Second Week in QuFu: Small Victories
Week 2
Since having my schedule rearranged, I have found myself with a lot of free time. I am having fun listening to the military training that all my freshmen students have to go through. It is also “fun” to walk around campus and have them get in trouble for staring at me when they’re supposed to be listening to their drill sergeant. (All freshmen in university go through mandatory military training lasting from 2 weeks to a month). My classes will start the last week of September.
(Good camouflage)
The English department finally met up with us to talk about expectations and regulations. Since I am teaching all 6 sections of Speaking and Listening 1 for freshmen, I basically get to do what I want. I have textbooks, and there is a loose “use 50% of the books” rule. After looking at those textbooks, I’ll most likely be using them as homework and for support material. This course will basically be a conversation class. The textbooks seem to cover things like making appointments, answering a phone, how to end a conversation, how to begin a conversations, and ordering food at restaurants, etc. This all seems like very low level stuff compared to what the sophomores were capable of doing during the single class meeting I had with them.
I’m hearing whispers of a school sponsored trip to the Confucius temple this month, so look forward to more on that soon. We (the other foreign teachers and I) have also finally gotten the ball rolling on Chinese classes to begin next week. We picked up our textbooks this week to give approval. My book is an HSK5 (proficiency exam) prep book. It basically contains like 8 practice exams. I’m interested to see how the tutor will spend “class” time to help me prep for it.
Since last week there have been quite a few exciting developments.
The foreign teachers all had a potluck. The new teachers (Kim and I) didn’t have much to contribute since we are still figuring out where to get ingredients and kitchen supplies. We did cut up a lot of fruit though. Sharlyn (another Fellow) made some bread, coleslaw, and some yummy veggie pasta. Karen, a short term visiting physics professor from Canada, brought some bread and baozi. Jordan, a French teacher (from France), brought some wine and an interesting perspective to our political talks about Trump, healthcare, and other things affecting Americans and Canadians. Mike (the host) had prepared another pasta dish, and some banana pudding. It was good to connect with the other foreign teachers on campus.
I met a senior physics student (who likes to point out how young I am). Since 1) I don’t teach seniors, 2) physics students don’t take English, and 3) she’s only 3 years younger than me, I felt safe agreeing to hang out with her. This hangout session comprised the first real test of my Chinese proficiency other than small talk or asking for service in stores in restaurants. She took me on a scooter ride around QuFu. Next to the Confucius temple is a shopping/eating district. Apparently, it is where all the young people go to hang out in town. We ordered some vegetarian (much to the regret of my new friend) noodles, some frozen fruit yogurt, and did some shopping. They (her friend showed up at this point) were very interested in how I would look in Chinese fashion. Unfortunately for me, this meant trying on a lot of clothes I knew wouldn’t fit simply because our bodies are shaped differently (particularly, Western shoulders will almost never comfortably fit into Chinese shirts even if your chest and rest of your torso manage to fit that size). Afterwards, we went to a street next to a shopping center I’ve visited before. This shopping center has a KFC and a Watsons (think Walgreens or CVS with no medication). The cool thing, though, was that this street, apparently, turns into a night market. I would have never guessed. They set up carnival games and have lots of street vendor foods. Afterwards, they drove us back to campus and we shared a meal in one of the school’s many cafeterias. This turned out to be very nice because I had been too overwhelmed to enter the flooded cafeterias on campus thus far. After eating dinner, they wanted to see my apartment. This might sound weird to some people, particularly those going “whoa don’t invite students to your apartment.” However, this curiosity is borne out of the fact that there is a huge difference in where the local staff and students are housed and where the foreign teachers and students are housed. I showed them my apartment to which they lamented that I live in a castle. I asked if they would let my friend (another foreign teacher on campus) see their dorm since she hasn’t any experience with Chinese college campuses. They agreed after warning me that it would be very messy. After collecting the other teacher, we went to see the student dorms.
