around, making paper airplanes, or playing on their cell phones. Makes a little more sense now.

We continued the hilarity of asking and answering questions. I got the obvious "boyfriend question" but this time with a little more backing to it. He asked, if I didn't have a boyfriend, who were all the boys who I always see at the gate. I have a lot of guy friends, many of whom have shown up to meet me at the gate, this ranges from Brendon, to Ryan to Gavin to Ian to Randy. And I'm sure others will show up as the year progresses. I explained this to him to hopefully quell any rumors circling the guard houses that I'm dating half of China.

My Chinese is getting progressively better, but this is something that I only notice when I talk to people who have very little to NO grasp of English. It comes out from the recesses of my brain. I can also read and write better than I can speak (like many of my kids) so if I couldn't understand him he would write things down, which became a little frustrating because he was writing things that I COULD understand such as, "what will you do when you return to America?" What I liked about talking to him is that he spoke slowly and somehow figured out which words I knew and how to use them to explain things, leaving the difficult Chinese alone. When any of the other guards joined the conversation they would confuse me every time. Things that he said that there was no transtlation for or I just pointedly did not understand I would write down to either translate later or ask students what it meant. When I told him this he raised his eyebrows. I told him, that's their job, it's what they help me with. I could probably have a drink with this guy (which is what we ended the night talking about because a lot of his guard buddies were leaving to go get drinks). I found out that he lives on the 5th floor in my building. One of the last things he said to me in Chinese was that when I go back home they will miss me. "Ni hui lai Meiguo shenme shihou, women hui xiang ni." Which is probably incorrect but it's the jist. I'm glad to know that if I'm ever bored late at night at my school I have friends not far away.

I just learned that the English plays that the kids are doing Xmas eve will coincide with the Christmas party time. I don't care. I will just go later. I am going to watch those plays. They are going to be the cutest things in the entire world and it will be my favorite Christmas present.

Lemon Starburst Candy

So I took some Chinese Prozac and am feeling better today. The last post was angsty and angry and grumbly and I'm probably going to end up deleting it. This one will be part of the remedy.

First I'm going to start with some quotes I've been collecting over the past few weeks from my kids or from things that I've been hearing at English corner. I hate to say that some of them are in context and while they were funny at the time, you may not find them funny so I will try to explain. (plus I, of course, find everything funny, so ya know...)

{In response to when I asked a kid in the back of one of my 9th grade classes what my name was} "Pretty girl?"
Me: My name is not pretty girl...
Him: Pretty girl should be enough...

{One of my Oral test questions is 'what job do you want and why' and this is what I got in response}
"I want to be a teacher."
"Why?"
"Because I want to touch the students."

{This was from a 7th grader who shouldn't even know what this means}
"I'm not gay!!"
.....and 2 minutes later
"I'm amazing!"

{At English corner I asked the kids, 'what will you do during Spring Festival?" and one replied...}
"Chasing Girls!"

{When I saw one of my kids at a restaurant and asked 'what are you doing?'}
"I am doing my workhome!"

---

Yesterday after coming home from Chinese class I was surprised to see more than half of my school on the playgrounds attending basketball competitions organized by grade and girls and boys. I wandered around from court to court to watch during most of it. As I passed the area that faces the school, there were students from junior 3 standing on the different floors watching their classmates. I got a good loud cheer from them when I walked by. Two seconds later I heard my name being called from the 4th floor and saw a smaller group of 7th graders waving and laughing. Nothing makes you feel more the celebrity than being here.

Towards the end of the competitions I was approached by the boy who had a microphone and was wandering from court to court reporting schools. The person who spoke into the mike could be heard all through the school, so he decided that he wanted to interview me about basketball. It was a very brief conversation about how "yes I like basketball, but I cannot play" "well if you like it, surely you must be able to play it!" And of course before I knew it he was shouting into the mike that the foreign teacher was going to attempt this, with me of course PLEADING with him and protesting that I cannot play basketball, whatsoever. We head over to the girl's court, followed by almost all of the 9th graders and some other meandering students. They let me shoot 13 baskets and I got all of 2 but they were still heavily impressed that I was even trying. They were ecstatic the entire time. I on the other hand was shaking haha. But at least I didn't fail completely. Their gym coach managed to snap a few photos that I'm sure I will regret later.

