And like that... they were gone

Well, the fam is gone, and I'm still left with my work - and now I have no approaching reunion to occupy my mind.
It was great having them here, and I feel more secure with myself as far as my work, I just wish... I don't know... that they were staying a little longer, that I had as much leisure to learn and enjoy myself as everyone thinks I should, that my Chinese were better, that I could go more places away from this campus... I could go on, but wishing won't make things happen.

So it's back to the ol' salt mines I guess.

Still the visit was what I needed to perk me up some. I may not sound so 'perky' but I'm more sure about what and how I'm teaching, and I was glad to bring (nearly) all of my friends together.

On the academic side of things my Friday classes were pretty lousy - I just didn't know what to give them and was in a mental rut, so I did a review of material from last week, gave them some topics in the news to advocate feelings for, and then gave them free time to do work from other classes.
...yeah, I wasn't feeling too pleased with myself after that - the students weren't upset, but that wasn't much consolation.

The Miners have landed...

At last the day has come. Dad, Mom and Tom are here and (as would be expected of any loving family) they're already making changes to my apartment.
Some of the changes are certainly necessary - for instance a new hot plate for cooking, some more dishtowels, a better inside-doormat, and a more "official" wastebasket - but it would be nice if we could just sit around for a while and relax.
(I guess it's in the genes - can't stay still for too long).

We just took it easy today, got Mom and Dad to their hotel room, had lunch with some of my friends, went shopping for some things and had dinner. They all seemed to enjoy my choice for dinner - it was lighter fare than most of the Chinese food they'd been having so far. It wasn't American food (I would never stoop so low when I have guests in China), but it was a little more "American" in that there was only one vegetable dish (corn, peas and carrot pieces), a scoop of white rice with sesame seeds, and a meat dish more akin to an American style of cooking.

Hopefully tomorrow when we have dinner in a Chinese restaurant again they'll be a little more grounded and able to handle the local food again.

In other news I'm looking to ways I can hold my classes on Thursday and how I can best present my present family (there's just something missing when you're not here Matt).

The balance...

...it might not be cosmic, but it seems to work nonetheless.

Quite suddenly the weather turned really COLD. Not quite freezing, but a long way off from the comfort zone.
When I first came here (almost 3 months ago!) I was given a blanket and a single bed sheet. At the time the temperature was still lingering around the summer levels and thus I converted the insides of my blanket into a mattress top to make my bed at least a little comfortable. This left me with a thin sheet for a blanket, which was all I required a couple months ago, but has since proven inadequate to stave off the frigid nighttime temperatures.
I recently asked my boss if the college can provide me with another blanket, which would serve a dual purpose by allowing me to sleep on the couch while Tom stays with me (yeah, Mom and Dad get the hotel, Tom hangs with his big bro).


I was given my blanket today, while at the same time I was given an extra 16 students in my first Friday morning class.
...I will say that once more for good measure: "an extra 16 STUDENTS!"
...It gets better...
The majority of these students do not have the room in their schedule to even attend my class, so they expect me to provide them with make-up work for review and allow them to take the final exam and call it good.

Allow me to make one thing clear, I am NOT accusing Shelley (轲素芬) of any kind of backstabbing maneuver (I've said it before, I'll say it again: She is AWESOME!), but I get the sense that there is some balance being preserved here - I make a demand, I get what I request, and in addition I get more work that doesn't conflict with my contract.

A quick review of my job requirements: my contract stipulates that I will teach no more than 16 credit hours per week, however there is no written clause that limits the size of my classes.


In other news, Dad, Mom and Tom supposedly arrived in Beijing last night, but at said time I was on the South Campus, judging a speech competition for my college and had turned off my cell phone.
One of the contestants was a student of my Friday class, and when it came time for her speech she went free-form and decided to turn some of her attention on me as I judged. She said a lot of nice things, and being that I am somewhat susceptible to flattery I tried to give my scorecard to someone else so I'd have zero chance of giving a biased assessment of her speech.
In the end I kept it and judged as best I could.
She ended up winning second place (along with around 3 or 4 other students).

At the end I was given an envelope which I didn't think to open until today. I expected a generic "thank you" letter... I was right about the generic "thank you" part, it came, however, in the form of a 100 元 bill.
...wasn't expecting that.


