A night out with all the English teachers

I'm so lucky!!! I work with such an awesome group of English teachers!
Tonight we went out for dinner to eat hot pot. Its basically one huge pot of boiling soup that you put anything into to cook and then everyone eats from this pot, and the food is really really good! It was so much fun to be at dinner with 10 of my fellow English teachers from my Grade, and maybe 5 extra family members, so altogether there were maybe 16 at the table!
Fionia, standing in the back teaches Class 5. Sunny, sitting front left teaches Classes 1 and 6, Gou Xuayin, to the right of Sunny teaches classes 11 and 14, Chen Ying teaches class 3 and that's her little girl sitting on my lap, and I of course teach every class one a week, and Mr. Jiang, also my FAO to the right of me teaches class 8, Mr. Li teaches class 9, then is the teacher of class 10, and the teacher of class 2, and then Oliver teaches class 7, and finally Simon teaches class 4!
And its funny but now that I think of it I've never met the teachers of classes 12, 13, 15, and 16....


Then after dinner went went out to the 'disco' or basically karaoke. The Chinese people are not shy at all to sing karaoke and they want me to sing too but they always only have 1 English song and that's 'My Heart will go on' from Titanic... how embarrassing! but then they like to dance to every song, but this waltz like dance that I think I've finally figured out... Its funny.
(pic) at the Chinese style disco!

Its been an interesting last couple days

On Friday night one of my students, Sun Fuji, wanted to take me and Sunny to dinner because he was the one who won the English competition on Wednesday. So, he took us, along with his mom, 2 aunts, uncle, another teacher, and his brother, Fu Shing Jin, to dinner at this super fancy restaurant that we got our own private room with a huge round table, a large flat screen TV with sofas, a bathroom, a computer with internet, and of course a Majiang table for gambling. Evidently everyone no matter their age knows the exact custom for hosting a dinner. So, it was really funny to have my 19 year-old student bringing wine to dinner for Sunny and me, and toasting to us, lol. Its also the Chinese tradition for the host to serve the food for the guests. And even though the food was amazing, the atmosphere was slightly uncomfortable because everyone was speaking in Chinese the entire time and a few times when someone would start to speak to me in English Sunny would just interrupt or answer for me but in Chinese, which meant the conversation went back to Chinese. Then a lot of times I heard them saying "Mea-guale" which means American, or "Ying yu lao shi" English teacher and looking at me, but instead of translating for me when she needed to she just said "ting bu dong" Don't understand!!! Grrrr so frustrating!

Then after dinner Sun Fuji taught me how to play Majiang, and even though he tried to explain everything about the game which is too much all at once, it was much better than a few weeks ago when Sunny tried to teach me, while gambling... and then forgot about me to let me loose money until I said forget it and they thought I was being a bad sport...
And I don't know for sure but I think Sun Fuji must have paid at least 1000 Yuan for the entire dinner which is a crazy amount of money, especially here in Tongzi! And Sunny told me he was paying from his own money! I would never have agreed to this if Sunny wasn't there and acting like all this was perfectly normal...

Then Saturday, I had agree to play basketball with the Sun Fuji's 9 yr-old brother, Fu Shing Jin, who is such an obedient and smart little gentleman. So, when I came down from my apartment to go to the school to meet him, he was already waiting for me outside the gate of my building. And so I gave him the orange I brought him and he walked me to the school just down the street, but we couldn't play basketball there because they had classes. So, he started to walk me to his primary school but he figured it was too far, so he waved down a taxi, opened the door for me, and paid for the taxi!! This little 9 yr-old boy! But... then his school's gates were locked because there was no school, so we walked out of town to one of his aunt's home at another school. And of course... she wasn't home so we stood outside the gate while the little boy tried to yell across the school yard to convince some workers to open the gate for us, which they wouldn't. Finally, we found out the gate had been unlocked the entire time, so we just helped ourselves inside and the workers never told us to leave so we played basketball in there. Lol, it was just me and this super respectful little boy, and he seemed so excited the 1-in-10 times I actually made a basket. Then we played ping pong a bit, and he's so good at it I was embarrassed. After a while he decided I needed some water, and took me in his aunt's home, but there was a dog tied up out front that didn't know me so it bit me on the back of the leg. And even though it didn't hurt or rip my pants I guess the skin is thin there and it bled a bit. The poor little boy looked so upset that first he had dragged me all over town to play basketball and then the dog bit me. Then his aunt and uncle showed up and his uncle drove us back to his home where we ate lunch with his surprisingly huge family in their cafeteria like dinning room. And Sun Fuji was home from school so Fu Shing Jin told him all about what happened and then everyone got all concerned about the dog bite and wanted to look at it, help me wash it, and take me to a doctors... oh man what a scene I didn't want to make!! So I went outside to clean it up on my own!

