Thumbing my way

As the great American singer/songwriter Eddie Vedder once put it, "No matter how cold the winter, there's a springtime ahead." This lyric has never struck such a chord with me as it did today, while I was listening to my iPod and walking down the street as a warm Spring breeze caressed my face. It is absolutely beautiful here, with temperatures in the 50s and 60s, and a high of 71F tomorrow! We can only hope this weather lasts for months to come.

Anyway, one of our devoted readers has sent a laundry list of questions about life in China, so I am going to do my best to answer a few of them. Here goes...


1. Please tell us about Chinese tv (if you have one), radio, newspapers...how do you get the news? Is satellite unknown where you are? If you have a tv, do you pay for that service (like cable)?
We do have a TV, but we only get one channel. This channel comes in only when it wants to. We have tried messing with our antenna and tying a metal spatula to the antenna, but all to little or no avail. This one channel is the local Harbin channel, which shows Harbin news and weather and a lot of extended commercials for local hospitals, etc. When the Winter Universiade (worldwide college sports competition) was here in February we were able to watch a few of the competitions on our fuzzy channel. We could pay for cable if we wanted it. I had a Chinese woman tell me that it was quite cheap, maybe $15 for the whole year. Cable consists of almost all Chinese language channels, with the exception of CCTV9 which shows some English language news and has short Chinese lessons. I have not heard of anyone who has satellite TV, but I honestly don't know if this is an option or not. We catch up on most of our news at CNN.com and TheOnion.com, because these are the two most reliable news source to which we have access.

2. What do the Chinese think of Obama? Do they like him? Do they even know who he is?
Steve and I have had several university classes called "one-offs" wherein you teach a university class that is normally taught by a Chinese teacher for one class period [of their semester] so that they can get some exposure to a native speaker. In these classes I often talk about Obama. All of the Chinese people know who he is and most seem to like him very much. However, they know almost nothing about him. The most common things you hear are that they like him much more than Bush (when I was here two years ago they all hated P. Bush) and they realize that for America to have a black president is a big step in our history. Sometimes they don't understand why, so I use the example of their attitude toward the Japanese and say, "It's kind of like if you had a Japanese president 100 years from now." I think this usually paints a pretty vivid picture for them. Many of the students ask me about the economic crisis as a side note to this conversation. I tell them that Americans have a lot of faith in Obama to "fix" things. The English level of these students is usually quite low, so I explain to them using a few key vocabulary words how we feel about Obama and it usually goes something like this: "Things in America are very bad right now. I know many people who have lost their jobs. We hope, we hope (I usually repeat a lot and re-emphasize things because their listening skills aren't great), that President Obama can fix the economy. But, Obama is very young, yes? and doesn't have very much experience, yes? so we do not know yet. We like Obama and we hope that he can do it. What do you think?" Often, students respond that they believe in America and have faith that things will be set right quickly. This is always interesting for me to hear and I'm not sure if they mean it or not.


3. What does a Chinese map of the world look like? I suppose China is at the center; does it feel funny to look at it like that? Do the Chinese know world geography very well?
Yes, a Chinese map has China at the center, with America across the Pacific to it's right. It does seem a little odd sometimes at first glance when I look at the map. It's like, "Wow, something is really off with South America.. oh wait, that's Africa." It is difficult to know whether or not they know geography very well because of the language gap, but I would lean toward saying no to this question. I have tried to talk about Mexican food and the reason we learn Spanish in America, but I often can not get them to say either the Chinese or the English for Mexico. I'll draw a little map and be like, "You know, the country under America..?" They just shake their heads. There have also been other instances when students couldn't name a country in Chinese or English, so I think that geography is not as emphasized in school as other subjects. I do know that most of their curriculum is based around math and Chinese language.


4. Do the Chinese teens/young adults listen to American music? What do they listen to? Do they all have IPods? Blackberries?
Yes, teens and young adults do listen to some American music. I would say more than half of the older students I've taught could name a few American artists. However, not all. And the artists they know are often a bit out of date or odd picks... For example, boys here love the Backstreet Boys and are shocked to learn that this was 13 year old girl music many years ago in America. Avril Lavigne is also a very common name that I hear, which I think is strange. Their main focus is on pop music, because that is what they can find. I do have a one-on-one student who likes "underground" music, but I haven't discovered which artists he means yet. They also like techno and club type music. Just about every person with any money in China has either a really nice cell phone that plays MP3s or an MP3/MP4 player. iPods are quite rare, but people do have them. MP3 players are so plentiful and cheap that an iPod seems like somewhat of a waste to most of them. However, they seem to spend a lot of money on phones. Phone prices are about the same, without the bonus of 'free phone with contract' deals. So people are regularly spending a few hundred dollars on a phone that will do everything (with text messaging, internet access, and MP3 player being the most desired qualities) when they might not make this much money in a month. It's just an important purchase for them and has quickly become a 'must have' for all Chinese people in cities.