After all was said and done I cornered the boy with the microphone and told him that he was in SO much trouble. He asked why and gave me the mike. I proceeded to tell the whole school "I was embarrassed and it's your fault, so in my class I will be making you answer every single question all year." He was so worried, until I told him I wasn't serious. He's still in trouble though as far as I'm concerned. But I'll admit, it was fun. Brought me back to when we lived at the Herrod house and had the basketball net on the garage.

Absent

The reason that I have not been writing as of late is because this is an open journal. It's not that things have not been happening, they have, it's just in my opinion nothing worth noting down. Right now I am giving tests to me kids, not because I want to, but because I have to. I am not happy about this because it means that while we are testing they are not able to have a Christmas lesson, which I know is what they wanted from me, and I cannot deliver. My hands are tied. So I am angry about that.

Another reason is that people read this journal or have the ability to read it. I am not going to be a self-absorbed ass and write things on here, knowing full well that people will be able to read it and will want to read it and make a big deal out of things. Oh no. I'm just sick. Sick and tired of being different. I fit in here in a weird way. Why? Because I'm more Chinese minded than I am American minded. There. That's it. I'm more accepting, I'm more patient, I'm more open-minded and I'm more tolerant than nearly 80% of this group. I am also a person who is including and caring, until you cross me. Do not cross me.

I cannot get into the Christmas spirit because there really isn't any Christmas spirit to be had. There's no Christianity over here, no Jesus, none of that. And I don't have anyone here that I feel the need to buy things for. There are people that I wish I knew better so that I could buy them gifts, but I don't know them, and it's hard to buy gifts for people you don't know. I have a hard enough time as it is buying presents for my own family on Christmas much less for people I've known for maybe 3 months.

I need to find a place to travel this vacation. I still don't know where to go and I don't want to go alone and I'm sure that I sound like the traveling partner that no one would want right now and I don't care. I'll figure it out and I'll get lost, it'll be fine.

I'm sorry, this is an angry post. But it's actually a lot more watered down than it started out being. Better posts will be coming with the holidays. My kids are going to be putting on English plays and there will hopefully non-sucky Christmas parties. I'm not depressed, I'm not anything I just needed to vent so there's no need to worry.

Peace

I win.

Because I am awesome and I do. Leave it alone. I win. Shut up.

The competitive spirit of my classes is rubbing off on me.

I have another cold. I don't care. Whatever, I still win.

I love how half the school was like "Fuck it, it's too cold today for fancy uniforms. We're rebelling." Go them.

We played trivia on Friday night. People who never come to anything were there. Justin and Harry almost got raped by the para para girls from Yantian. Meagan passed out and was timely caught by Steven's foot. Good timing.

Had 'Morning Tea' with David from SZU. His mom joined us for like 5 minutes and then promptly returned home. Don't know what all that was about. She was nice though. We went back to his house and watched a movie about great movie about aliens and I learned about what a weird and lovely kid he is.

English Corner: Man I'm gonna stop going. I'm just going to round up the guys that I love like David, Ian, Jimbo, Andy, Rico and a couple others and BA's gonna take his favorite girls and we're all just gonna go hit up the nearest KTV. I'm tired of meeting new people who just want to ask me the same 20 questions or try to manhandle me into teaching them English. ENOUGH!

While waiting for the bus last night I met two new friends, one of whom spoke english well and was sort of attacking me into being his next best English friend and the other who was quieter and spoke less English. When the loud one got my phone number and got on the bus the two of us waited for awhile, not speaking much. Finally after waiting too long I told him that I was getting a cab and he was welcome to come with me because it was just taking too long. Thanks to him he was able to explain to the cab driver how to get to my school and he even paid for my cab ride. What a sweety. I win this week in the giant battle of me VS. china.

"What Month is it guys?" "October!" "No, no it is not..."

I've got chalk dust on the side of my hands. My kids are always pointing this out to me while I wander around the room making sure that Bobby isn't hitting Suzy and meanwhile making sure that Eli's book is open and he's not drooling on his desk for the fifteenth time. Meanwhile the kids that pay attention say "Teacher your hands are very dirty."
They are dirty because instead of wasting time hunting for an eraser, which are generally dish towels that have been soaked in a bucket in a drawer for the past month I use the backs of my hands to erase the board. I have learned that white chalk erases easily and generally is softer on the hands. Pink chalk is waxy and harder to come off and red chalk is neigh impossible. I have a memo that's always starting me in the face in my planner. "Stay away from the red chalk." I've had it stain my hands and my clothes. I used it a lot on Halloween because it would turn my hands red and they would joke and think it was blood. Funny little buggers.