Then after lunch Wang Kaiwei, the 2 boy's aunt (who is already my friend and also an English teacher), wanted to take me to climb the mountain at her mother's house in the countryside. I agreed, but first she insisted on taking me to the doctors and forced me to let her pay because they felt bad that their family's dog bit me... grrr. And the doctor never even looked at the bite or asked any questions other than my name and age (I guess Wang Kaiwei told her what she needed to know), she gave me a shot (I figure it was a rabies shot) and I need to go back for 4 more shots in the next month and in this time I can't drink any tea, beer, or eat any kind of herbal leaves... This will be hard seeing that the Chinese drink tea all the time and almost every dish has something I can't eat in it. Then we picked up some more little boys and another teacher friend of Wang Kaiwei and went to 2 different little villages, where all the little kids of the village gathered in the house's windows to look at me, lol :) After, we went back to have dinner at their home where there were even more people this time. And I found out Sun Fuji is something of a musical genius, holy cow this kid can sing opera, I think the whole town could hear!! and he can play classical music on the piano and Russian folk music on the accordion (all from memory of course)!! And I think I'm getting used to all the Chinese telling me to go here, do this, eat this, sit here...because it doesn't matter if I say yes or no I end up having to do it anyways so I'm just doing what they tell me to do most the time. So, I ended up in Wang Kaiwei's home eating these sweet little fruits, Pi Ba, I've never seen before and then helping her put up curtains. Then around 9 o'clock at night Sun Fuji calls me to tell me he's playing with some of his friends and they want to talk to me so Wang Kaiwei tells me I should go with him... but he ends up taking me to a club... an American style club, which I knew then I was definitely crossing the line. I was glad that the doctor told me I can't drink beer. But I called Wang Kaiwei and she sounded like she didn't understand what my problem was and told me Sun Fuji just wants to show me Tongzi. It was just me and a bunch of Chinese boys, some of them are even my age, but they don't speak English... Soooooooo awkward so I asked to go home after only a few minutes, I should have felt bad he took me all the way there and I didn't stay but I didn't feel bad!

Then today a girl, Michelle, who used to be a student at my school wanted to talk to me and practice her English. She's the same age as me and just finished University, so you'd think I'd be happy to find a friend, but this girl is a little clingy and doesn't have a long enough attention span to understand anything I say. I also have a few students like Michelle. Even though I'm glad for them to be so excited about practicing their English its really hard to spend time with them because they like to hold onto my arm so close like I'm a handbag and when I walk anywhere with them I feel like they're walking on top of me! It was slightly annoying because in the 3 hrs I spent with Michelle she first took me to her home for a small dinner, corn stew, and showed and explained to me everything in her bedroom, and showed me off to her entire family. I felt like an award or something she had won at school... Then she walked me around town and basically stopped by every shop that she knew someone at so she could be seen with me in front of her friends. And she was talking non stop, which I could understand only parts of what she said, and she wanted me to try a million different Chinese foods, when I was already full, and she wanted me to see everything in Tongzi as if it was my first day here. Oh man!! She a really friendly girl but just too much for me, I can't be dragged around like that anymore. So, when she asked me if she could show me some things next weekend I was so glad to tell her I had plans to go to another town for the May 1st holiday!!
These past couple days were really strange... I really don't understand all of the Chinese customs... and I wish I could understand more Chinese language to know exactly what everyone is saying. Maybe I'd feel more comfortable then.

Anyways, I have a 6 day holiday coming up, beginning on Tuesday. Not that I don't love Tongzi but I'm glad to be able to travel and get a small break!