Hope Mom and Dad get a phone and call me soon. I don't see them until Tuesday, but I'd like to hear from them before then nonetheless.

Sending out a request...

Tomorrow I start my new unit on Advocacy. Most of it covers everyday social interaction, trying to put kids in an American setting where they have to speak up for themselves (in English) to get what they want as opposed to what is just given.

One thing I really want to add to the unit, however, is situation-based interaction, and since I don't have any American waiters & restaurants, clerks & hotels, students & colleges, or advocates & demonstrations, I need the next best thing:

Pictures and dialogues.

So I invite you to share the American experience with my students - send me pictures you have of your hometowns, of foods you've eaten, and places you've been. I'll see if I can incorporate them into my lessons.


In other news I arranged a hike today with several of my friends and we went up 大罗山 to pick up garbage. I know it's not exactly the most enjoyable way to spend your last day off before school, but I got quite a few people to come along.


















On the way down, after we had collected our garbage, one of the guys stopped to help an old woman carry some tools and supplies up the way we had just come. He said later that normally such actions to him would seem laughable, or would be met with laughter from others, but that after our exploits today he felt no qualms about extending himself to help others. ...that was cool.

Ah the changes...

Hmm, it's been a while since I wrote something here hasn't it? The first long pause in news was due to an oppressively busy schedule, the second time was due to a lack of news to report, and it's been much the same since then.
However, recently a few notable things have been taking place, most of it kind of personal, but I have a lot of other things I feel comfortable sharing.

Despite being on the opposite face of this wonderful ball of rock, air and a myriad of other elements we call Earth, it didn't take long for me to hear the results of the U.S. Presidential election. The news came from Mom yesterday at exactly 13:28 local Wenzhou time in the form of a two word statement on my cell phone: "Obama WON!"

The other night before this event had come to pass, I was in a classroom as a teacher's aide and the students asked me (among other things) who I supported. I told them I preferred staying out of the political scene, but given the choice I'd go for the younger, more optimistic candidate.


For my part in this "new age of change" I've been looking into a program called Future Generations© and its graduate program for a Master's Degree in Applied Community Change and Conservation, as well as its volunteer program for university students called the Green Long March.
I mentioned the G.L.M. in my classes and asked the students to look it up online in order to help with our talk about "Advocacy" next week. Most of the students seemed unable to grasp that the homework was for them to research the subject themselves and continued to ask me "what does it mean?".

In the coming months I'll continue my personal "clean-up-crusade" on the mountain near my school, but I'd like to make it more than that - I want people to see what crap I'm bringing off the summit and make it clear that we ALL need to be more responsible. I also want to involve all my students so that I can communicate with the locals and make my students see what's up there being destroyed through carelessness. But at the same time I don't want it to interfere with their studies.


I also loaned my copy of Uncle Mike's book "Following John Muir" to a friend of mine who's quite fluent in English. Thus far she's only looked at the pictures and not touched on all the great writing, but hopefully she'll get to the literature later.

Where have all the students gone?

My two morning classes today were great, the students participated in all that I assigned them and followed directions well. What I taught they seemed to understand, and what I asked them to do, they did.

My evening class was a different story. It's my last class for this week (sports meet cancels the Thursday and Friday classes) and same as last week there was an attendance shortage.
My class roster shows 35 students registered, tonight I had something on the order of 25 attendees, about 5 were auditors. My students seem to think it's acceptable to just skip the class for these singing competitions (there was another one last Monday) as long as they call me at the start of class or have their friends tell me - some don't even bother doing that.
I've made it clear that every class counts for 6% of their grade this semester, and the Midterm next week counts for 20%. I'm not going to enjoy giving any F's (I don't think of myself as being sadistic), but a number of these students are headed in that direction.