This thought weirded me out the other day - I'm a teacher. I full out teacher. I mean, yes, I only see these kids once a week and I don't have to deal with them on a daily basis like most teachers do, and I don't grade homework or give tests but still; I am up there at the front of their class once a week. When I wander around the room and watch them throw whatever thing that was on top of their desk that was not supposed to be there into the bowels of their desk and pull out their books to show "why yes I was paying attention," I am constantly reminded of being in high school, or junior high, or elementary school for that matter. I was a "drawing kid" as most of you I'm sure are aware or could have guessed. While the teacher was talking I would have my book open and the work was generally finished before some of the others. I would also have another pad of paper open and would be drawing. Most of my "drawing kids" tend to just draw on whatever they have near them, their open workbooks, their desks, themselves. I don't punish these kids, I never have. The only time I reprimanded one was when I caught one older boy in one of my 9th grade classes drawing an elaborate bold faced block letter of the word "Fuck". I complimented him for his artistry and promptly confiscated it.

It's amazing what a small basketball can do to promote rapport with your kids. After class they stole it and we were playing a weird sort of game of catch/keep away. Then they started throwing it to kids in the upper grades. So we were having mixed ages play together. It was cute. I was proud. I like to promote stuff like that. Right now I eat lunch with a 7th grader and an 8th grader. I remember being in junior high and not talking/fearing the older kids. You shouldn't fear the older kids. You should admire them and hope for their guidance and protection. But of course we all knew that the 8th graders were scary and mean so we stayed away from them. I'm sure that's what my baby 7th graders feel too. I like to see them interact when they can.

Another good thing happening (when I'm down I've been writing down the good things and so far they really do outweigh the bad) my kids are starting to talk to me on their own. This only happens rarely (only with Kathrine and a few others who have got up the confidence, mostly the other ones just mob me asking for candy and whatnot.) Yesterday I had this happen in two occurrences. The first was when a little girl named Ling Ling came up to my desk and started talking to me about my Santa hats. I have bought a plethora of Santa hats for a project that I was working on. A project that sort of went awry but here I am with 10 random Santa hats. From there she started talking to me about Christmas and New Years. I was prompting her with simple questions but it's the most I've spoken to her that doesn't involve "GIVE ME SWEETS" all year. I was proud of her. Her English is better than she lets on for a little 7th grader. I talked to her for the whole break period (10 minutes) and then at the bell she ran off waving.

Another hap instance of friendship was brief but whole-hearted. There is another boy in one of my 7th grade classes who has very good English. He always makes little jokes with me and gives me some advice. He's also the one who showed me the class's stock of music videos one day after class. Music fan, no doubt. His name is Jackie and he's a real cute kid, going to definitely break some hearts when he gets past the age of 12. The weird thing is that he always sits in the back. The kids are seated by grades, if you get bad grades you're in the back if you get good grades front. Not how I would do it, but there it is. So I asked him Monday if his English was so good, why is he in the back. He went on to explain that his English is okay but his Chinese is better and his math is terrible. I know the feeling. I asked him what he was best at and he said of course, music. I think by the despcription that I got that he's learning to play the recorder. This is not the cool part. The cool part is that the two days I got tapped on the shoulder while I was walking to lunch. It was him. He's usually really reserved and hangs back. He said hey and we did the simple "how are you and where are you going bit" before he sprinted off in the way of home for lunch. Made me happy. I like the fact that some of them can think of me as more than just their teacher. That's how I would want it to be if I were in America and that's how I want it to be here.


Last thing to report was the event of the last day of the Shenzhen University Sports Festival. David invited me to come watch the closing ceremonies at the stadium (gym). He said there would be "cheer leadering" I had to go. Not only were there girls but boy cheer leaders and boy break dancers as well. Each club had put together their own cheer/pop/hip hop dance. It was fantastic. They danced to several American pop and hip hop songs and at one point I know I heard "Oh Mickey You're So Fine." We watched from our very crowded perch in the standing room only of the bleachers. Every time a club would finish dancing the section that represented them in the bleachers would shout out their class saying or motto. It was intense. Another surprise came when I realized that one of my friends, the boy named Elvis was one of the ones on the floor dancing for the Chem club. I recognized him by his pants (he wears unique pants let's just say). He was the only one I knew on that floor and it was awesome to watch one of my friends dance. As we all know I have a love for boys who dance and here is no exception. We cheered for everyone though, screaming words we didn't understand and all the while it took me back to high school and pep ralleys and school assemblies. I was glad I could be there to experience it.