English Competition

The other night I went to an English competition that Sunny put on for her two classes. She gave her students 5 speeches to choose from: I have a Dream by Martin Luther King Jr., Gettysburg Address by Abe Lincoln, If I have Three Days to Live author unknown, a speech by a Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao on Feb.2 2009 at Cambridge University, and the last was Obama's Inaugural Address. I think its really funny that three of the speeches the students could choose are famous American speeches and even funnier is that no students choose to do the one Chinese speech. The majority of the students choose Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, the next most popular was King's I have a Dream, then the rest of the students were split between Obama's speech and If I have Three Days to Live. So for the past week I've been busy with not only my 16 classes plus the 8 classes I picked up from Sev leaving, and also the increasing number of students wanting to practice their English after school but now also correcting these students speeches.
I can't tell you how many times I made students keep repeating words like consecrate, nullification, momentous, unalienable, and honoured. And if the students could get these words right I had to try to teach them how to say the 'th' sound. This sound is so difficult, words like 'these' and 'this' both come out like 'zis', and 'that' comes out 'zat', then words like 'with' and 'earth' come out 'wis' and 'ers'.
So my trick was to write 2 lists of words:
fathers..... forth
whether... with
rather...... thus
that......... birth
those....... earth
these

So, the students must first read: fathers, whether, rather, that, those, these, forth, with, thus, birth, and earth. I try my best to keep encouraging them, and I feel so bad because I can tell some students are so hard on themselves that they can't pronounce either 'th' sound correctly. Then I really make it hard on them, not to be mean but to help them, and they have to read left, right, left, right: fathers, forth, whether, with, rather, thus, that, birth, those, earth, these...
And on top of all these difficulties, some of the hardest sounds for them to make are the 'j' sound in the middle of a word, the 'tion' sound. And of course there is no 'v' in Chinese, so all their lives the students have been learning English from Chinese teachers who have never pronounced a 'v' correctly...
So, I don't know how long I will keep having nightmares from this one section from Lincoln's speech: "...zat. from. zis. ha-nerd. dead. we take.increased dewosin.to zat cause.for whits. zay gave. zeir last full .meyor of dewosin; zat we here. highly. resol. zat. zis. dead. sall not. have dead. in van; zat. zis. nasin. under God. sall have. a new birs. of freedom..." It would be such a nice dream if it came out like this, "...that from these honoured dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave their last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom..."
Then during the competition, Sunny had me be one of the judges... which was hard because I know how hard all of the students worked.
All 120 students from the 2 classes piled into the school's media room.
Sunny set-up the competition really well. She had the 2 most humorous students host the competition and then in between some speeches she had music, or a guest student sing a song, and she held drawings for prizes.
Even the students who didn't enter the competition were really into the whole ordeal, cheering and laughing and listening.

The winners got notebooks.
Here are the 3rd place winners. I'm so proud of all 3 of these students because they're all relatively shy and especially the boy spent a lot of time preparing.
The second place winners, also the funny hosts :)







And best of all, the first place went to the student I spent hours with helping last Sunday. And he made 90% of the corrections I helped him with!!!
Here are all of the students who participated in the competition. 25 of them!





As for my teaching, its going really really well! I haven't had any major problems in the last three weeks. And I feel like I have the attention of more and more students every week, and more and more often I'm surprised by the shy students starting to speak up in class. I think its helping that the students are finally getting used to my accent and able to understand the simple English, this makes my job so much easier. Also, one of the teachers I'm friends with came to watch me in her class the last 2 times, and she tells me she wants to adopt some of my 'western' teaching ways because it makes the students more comfortable to speak out in class. YAY :)
Have I mentioned that Sev went back to England because his Gran is sick. So, while hes been gone I've taken over his classes in grade 1, half (8 classes) a week were added to my 16 classes every week. At first when I agree to it I didn't think it would be so tiring, but now after 4 weeks of 24 classes, 1500 students, a week and English corner almost every day after school, I'm finally tired... But its ok because next week the students have their mid-term exams, for 3 days, then there is the national May 1st holiday, for 3 days. So, I have 6 days off!!! I'm hoping to travel north to the city of Xian. Then when I come back from a relaxing holiday Sev will be back and I can go back to a lazy 16 classes a week!! :)
Ok I'm off to bed now... I have basketball to play with some students tomorrow!

Spring is here at last

or at least I hope! The weather is finally getting warmer, and the sun peaked out a few times in the last week, lol. This is such a cloudy town :) And the town is going into spring mode, there are more and more Chinese BBQ stands popping up along the streets of downtown, and tables out front of the food stalls. Fresh cherries and strawberries are available everywhere along with fresh almonds and walnuts. Yumm!!! But another thing I noticed showing up out of nowhere is the homeless people, I had never seen even one person living on the streets when the weather was cold. I haven't seen too many yet, maybe a handful, but where are they coming from? Where were they when the weather was cold? And why can't they keep shelter there now that the weather is warm?
Well, on a lighter note my classes are getting much better. The students are getting used to me and more importantly my accent, so each week they can understand me better. Also, my students are feeling more comfortable to participate in class activities and even approach me after class to practice their English. I think I'm also getting used to my classes and I'm able to adapt my lesson plans according to each class's understanding, and I've come up with many tricks to explain myself to the students. :)
A couple weekends ago there was a Tomb Sweeping Festival, and the students had Saturday, Sunday and Monday off of school. So, my Class 2 students took me to 'climb the mountain' and visit a temple on the top of the mountain.
'Climbing' the mountain, or really it was just climbing stairs to the top.
They are a funny group.







