To give you more than a mental picture

I just found out I can load images on Blogger, so I'll give all of you some visuals of where I live and the kind of scenery that surrounds me.

(Truth be told this isn't much more than a sampling of what I've seen and most of my pictures are on Facebook).


Wenzhou University, North Campus Entrance
(September 6th)













View of the grove and street from my balcony













View of the mountains from my balcony













Inner court from the level of my apartment













C 区 (district) - my home













Wenzhou Medical College

Recent Developments...

For the first two weeks of the term I had no classes at all because the freshmen had yet to arrive, and for two weeks after that I had no classes on Monday, first because the freshman came on a Wednesday, and then because there was a holiday last week so no one had classes on Monday.

Yesterday I met my Monday students for the first time, after my Thursday and Friday classes had already received two lessons a piece. My regular morning classes in Oujiang (瓯江学院) were much like the morning classes I'd done in previous weeks - although I've found myself tasked with finding English names for several of my students - a task I wouldn't say I'm qualified for, but I'll do it nonetheless. I've given an English name to one girl I know who invited me on the hike last weekend (Janette), and I've so far named girls in two of my classes Susan.


Getting settled into the system I thought was taken care of, but yesterday I had to go to the Police station and hand over my passport and other information to get my work permit, only problem was I thought my boss still had my passport, so I was there (45 minutes from the campus) with copies of my passport and other official papers, but unable to process the documents without the passport hard-copy. I went back today with my passport in hand and turned everything in (most of the paperwork I finished yesterday anyway), but there was a time when I wasn't sure if I would be fined for my slight tardiness ($500 US).

I've been doing more work on my idea to clean up the natural areas around Wenzhou and I 've sent requests to a group called Freecycle for garbage cans, garden tools, gloves, etc. The organization has groups in several cities and allows people to give away their old 'junk' to avoid sending it to landfills. We'll see how that plan goes - in the meantime I'll get to my surveying.

As far as learning Chinese I've gotten into the mindset of doing all I can to not fall into using English, and I find I two things: 1) I know a bit more than I thought I knew, and 2) I know a lot less than what I thought I might need.

So hot... so humid...

...but oh the things to see and do.

Last night I went to the P.E. college and participated in a Taekwondo class that practiced the same techniques I did when I was 10. Talk about rigid movement - it was like doing a poor version of 'the robot'. Though I was a bit impatient because I finally got the Internet working on my own machine and I wanted to get to using it and upload some pictures.

I got back to my room and showered, and within a few minutes of getting out of the shower, a couple students came knocking at my door (to add to the problem my two towels were in the washing machine at that moment so I couldn't dry myself in the conventional manner). Anyway, I got invited to go on a hike up one of the mountains near the campus with the "Crazy English" club.

The hike took place around 6:00 this morning. We biked out to the base of the mountain (where I had gone a couple days before when I had a free afternoon), and halfway up the mountain we celebrated one group member's birthday with a fruit-filled spongecake (there were close to twenty of us).
The students were very nice and wanted to include me in all that they did, but therein lay the problem; I like to go hiking to get away from excessive socialization and the press of civilization. I certainly don't mind going hiking with others, and I don't mind talking to others on a hike, but in my experience there's a sort of unwritten, unspoken "non-speaking" rule in regards to hiking up a mountain - you talk all you want when you have a break, and while hiking you strive for silence. You focus on breathing and enjoying the scenery ...in silence.

Apparently such is not the case in China, I scarcely had a quiet moment. So many group members wanted to talk to me and practice their English. And when I tried to speak in Chinese they would usually just answer the question and then jump right back into English (sometimes it's almost impossible to get Chinese practice, no one wants to use the native tongue with foreigners.)

At the top of our ascent (we only went about halfway up the mountain) I climbed some tall stones to get a better view (and get a bit of distance from everyone) and my 'daring stunts' had some of friends freaking out.

We had lunch at a restaurant outside the university and a little ways away from the town. As usual I was reluctant to leave food uneaten, knowing no one is taking it home for leftovers, and I noticed we still had a lot of steamed rice. One of the girls told me not to worry because it can be reused. That relieved me as far as knowing that there won't be so much waste of food, however learning that my lunch included potentially reused rice from someone else's meal left me just a little discomforted.


