Teaching English in China

*Note: More pictures have been added to the "Around Harbin" album from Steve and I's day off. We went walking down "Walking Street" (aka Center Street), a rather long cobblestone street for strolling and shopping.

OK, if you read my previous post then you should know I have so many things floating around in my head to write about! But I will go with something concrete that everyone is probably curious of anyway... what it looks/feels like to teach English in China!

Before coming we were lured by the "22 hours per week" slogan that our school advertised, as are most people coming to China to teach English (anywhere between 16-25 hrs/week is standard). But once our month long TESOL course was over, we quickly realized that this is easily a 40+ hour per week job! 22 hours refers to the face time we have with students. So add to that the 10 minute break during every class, 'dead' time of sometimes 30 minutes up to 2 hours between classes when you can't really do anything but sit in the office or walk around the block, travel time to various campuses and branches, and [the main time eater of] lesson planning/preparation, and you have somewhere around 40 hours. So many of you are saying, "Well yeah, Jaclyn! I think a 40 hour week is pretty standard. In fact, I work a 40 hour week!" And yes, most of you do. All I'm saying is, we were mentally prepared for something closer to 22 hours and found out that this really is a full time job! I'm not complaining, just trying to let you in on some of what's going on in our lives.

But anyway, these 40 hours are spread across a 6 day week, with Steve and I having Monday off every week. In all, this makes for a really strange schedule! Yesterday I worked a helluva split shift: I had to be up and at a local university by 8:00 AM to teach one 2 hour class, then I had the rest of the day off until I went to teach 3 and 4 year olds at 5:40 PM and a one-on-one with a 16 year old girl from 7:30-8:30. So I left home at 7:30AM and got back at 8:45PM. (Did I fail to mention the 3 hour nap I took in between...?) But that has been a somewhat typical schedule for me this first month, as I am still picking up my own classes and ironing out a more permanent schedule. Steve, on the other hand, is getting close to a firm 22 hour schedule. He already has a typical foreign language school weekend schedule, with 3 classes back-to-back on Saturday and 4 on Sunday.

One side note to make before I continue talking about being a teacher... The one-on-one student that I mentioned is named Sophie. I have a one hour session with her Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays (I know, it sounds like a Jimmy Buffet concert series) from 7:30-8:30PM. She is a 16 year old girl from Harbin. For the past two years she lived in Shanghai with her parents who own a restaurant. She came back to Harbin a few weeks ago to live with her aunt, uncle, and younger cousin (as most Chinese do, she calls her cousin her 'sister' because it's the closest thing to a sister she will ever have) and attend training school for flight attendants. Although she is only 16 years old (she admits she's the youngest in her class at the school) I guess her parents thought it was her best prospect, as you can make a decent living as a flight attendant. Something that I can't really ask outright in China for fear of making her lose face, is whether or not she even had a chance to go on in public school. In China, there are 9 years of compulsory education. When you are 15 or 16 you take the Senior Middle School (equivalent of high school in America) entrance exam. I guess Sophie must not have done well on this exam, so she is destined to vocational school of some type. However, she has a very open and honest relationship with her parents and is pretty mature for a 16 year old Chinese girl, which makes me think that maybe she led a somewhat normal childhood instead of the alternative of being locked in her room to study anytime she wasn't at public school, [insert musical instrument here] lessons, or private language school. So, that is the trade off. Live a happy childhood and one day become a flight attendant, or be a slave to your school books and not enjoy your childhood and one day maybe be a doctor.

One more side note... Because I get done at 8:30 three nights a week, I get to see one of the coolest things about China three nights of the week. No matter the weather, absolutely freezing to mildly comfortable, every night a large group of elderly Chinese people (with the odd teenager or younger couple) can be found in the park/square by our school building dancing the night away! Someone brings a large stereo system and plays various types of music and the couples (or two women together if a husband is missing) waltz around the square. Everyone knows the dances, although you occasionally see a younger person being taught. I can't explain what is so cool about this, but it truly is a bit surreal everytime I see it. I always find myself wanting to just stand and stare at them(and if I was Chinese, I would do just that) but I opt to walk slowly by (alas, I'm Western!) so that I can watch just a little bit longer. Who knows, come summer I might decide to join in.

So, back to teaching. There are many feelings and thoughts that continue to run through Steve and I's minds when it comes to teaching in China. Honestly, it is too difficult to explain many of these thoughts. Interestingly, before coming I thought that Steve would take to teaching much easier than I would and that I might not really like it. However, just the opposite has happened. Steve had expressed to me many of his concerns with this occupation (ESL in China is a completely different thing than teaching in America) and then he found a website that made him feel much better, because it was written by an American psychologist who had taught English in China for several years, and it said all of the same things that Steve had been saying. (The title of this post is a link to that site, but I will also put it here: http://middlekingdomlife.com/guide/index.htm) The site is targeted toward anyone thinking of coming to China to teach English. The picture he paints is wholly accurate, so if you are at all interested in the many, many aspects of teaching in China, this website says it better than I ever could.