Last night I had an annoying disagreement through cell phone texting with a girl who I said 'hi' to the first week I was here (she just saw me recently and decided to start talking). I don't know her other than that she has a boyfriend who does Tai Quan Dao (Taekwondo) and she asked if she and her boyfriend can come to my apartment next weekend to learn English (knows nothing about me and practically invites herself). I told her she could come to my office during the week because I'm busy during the weekends and she went into a long spiel about how she doesn't care if I don't invite them to my apartment and how foreigners are always 'busy' when people try to be nice to them.
I told her straight up that I AM busy (+240 students, weekend lesson planning) and told her she can suggest another time (I felt like saying a lot more and much less nicely, but I guess that's one reason why cell phones have such small keypads - the necessary precision in button-mashing filters out your angry responses). She said sorry she didn't consider foreigner's "territory awareness" but MY GOD! If you haven't exchanged more than three sentences with someone in public you're not in a position to invite yourself to their apartment!


Aside from these frustrations I'm actually having a very good time here and thinking more and more about renewing my contract. Admittedly this isn't the best place to learn Mandarin because of the local dialect, but the people by and large are very friendly: the intellectuals are great fun regardless of their level of English, and I've even managed to make friends with the head cook at the Oujiang dining room. His name is 张 六 九 (surname, given name). His given name is the year he was born ('69)!


There are also some new foreigners here; a family from Georgia that as far as I know does everything except eat through the Internet. The mother Mary Ellen is teaching an Organizational Studies course in the college for the next 10 weeks while the husband Lee teaches business through the Internet, the two kids (Carter and Madison) do school through the Internet, and the nephew Alex (he's close to my age) works on completing a master's degree in education through (...would you believe it...) the Internet.
They seem pretty nice, but not particularly keen to soak up the local culture... eh, if it's not your cup a' tea...

Always something...

Since my last blog there's hardly been any lull in activity of any kind. Either I'm off on an adventure and doing something with people, or I'm preparing my lessons (on my computer in my apartment or on a notepad some random place).
Good news is I've hammered out my grading criteria for the remainder of the semester and now I have a template for next semester. Bad news is now I have to start failing students that aren't trying their best (or at all).

Before I forget, I need to add this little tidbit: Last week I saw a play with my "English-conversation-partner/Chinese-teacher" Julia about some high school students that have done very poorly on an exam and try to convince their teacher to give them the keys to the safe so they can change their answers and pass. I found the play a little disturbing and the premise and outcome a little cliché by American standards, but I think a lot of the students really enjoyed the performance.

The stage - low-budget, but I say use what works.










The Street Petshop of Wenzhou - rabbits, hamsters, guinea pigs and parakeets.




On Saturday I... ...go on, guess ...you'd never imagine I'd do this over the weekend... I went hiking with the Crazy English Club. This time we carried up a barbecue grill and some tents and sleeping bags that were rented from the school. We went way up into the pass and set up camp in the empty side-channel near one of the reservoirs.










Campsite - shared by ~100 people






I didn't stay the night, I had to get down and get up the next morning to run the 1500-meter in the 瓯江 学院 sports meet (the teacher's race, not the student race).

Jia Jing and Xiao Ming both walked down with me and then back up again. It was 5 hours round trip and the last three hours walking up they did in the dark. I felt really bad about putting them through that, even though they insisted it was nothing.



In the 1500m race it was only one other teacher and myself, I won by more than a minute and more than half a lap, pushing myself as hard as I could. I don't know what my time was, but I imagine it's the same time Matt would've run if one of his legs were chopped off.

On Monday, Julia (the girl who's been teaching me Chinese) asked me to be a part of a promotional video recording that took place at the same time as my second morning class. I refused, the class was more important, but then she called me after lunch and asked me if I could do it then. The scene involved me speaking to several English-competent students alongside a Swedish exchange student about four years my senior and a Korean professor.

The whole setup was a little odd but, eh.


Today one of the students (not mine) told me he'll be performing in a singing competition next Monday and asked me for two things: 1) English song ideas, and 2) if I'd sing with him. (Fortunately for me, the English faculty and all the other foreign teachers, the competition is at the same time as my Monday evening class, so I could only give him ideas).

This evening, after a day spent in the office talking with a colleague I walked by the cafeteria and found Ben making Dumplings with several of his students. So I got invited to participate and got a free meal out of it.

Very soon now I'm going to give my students a midterm about "definitive experiences" (I've explained the topic many times now), so this week I'm hammering out the last things that they need to do to be ready for the presentation day (I don't have my Thursday & Friday classes next week).