One last thing I'll mention was that all along the paths ascending the mountain there was a fair amount of garbage, from plastic bags to packaging, to cigarette packs and bottle caps. Having lived so long in Oregon where such things are almost unthinkable I found the quantity of rubbish astounding.
A couple days ago I had been brainstorming ways to help clean up the river that runs through the town, and today I found the opportunity to do some clean up on the mountain. I and the other students only collected a plastic grocery bag-full of rubbish, but the students found it very inspiring - maybe I can use it to affect some real change in the near future - garbage cleanups in exchange for special English lessons (hey it starts with a dream).

So much to do... and yet still there's time

Before I came here I read two books about Americans who had gone to teach in China - Iron & Silk (1986, Mark Salzman), and River Town (2001, Peter Hessler). (I read them in this order).

Like Salzman I came here right out of college, and like Hessler I arrived here with minimal fluency in the language. Unlike either of them I'm not with any program in America (Yale-China or Peace Corps), and my contract is only for one year instead of two years.

Both of these books gave me some useful insights into China and I found both of them a lot of fun to read, although when I read Iron & Silk I had a hard time taking Salzman completely at his word. His book was certainly entertaining and fun, but the sheer volume of his activities: kung fu with one master (a veritable martial arts superstar), yixing with another master, travel, outings with the English teachers, it seemed impossible that he could do all these things and still have time to teach - at a MEDICAL college in the city where Mao Zedong came from no less.

Now however I think I begin to see where he would have found the time. So little of my time here is spent teaching I sometimes forget I actually have a job. If it weren't for the years of teacher training that make me keep planning my lessons I'd probably just be practicing Chinese, reading books and doing some martial arts all day and never even give a thought to preparing for my classes.
Despite my commitment to working on lesson planning I actually have done a lot of non-teacher related stuff, including a few martial arts classes. I have a few martial arts teachers, though none of them speak any English, and tomorrow I start some classes with them.

Since my intended class for last night got moved to another day of the week, I took the time last night to go out biking through the bazaar to see what's being sold beyond the college grounds. The food looked good so I think I'll go back soon.

For tomorrow I'm going to give my students a taste of some of U.S. culture through music. I'm thinking "Star-Spangled Banner", "I'm Free", some songs from "Grease", "Forrest Gump" and probably "Star Wars". (and of course some Disney music).

And then there were three...

...three days a' teachin' that is.

Around noon today I received a call from my boss, Shelly Ke (pronounced 'kuh'), saying that my Tuesday evening class has been made into a Monday evening class. So next Monday I teach three classes for the first time (two in the morning at Oujiang College, one in the evening at the Foreign Language College), and from here on out I have Saturday-Sunday and Tuesday-Wednesday to explore Wenzhou and learn Chinese. (...and plan my lessons I know, let me enjoy the moment).

Today I did work on reformatting my first lesson and got a few possibilities lined up for what I might teach on Thursday and Friday, but I don't want the students to get too far ahead of the others, so I think I'll revisit some of the things they asked to learn about last week and in the meantime I'll treat them to some classic Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck cartoons - I knew it was a good idea to bring those.

I spent the afternoon in the office next door to mine talking with a colleague, "Faye" who got a master's degree in translation from Leeds College in Cambridge, UK (this is her first year as a teacher too). She helped me find this professional translator's site where they also have jobs for voice-overs, so I'm looking into it now to see what opportunities there are in that regard - who knows someday I might have a career, or at least a part-time job, in voice-acting or narrating (...awesome).

Regrettably I didn't go to the Wushu gym at 4:00 like I intended, so I'll do it on Thursday and until then just do a bit of practice on my own.

IT'S A TYPHOON!

Well it's a lot of rain and some wind to go with it, but it's not going to kill anyone.

I'm really wishing I'd made some room in my bags for a rain-jacket, though before I left I already emptied my bags of most of my books and other non-essential paraphernalia, so I'm not sure where I would've packed said jacket.