In case you don't have time to read that website, I'll go ahead and point out one of the main differences between China and America: the educational system. Of course, we all knew this was true and any American holds certain stereotypes of Chinese students: 1) they study a lot, 2) they are really smart, 3) they are very respectful of their teachers. In reality, these stereotypes are not completely accurate. 1) Yes, they do study, A LOT. This is by no means of their own doing. Their parents make them study and do homework. Parents also make them go to extra lessons everyday after school (before they go home and study). This is because the only thing a child can really do for their parents in this modern Chinese society is succeed in the academic world and get a really great job to support their parents when they are older. Parents are all competing with each other to have the best and brightest student. 2) But that does not mean that all Chinese children are smart! Would that make sense? In ANY setting there will always be a somewhat balanced curve of really smart-->not smart. Just because you are made to study and go to classes all the time does not make you intelligent or particulary bright. And the type of education that is provided in China turns out some of the best linear thinkers around, but lateral thinking ('outside of the box', say) is nil. So to appear smart, Chinese students are made to memorize as much material as they can, encouraged to cheat, and praised for the best rote memorization. And then they come to private school in the evenings... 3) where they experience a whole different way of learning. Foreign language schools usually focus on the listening and speaking skills of English (hence the foreign, native speaking teacher), but these skills are not what any Chinese person really wants/needs. In fact, they just want to pass a written test of grammatical skills, reading, and writing. Once they get to these lessons at a private school, as late as 6:00 or 7:00 in the evening, they are severely uninterested in learning. They look at this time as their 'free time' and would rather be reading a non-educational book or playing computer games. For many reasons (again, read the website!), they are not very respectful of the foreign teacher. We are mainly just monkeys there for their entertainment, to facilitate fun 'learning' games related to English language.

OK, so this post is getting very long. But again, the website I have provided the link for is a MUST read if you find anything in the previous paragraph of interest. Steve and I really love China and being immersed in another culture. However, teaching English has exposed us to one of the not so great facets of the culture: the educational system. It is difficult to teach students day in and day out, knowing that they would rather be anywhere but in your classroom and pitying them because they are your captive for the next 2 hours. As Steve put it, "We live in a city of nearly 10 million people and you NEVER see kids running around or playing. Those old people on the playground equipment? They should be kids. And when you do see kids their parents are two feet away, ready to wipe their hands or mouths as they try to play like a normal kid."

The best way for me to sum all of our feelings up may be like this: Many people are drawn to the teaching profession because they crave the fulfillment of imparting knowledge to and really impacting those few truly great students. But our jobs here bring little of that satisfaction, as we are ill equipped to really "teach" anything due to a number of environmental factors. We like to do things well if we do them at all, and at times it feels like that isn't even possible here.

Whew, this is such a downer post! But I don't mean it to be. The truth is, Steve and I feel incredibly lucky to be here in China. We love the food, the culture, the people, and the feeling of being somewhere that is truly unique. We knew all along that teaching English was just the catalyst to get us here. Our contracts right now do not allow for any vacation days or time off, which makes teaching a bigger part of our lives for these first six months. Come August/September, we will hopefully have signed a contract with another school with lots of vacation days built in so we'll be able to travel and see more of this magnificent country. So, you should certainly not be feeling sorry for us after reading this! That was NOT my intention for this post. I mean, we live in China! That is awesome and way cooler than anything else I could imagine doing right now! Just riding the bus around the city is an adventure here. I just wanted to bring one facet of this unique culture to light and possibly clear up some misconceptions.

And don't forget, I get to see dancing Chinese folks in down parkas every other night. Life is good...

Blogging

So, I've had a couple of thoughts on keeping this blog that I'd like to share because I forget everything else that I want to write (but more on that later).

First off, this blog was inspired by Mike H., a friend of ours in California. I had told him of a few of Steve and I's future plans, and so he pulled me aside at the wedding and told me it would be a great idea to keep a blog. Not only for you all, the devoted readers, but also for ourselves. After all, it would be a terrible shame to forget everything that we had done/will be doing! I only wish I had started it earlier so that we could have chronicled our time in Eleuthera, Bahamas and Estes Park, CO and all of the little trips in between. But alas, it took moving to China to get it going. But I'd like to say thanks to Mike, because I really have enjoyed keeping this blog. And it's been a much better/easier medium than the mass e-mails I sent out a few years ago when I was in China.

But there is also one frustrating thing about the blog. It's not really blog specific so much as it's 'just how life is.' Here goes: often, I am walking down the street with the most brilliant commentary of all time running through my head. Something that I really want to share with my friends, family and the world! I'm talking about golden material, usually having to do with snow, ice, students, teaching, China life, etc. But by the time I reach home I have forgotten everything that I wanted to write! It's like waking up and having that dream still running through your head in vivid color, but as soon as you start to explain it to someone you realize that the details are actually quite fuzzy.

Anyway, I just wanted to tell Mike thanks for inspiring the blog, everyone else thanks for reading, and just know that there are so many great thoughts and comments that will never become blog posts! But we're trying...

We love you all! Thanks for reading. And if you have any specific questions about our lives here, leave a comment and we'll answer you in our next blog.