There were 9 students in all. And the boys who joined us are some of the most respectful teenage boys I have ever met.




The girls donate money to the temple at the Chinese God of prosperity.








A cave with a natural formation that they dedicated to a Chinese goddess.
I showed the girls a new way to take a photo.








Something in the temple I don't know what it stands for.











The next weekend some other students heard I've been spending time outside of class with the students. Now, I get tons of invitations to go climb the mountains, play basketball, cook Chinese food, go shopping and so on and so on. I try to do as much as I can with the students, but there are just too many of them. I know over time they will get bored of me but in the mean time I don't care how tired I am I want to take advantage of their enthusiasm and give them as much opportunity to practice their English.
At the temple on Huang Shan, or Yellow Mountain.

Too bad my camera doesn't have a wide angle view so I have to be at weird angles to fit the temple in the picture. Its a really beautiful temple covered with colorful, Chinese art.




Foggy Tongzi from the top of the mountain.








One of my students and 3 of her roommates from Grade 1 came to my apartment to teach me how to cook Chinese food. The girl on the far left is quickly becoming my favorite student. She is from my best class, Class 2, so she's really smart and hard working, but super shy. After one of my first English corners, a few weeks ago, she sent me a sad message to my cell phone almost begging me to help her with her oral English because she was so afraid to speak out loud in the group and even more afraid to speak with me personally. So, I met with her 1-on-1 after class to give her some tips on how to overcome her fears, and give her the chance to feel comfortable speaking to me. After that she has met with me almost everyday after school, sometimes alone just to talk, and sometimes in an English corner with other students, and she's such a great student because she understands when to give others a chance to speak and when she can translate what I say into Chinese without taking away the experience for others, and she can now join into the conversations freely. And not only that, she's sorta become my little English assistant, gathering up students for English corner that may have never given it a chance and reminding others about activities I've planned after school. Its awesome! And she has a great personality. She comes from a town in the countryside which is much poorer than here and lives with 8 roommates, so I sense she has a really difficult life, but despite that she is so grateful for every little thing and always smiling behind her shyness :) I just know if she is lucky enough to get the chance she will be very successful, but I just hope her good nature and innocence won't be taken advantage of. I'm not sure if I should say that she is my project or I am her project because she is actually teaching me too!

Celebrating my birthday in China

It was great!!
One of my fellow English teachers and my best friend here in Tongzi, Sunny, told a few students it was my birthday last Thursday and in one of my classes the students actually sang Happy Birthday to me in English!!! It was awesome.
Then the students gave me an eagle statue with one of those snow globe things that has a Chinese saying inside, wishing for a successful future.
Then after school Sunny gave me a gift, a root carving of 2 love birds that her father-in-law made, and took me to dinner, courtesy of the school :) The director and Head Master of the school came, along with 4 other English teachers from my grade. We ate 'hot pot', or basically a communal bowl of boiling soup, where you throw in a bunch of different fresh ingredients, like 10 different kinds of mushrooms and other Chinese veg that I have no idea what it is. I guess the Chinese tradition is to make a toast every time you take a drink so i'm glad my little thimble size shot glass was being filled with red wine and not the maotai, Chinese spirits. Bottoms up! they say!
After dinner Sunny took me to a 'disco', or what they call disco, for singing karaoke, dancing, and eating Birthday cake! A few more English teachers joined us there, and so I got to embarrass myself in front of everyone trying to sing 'My Heart will go on', the one English song all the Chinese like... Then they sang me Happy Birthday on the karaoke and I got to blow out these cute Chinese sized candles on my Birthday cake. Haha, after all the drinks at dinner the guys were pretty drunk, so it was really funny to see my fellow teachers this way. And Mr. Jiang, the one who hired me, was so drunk he got cake all over his face and was laughing just like a little kid :)
A few Chemistry teachers from my school just so happened to be there also so I got to meet them and a few really nice girls, who go to a university in Chongqing. The girls invited to show me around Chongqing on a free weekend, its only 100 km from Tongzi.

It was a really great night but especially on this day I still miss my family and friends from back home...