Utilities and the like

A few more things that I wanted to get out there:

- It's my Dad's birthday... HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD! And Amy's birthday was yesterday... HAPPY BIRTHDAY AMY! And I think there are a lot of other birthdays coming up, so if it's your birthday then... HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

- A few weeks ago the electric company shut off our power because the money that had been fronted by our school [for electricity] had been used up and apparently we had consumed a bit too much power [without payment] for the comfort of the electric company. So off it went. Upon inspection, Steve immediately noticed that the big box on the 3rd floor that houses everyones power meters had a smaller box above it with the breaker switches. This box was not locked. Steve knew that we could just flip our switch back on, then we'd have power, and voila! problem solved. We did the right thing, however, and went and paid the bill with some extra deposit. (In case you're curious but you're too politely Western to ask, I'll tell you how much it costs: It was about $20 for a month and a half of electricity, but this was when we had a 3rd person living with us and we often plugged in our space heaters overnight. I'm expecting power costs to go down in the next few months.) Of course, Steve needed to plug in the hot water heater so he could take a shower before class... so we saved the power company the trouble of coming over to flip our switch back on and went ahead and did it ourselves.

- A woman came to our door sometime last week with a stapled packet of receipts. I could understand very little of what she was saying, but I knew that she wanted us to pay her some money. When we told her we weren't interested, she told us that that wasn't an option and that the whole building was paying her. Steve was still very hesitant to hand over the money, but I told him that I knew she wanted us to pay her money and that she wasn't going to leave until we did... I could understand that much of her Chinese! (Of course, our neighbors were watching much of this from their door.) Steve did the smart thing and called the school and had her talk to one of the Chinese staff. Turns out, she's our local garbage lady! Actually, I think she was the business end (hence the money collecting) and her husband is probably the working end. A true Mom and Pop operation, if you will. Anyway, we owed 14 kuai for 3 months of garbage service. (You just stick your bags of garbage, which are all tiny sized [think bathroom garbage can], in the stairwell and they eventually get picked up by some mysterious entity. I often see a man with a biycle retrofitted with a large trailer completely heaped full of tiny garbage bags, so no garbage trucks here.) Well, they are mysterious no more! Can you believe we had to pay $2.05 for this service! Outrageous prices, I'm thinking of switching to another company....

Some things you should know...

I still don't know what all I've thought of to post, but here are a few things that I can remember right now:

A. It's getting really warm! The high today is 57F and tomorrow it will be 62!! Junk, that was quick. The weather is always so bittersweet (no matter where you live) because when it's super cold you think of nothing but warmth. However, as soon as it gets hot you yearn for the cold and layered clothing. Where is it that has nothing but spring and autumn again...?

B. Anyone [Chinese] that I talk to thinks I'm Russian. At least once a day I have to say, "Wo bu shi Eguoren (I'm not Russian)." Even when I teach university classes and the students know that I am their English teacher they ask if I am from Russia. A taxi driver once handed me a Russian phrase book that he had been studying so that I could check it out and another taxi driver asked me to translate the meaning of a Russian word for him. I suppose this is mainly because we live so close to Russia and the history of Russia and Harbin are closely connected. I see this problem as having a good and a bad side.
Bad: If China and Russia have some big falling out [for whatever reason], I'm gonna have to get the heck out of Dodge!
Good: On the flip side, if America and China have some big falling out all I have to do is say, "Damn Yanks. Good to be Russian..."
*Steve has not had this problem but he says that he is rarely in the situation that someone must suppose his nationality. So not sure what they think of him except I usually get a, "He's very handsome!" from Chinese girls who hear we're married.

C. I am in this weird place between knowing that everything about China is completely different than America while at the same time not really thinking that anything about our lives in China is different than it would be back home. I've been here before. When I returned from China a few years ago people would always ask me the burning question of, "What's China like?? I mean, how different is it?" But this was the most difficult question for me to answer, because after two trips to China I had gotten accustomed to so many of the differences that I barely registered them as "differences"... it was more like my brain had divided things into China and America so when I saw something I didn't think anything of it, just knew that it belonged to the China side. Having Steve with me on this 3rd trip provides an interesting perspective. We were sipping some coffee the other day and I asked if he really noticed any differences. His response was to the effect that the two countries are completely black and white, apples and oranges. So I guess that's it... the differences are so deeply and culturally seeded that they can not easily be explained. I still don't have a quick and easy answer to the, "How's it different?" question. Sorry...

D. We have found one of our new favorite treats: popcorn! Much like one of those specialty popcorn stores that sell candied popcorn of all different colors and flavors, there are some street vendors around town who stir popcorn into big vats of sugar coating of various colors and sell a bag of it for 2 kuai and it's always hot and fresh! Yummm.

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.