China: March 2005 Archives

We've put up all these photos of drinking beer, singing karaoke, visiting the big buddha and learning Kung Fu, that I thought I would take some time to let you know that we're actually teaching too! We're having a great time in the classroom--the students here are lots of fun to teach. Most of them are really enthusiastic and eager to improve and practice their English. Michael and I have both noticed that even when we're feeling lethargic or a bit blah before class or office hours, working with the students always leaves us feeling reenergized and in a good mood (a little different than my days at Webb!).

We've been working on roleplays in all of our classes. Whenever our classes don't overlap Michael and I go to each other's to perform short little scenes from a restaurant or job interview, etc. We teach the students some key vocabulary and then they come up with their own skits in small groups. There have been some really creative and funny ones so far, like the fly-in-the-soup restaurant scene where the fly turned out to be the manager's pet and she came over to talk to it.

In addition to our own classes we've also been visiting some of the other teacher's classes, since most of their students have never had a foreign teacher before. We've put together a little multi-media presentation (Ok, it's just photos and music, but 'mulit-media' sounds better) about our families, our wedding and our trip. It's been interesting and fun to try to explain all these different things to students with very limited English (these students are Japanese or Korean majors who haven't learned much English). Michael does a lot of drawing on the board and we've also had to act out a few things. Our most popular performances include me trick-or-treating on Halloween as either a ghost or a frog (depending on whether I have my scarf or hooded green jacket along with me), as well as Michael's demonstration of how people carry things on their heads in Africa and India (again my scarf comes in handy for this). Oh yeah, and Michael likes the face I make to show the meaning of 'gruesome' when we tell the story about Shah Jahan cutting off the thumbs of the workers who built the Taj Mahal.

After dinner we sometimes go back to the teacher's office to offer extra help to students if they need it (They all study in their classrooms until 8:30). The students mostly seem to want help with their pronunciation. You'd think this would be easy for us, being native speakers and all, but last night we ran into some difficulties. Michael and I discovered that we say the 'l' sound differently, specifically when it's in the final position in a word, like 'will' or 'fall'. It wasn't that noticible until we slowed down and exaggerated it, and found that our tongues do completely different things.

We spent a while debating and demonstrating in front of the poor student, who probably just became more confused. We continued the debate back in our room, and the only thing we could agree on was that the English 'l' is different from the German 'l' (English 'will' vs. German 'will' (want)). We concluded that it must be a difference in regional accent. Either that, or else ONE of us just learned to say HIS (or her) 'l's the wrong way. So how about a little survey? What does your tongue do when you say the 'l' sound, especially when it's in the last sound in a word? Does it touch the back of your teeth or does it curl up in the back of your mouth in some weird way so that you actually kind of swallow the sound? (No bias here!)

Just a quick note to say we've decided to extend our stay here in Yantai by one month, so we'll now be here until the end of April. We're really excited about our decision, it's the first time we've been able to it because in the past we've always had to catch our next flight or make it to our next volunteer program. It's nice to feel a bit more grounded for a while and we're starting to feel more and more at home here--knowing what buses to take, which restaurants are good, and hearing students greet us by name as we walk through the market.

Learning even a little bit of Chinese has proven to be pretty difficult and slow though. When we're on our own we end up either getting really creative with gestures and charades or showing the person we're trying to communicate with our notebook in which the teachers have written down some key phrases in Chinese, most importantly: dumplings and noodles. The words we do remember how to say are: hello, thank you, this, that, not too spicy, tea, beer, Austria and Australia (from explaining our trip), and some numbers. Hopefully our list will start growing over the next few weeks--another good reason to stay longer!

Part I:
From the business card of a restaurant (copied exactly):

Sculpting in Time
Beef-steak Italy Pizza Spaghetti
Ladies and Gentlements:
Are you going to share an unadu-
lteratod cafe with the form of Am-
erican countryside? Are you
going to share delicious Pizza? Are you
going to share fresh steak? Yes!
Welcome to Sculpting in Time

Part II:
Written on our pillowcases:

Best wishes
Do you like

Part III:
Dinner Scene

We were at dinner last night with some teachers and students from our school, talking about our favorite music, etc, and one of the students asks Michael,
"Do you like Lee ta Ree cha?"
"Little Richard??"
And the students repeats "Lee ta Ree cha"
And Michael again says "Little Richard??"
The student kind of nods his head yes so Michael starts saying "You mean the guy with the little mustache??"
The student nods again, so Michael starts thinking about it, "Um...Well..."
Meanwhile I'm trying to tell Michael what the student was actually asking, but he was just too into Little Richard to hear me.
Then finally the teacher next to us says it more clearly...
"Oh--Literature!"