Our Doorbell

After we'd been here a week or two, we discovered that we had an awesome doorbell built into our outer door. You see, we have two front doors, the metal outer door and the nice looking wood inner door. And our prison-like outer door has a tiny red button on it that is our doorbell, of which I have provided a recording!
So head on over to Youtube and have a listen.

The doorbell says "你好. 请开门."
Translation: "Hello! Please open the door!"
Direct, yet friendly.

In other news, we made french toast this morning! Jaclyn says that the menu title would have been "Homestyle French Toast with Orange Zested Simple Syrup." I bought some brown sugar at the store for super cheap (less than a dollar for 500g), so we made our own syrup to go along with the french toast. Halfway through making it, Jaclyn spotted an orange that we needed to get rid of, so in went the orange juice. And the syrup turned out surprisingly well for just water, brown sugar, and orange juice. Yeehaw!

It's snowing again this morning as well. Yay. Another slushy mess outside this week! And that's all for now. I have to save some of my brilliant material for later...

Check out the new pics

The long-awaited apartment pictures are hot and ready. Check out the link there on the right.

In other news, today was my first full day off in two weeks. After a long weekend of teaching, it's been a welcome break. We slept in, then decided to go try our hand at mastering the bus system. Or at least one bus line among the many, many different buses in the city. We got a link from another Sunshine teacher to an online bus route map, so we were able to figure out which bus we needed to go on to get to our destinations for the day, the Xuefu Book Store and the Metro [German Import Store]. So we hopped on the 209 bus and hoped for the best. We got off a stop too soon for the bookstore, but it was no big deal and we found this five-story book land pretty easily. Jaclyn picked up a couple of Chinese books to spur her studies. The fifth floor there houses all the English books, including zillions of books for Chinese folks learning English. I was hoping to find something to read when I've got nothing else to do, but they really only had "the classics" in English. Surprisingly, I wasn't in the mood for Jane Eyre, Sense and Sensibility, or David Copperfield, and so I walked out empty handed. Outside of the book store, we grabbed an interesting snack from a street vendor- it was a large crepe-like shell painted with egg stuff and red paste, folded over two pieces of bread, a hot dog, some potato shreds, and greens. And they were only 3 yuan each. So, two for less than one dollar. Not a bad price for lunch.
Next, we went over to the Metro to see what Western delights they had. Everything was wonderfully expensive, and the store wasn't as much of a paradise of unhealthy Western food as we thought it might be (or that it was in Dalian, says Jaclyn). My favorite irrationally expensive item was a six pack of Corona (not to be confused with "Cerono," a very well disguised knockoff that we've seen) for 225 yuan, or a bit north of $30. We did get a bottle of Chilean Cabernet there, since Chinese wine (called Great Wall) is probably best described as nasty, cheap dessert wine. So here's to hoping it fits the bill at all. We also got some spaghetti fixings, Chips Ahoy, and M&Ms to bolster our stash of chocolate (thank you Dawn!). Jaclyn and I are too cheap to splurge on too many expensive (though tasty and missed) Western yummies.

The picture in this post is just a random picture of the city that I took while Jaclyn and I were walking around, so...yeah.

Whelp, it's dinnertime. Adios.

We've been busy and sick

Hey guys!

Sorry it's been so long. I kept hoping that Steve would post something (it's totally his turn!) but alas... Anyway, there really isn't much to report because we've been so busy with school. Last Friday we finished our one month intensive TESOL training and this week we've been working on full schedules of 22 hours. Now, we (like you) were thinking that 22 hours would be a piece of cake, but when you do the math that actually means you have about 15 classes that you must write lesson plans for. So we've been busy writing lesson plans and then teaching class and writing more lesson plans! I got really sick the last week of our TESOL course (just a bad cold and a bit of fever) and couldn't kick it for a while. I finally started feeling much better yesterday but Steve and I both continue to cough and sniffle.

Our one year anniversary was on March 1st. I had to teach for 12 hours that day (Steve taught 5ish) and then we had to go to a dinner that was in honor of one of the teacher's who was leaving and several branch birthdays, including Steve's. So, not quite the 1 year we had in mind, but just looking through our last year of photos it's really quite hard to complain.

Our roommate moved out yesterday, so Steve and I took a break from lesson planning to rearrange and clean everything! We moved into his room, which is much smaller than ours, but it has boat loads of built-in cabinets that we were able to put our clothes in. Up until this point, those clothes that couldn't fit in the very small wardrobe have been laying in folded piles on the floor (or messy heaps half in a suitcase if you're a certain someone...). We feel so much better having them folded neatly on shelves and in cabinets. I was also finally able to deep clean the bathroom and discover that both our bathtub and sink were yellow, not gray. So we did a lot of sweeping and a lot of putting things in cabinets and on shelves that we were unable to do up until now because of our roommate. And let me tell you, I feel soo much better! I love being able to nest as soon as I get somewhere but I had to wait over a month this time! Ahh. So I guess that means we are finally ready to take some pictures of the apartment and post them. I have to go to class right now, so I don't have time, but we'll definitely get apartment photos up soon.

Hey, does anyone want to teach my class of 4-5 year olds? We're doing colors today!! No...? Nobody...? OK, I guess I better go then.