Last night we had a nice little celebration for the Mid-Autumn Festival (中秋节日). Julie's apartment is still being renovated so we couldn't eat there, but we did go to the restaurant where she and her husband took me on my first night in Wenzhou - the place with Northeast-style food (don't try to order clam chowder, it's a different Northeast). Ben came and so did Jada, and Mr. Mu's mother came as well.
The food was really great, and we had lots of it. We ate sweet and sour pork, caramelized sweet-potato, vegetables, noodles, beef, and a couple other dishes I can't name. And afterwards we had moon cake (月饼). Ben said that he had been feeling lonely when he got the call from Mr. Mu, so the dinner was just what he needed - and after my trip to the islands got cancelled, an outing with friends was just what I needed too.

Tomorrow night I have my first class at the Foreign Language College and it's three periods instead of the standard two, so I need to try to make it a bit longer than my previous classes - I'm thinking of using some music during the breaks and maybe having them make name cards too.

Thanx for the comments people have been posting, hopefully I get my Internet working soon and I get to post some pictures to compliment the stories.

First week over, four classes introduced

Wow...
wow...
I expected this teaching job would be different from any kind of job I could get in America (given my qualifications) but some things you just can't prepare for.

Here's a breakdown of the two days I've taught so far:
I get up, shower and dress, have breakfast (oatmeal) and bike over to the school (it's a much shorter commute than either of my two student-teaching jobs in the US were). I go to the building attendant and sign out an access card for my classroom, then go to my room (the room is already open, the access card is for the computer). I get out my materials (clock, notes, paper, etc.) load up my PowerPoint and wait for the straggling students to arrive (even twenty minutes early a number of students are already there).

All of my classes have at least 30 students, about 90% girls. The students in the first and third classes seem very capable and many students are participating and using English comfortably. The students in the second and fourth classes have some good speakers, but most of the students are still afraid to speak, so I need to work on getting them talking.

In all but the first class the students have asked me to say something in Chinese, and in the third and fourth classes they asked me to demonstrate some Kung Fu. Not wanting to be a hard ass I chose to give them what they asked for, but before doing any of these things I would take off my glasses to signal a "departure from normal practice". For lack of anything "useful" to say in Chinese, I sang the first two stanzas of "Beijing Welcomes You", and for Kung Fu I did Wushu Basic Stance Drill (just 10 moves).
Both of these things got a lot of applause.

And I grievously underestimated something about these students: flirting. During my teacher training I was told, unequivocally, that we teachers must never put ourselves in any situations with our students that could ever possibly be construed as romantic or suggest mutual attraction. In my inquiries about teaching in China I was told that the girl students will look at young American guys like American teenage girls look at rockstars, and will pursue them just as fervently - my sources were not exaggerating.
In every class I've had, students ask me if I have a girlfriend, they ask for my phone number, they want to know what I think of Chinese women, I even had one student suggest I wear a T-shirt next class because she thinks I'm handsome. (...not gonna lie, that was a little, uh... yeah).

When I was a student, or a teacher in America, I was not one of the popular crowd. I had several good friends, and I wasn't the victim of social discrimination, but I wasn't the kind of guy that had hoards of girls asking for my number and giggling and hiding their faces every time I smiled. Now I'm living that classical high school/college boy's dream, but honestly I don't really care for it.
Fame by its very nature is transitory, and the fame I have doesn't come from any achievement on my part, but only by virtue of having been born an American and being able to speak my native tongue. Why attach any value to it? (I've been reading a lot of Stoic philosophy, can you tell?)

After I finished my classes on Friday I went to the Teacher's Break Room in 楼 7 and sat in a massage chair for a little while - that was a nice release of physical tension. I also met a Math professor in his mid-forties whose been teaching at the University since 1990. He and I played ping-pong for almost two hours and he was whoopin' my ass. Although he did give me a number of tips about how to hold the paddle and how to swing properly, so I made a lot of progress.

This weekend we expect a large typhoon on the coast, fortunately I'm a little further inland, so it won't be getting to the university. However one of the teachers has invited me to go with her to one of the islands on Sunday. These islands are within the delta and further up-river, but still a typhoon is a typhoon, so I'm waiting to see if that trip is still a go.

My teacher, Julie, invited me to go to her house on Monday (she also invited Ben) and we'll celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival (中秋节) - kind of like an early Thanksgiving.

Besides that I'm just hanging out around school - still no Internet in my room, so no pictures to show everyone, and my Chinese is still weak, so I'll practice some of that in conjunction with my lesson planning, and... that's about it.