I didn’t take any pictures as it would have been rude. Just imagine a building from a post apocalyptic zombie movie. There are bars on all the windows (I assume to prevent suicides or accidents or both). The lights in the hallways don’t work. There aren’t showering facilities anywhere in the buildings and students resort to sponge bathing. All the doors look like prison doors, short, metal, and inset into thick walls. All the doors are locked with padlocks if no one is in the room, and left unlocked if a student is inside. Each roommate has a key for the padlock. When you open the door to the dorm, you will see a room smaller than most people’s bedrooms back home. On the left side of the room are bunkbeds to accommodate four students and the right wall is lined with desks. There is a small porch for them to hang laundry. There is barely any room to walk and definitely no semblance of personal space or privacy. In some dorms, there are 6 beds (four on the left wall, and two high rise beds on the right side that have the desks under them).
After showing us their dorm, they wanted to show us where the graduate students stay on campus. The difference is night and day. They have a completely newly renovated building. It has an elevator (my building doesn’t even have an elevator). Central heating and air-conditioning. Motion detecting recessed LED lighting in the hallways that turn on and off as you move down the hall. A fancy restaurant like cafeteria in the basement. Only three students to a room, each room containing their own shower and bathroom. Lockers are next to each of the beds for them to put their personal belongings in. They had an even better porch than my apartment, with laundry drying racks that elevate and lower from the ceiling.
Anyways, that ends the “hang out session”.
Monday the 10th was Teacher Appreciation Day. Sad for me since I no longer have students. But not really, since students still used WeChat to send me messages and found me to give me chocolate. One of my students interviewed me about my love life (I was under the impression it was only going to be sent to my students) and then published it on the school website for a “teacher highlight.” Now faculty and staff all know about my love life so that is fun! If not extremely awkward. But the page also included student comments about what they think of me as a teacher. Since I only had one class with them, a lot of the comments are that I smile a lot, I talk loud (#AmericanProblems), and that I’m pretty.
I also finally got paid my living stipend by my university. And since nothing is really available in stores around here (like measuring spoons and cheese and butter), I am happy to announce I have figured out how to have things like this delivered through the Chinese version of Amazon (TaoBao). I may or may not have also purchased a popcorn popper for the microwave (anyone who knows me won’t be surprised by this).
This week also included my first trip to the gym. The other foreign teacher and I joined the most “western” gym we could find. They send us the group class offerings in a weekly WeChat message. Not that that helps either of us since she can’t read Chinese, and I don’t know any workout language in Chinese. However, after doing some conversions from miles to kilometers and figuring out what speed I needed to be running at… I can now report it is extremely hard to run in polluted air. You really can’t breathe. The weight machines are also a trip, because the weights don’t list what weight they are, not in kilograms or lbs. I might take a silver sharpie and just write my best guesstimate. I maxed out one of the machines though, so I’m pretty sure they’re not calibrated the same way they are in the US. Watching the guys faces though when I put max weight on the leg machines was #priceless.
Yesterday, Tuesday the 11th, I observed a local teacher’s English class. It was a group of junior students doing intensive reading. Their text was about hurricanes and the destruction they cause in the US. So naturally, this North Carolinian had to keep her sh*t together and try not to let her anxiety about Hurricane Florence’s approach mess with the observation. The teacher called on me multiple times during class to explain things like the Salvation Army, portable classrooms, and if “returnees” meant the same thing as refugees in the text. The actual teaching of the class was not as bad as I thought it might be (based on what I hear about Chinese teaching pedagogy towards intensive reading word by word). The teacher still did 98% of the talking, but she focused on language choice (“what words show the power of the storm?”) and article structure (“why would the author choose to break up the narration with this paragraph here?”, “Why are so many of the sentences short and elliptical? What effect does this create?”). The major concerns for me were the lack of student interaction in English (when they did work together it was in Chinese) and the fact that all the students had a reference text which included the article written in Chinese with answers to all the questions and exercises. I talked to the teacher after class and she seemed really open to working together to come up with solutions for these problems which she agrees are problems. She also seemed open to the idea that part of my job and hopes for my role on campus is to hold workshops.
All the teachers in my office (the linguistics office) are really open and friendly. I think the fact that I have relatively proficient Chinese abilities is helping me here. I hope to keep observing classes till my freshmen classes start so that I can keep building connections and relationships with the other teachers in my office and the literature and translation offices. That way, when it comes time for me to actually suggest things like workshops or MOOCs or other professional development opportunities, maybe some one will actually make time in their already overbooked schedules to hear what I and other teachers have to say.
That’s all for now!
(I know I promised to be better about pictures…. but next week really I promise… I really will be better. Below are some photos I took while on a walk out of the North gate of my campus.)