Last night, after a delicious noodle dinner (no drinks this time!) we popped into one of the music stores that was blaring Chinese pop songs out onto the street. I came across a John Denver CD with all my favorites on it: Leaving on a jet plane, Perhaps Love, Calypso... It even had Shanghai Breezes, the song that had been popping into my head whenever anyone here mentioned the city. We went ahead and bought it (for about $2.75, which Wendy said was expensive compared to other stores). When we got home I eagerly opened the CD and found a picture of--?????? Can anyone help me here?? Did John Denver ever go through a fat stage? Or maybe plastic surgery?? There's a photo like this on the inside of the CD case and then there's the poster that came folded up inside the case. When I saw the photo I was worried that the songs would be by some 'other' John Denver too, but I was relieved to hear his voice. I'm still confused about the photo though...

We've been invited out to dinner five of the eight nights we've been here--usually an elaborate affair in a private dining room and about fifteen to twenty different dishes to share, always very tasty! Tonight we went out with all the teachers and administrators of the college to celebrate women's day (I had already received a rose early in the day for the occasion, very sweet!). We all piled into the teacher's bus and drove to the "Red House Restaurant" where the festivities began!

One of the fun things about going out for dinner in China is the 'cultural drinking game' that takes place over the course of an evening. From the time the drinks are poured, toasts are made by hosts throughout the entire meal. Tonight they covered 'Happy Women's Day", "Thank you women", "Welcome to China", "To your health", "To new friends", and "Thanks for the song". We've been told that it's a sign of friendship and respect to finish your glass when someone makes a toast (luckily the glasses are only small wine glasses). As the night goes on, the toasts start to feel more and more like drinking challenges, as the "toaster" waits for a show of empty glasses from the "toastees". Some people try to cheat, but you're considered honest and virtuous if you drink up, even if it makes you sick. There were a few people who did end up sick, but it was openly admitted and there didn't seem to be anything shameful about it.

Everyone was all about singing songs tonight too, we'll try to put up some photos and sound. We ended up having to sing "The itsy-bitsy Spider" which we've been teaching in our classes (but we don't have a recording of that--sorry to disappoint!!) Actually, it's funny how often we've been asked to sing songs on this trip, we'll have to prepare a repitoire next time.

Thank you to the staff of Jian Wen University for a fun-filled evening!

Now that Michael has finished writing his ‘book’ about our last day in India, I can do a quick update on our time in China so far.

Our flight from Delhi to Beijing was on Ethiopian Airlines, which seemed kind of strange but we’d had good experiences with them traveling from Ghana to Uganda, so why not? The 6 hour flight seemed really short, probably because of all our long train rides recently. We had no idea what to expect in China or at our new volunteer situation. That’s the difference between traveling from place to place for a year and taking separate trips to each destination separately. If we were coming to China as it’s own trip we would have researched and read up on it as much as we could. But the way we’re traveling we’re always so busy trying to take in our current environment that it’s hard enough just trying to remember to confirm our flight. That was especially the case in India because we felt our time there was so short. We didn’t even look at the volunteer website again or read through past emails to find out the name of the school we would be teaching at—very unprepared. But I guess that makes it exciting, and that way we arrive without any expectations, which is often better anyways.

So we arrived at Beijing airport (very new and nicer than most in the States) at 6:30 PM. We knew there was an eight o’clock flight to Yantai but we didn’t have tickets yet so we had to hurry. Luckily we made it through passport control quickly (we were a little worried that they would make us show an onward air ticket which we didn’t have, and I had lost the itinerary that we had created the day before). We bought our tickets, bought a phone card, called the volunteer coordinator to tell him our flight, and made it to the gate just as the last bus was leaving to take passengers out to the plane.

As we walked outside to the bus we were hit by a blast of cold air—something we hadn’t felt in quite a while. It was a shock, but also exciting—that cold air smell was nice. The Chinese people on the bus kind of laughed at us and told us (without words) that we should put on some warmer clothes (we were wearing our warmest). The novelty and excitement about the cold quickly wore off as we stood shivering waiting for the driver outside the Yantai airport. We were driven to the college and Byron (Mr. Wong), a local English teacher, showed us to our room. The room is really nice—we have a desk, refrigerator, TV, computer with internet (though internet is not working at the moment), and most importantly hot water and heat! It stays nice and warm in here, but it seems to be the only place on campus that is heated. The classrooms and cafeteria are quite cold, and according to the students so are their rooms. On Wednesday we went shopping for some warmer clothes, that has helped and I think we are starting to get used to the cold.

I’m teaching 2 different classes of English prep. These students need two more years of English instruction and practice before they can go on to be freshman English majors. Michael is teaching the freshman and sophomore English majors. The students are between 17 and 22 and the class size varies greatly from 8 to 40. The college focuses mainly on languages (English, Japanese, and Korean) and prepares students to work as teachers, translators, tourist guides, commercial artists, and mainly flight attendants. Right now our schedule is pretty light and we’re feeling a little lazy (and a little bad too because we keep disappearing into our room to warm up). But starting next week we’re going to try to help out in some of the other English classes.

There’s more to say about the great people we’ve met so far and the great meals they’ve taken us to, but I think I’ll stop here and save some for later. Bye!