Vacation!

Starting Friday, we have PRC National Day, which means we get a week off from school. I'm really excited. I've got a friend coming in to visit from Guangdong, and we're going to go to Lijiang (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Town_of_Lijiang) and Tiger Leaping Gorge (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiger_Leaping_Gorge).

Last time I went to Tiger Leaping Gorge I had food poisoning, so I almost died. I'm hoping that this time I'll get the chance to enjoy the scenery a lot more.

It's going to be so nice to get a break. I'm just worried that my students will forget all the English that they've already learned over the course of the holiday.

Meetings

We have a meeting for all the teachers every week on Sunday, and it's pretty boring. I can't understand anything that's happening, so I just doodle or lesson plan. Anyways, all the teachers are supposed to start turning in the notes that they take during these meetings (so that they can tell that we're all paying attention), but when I was told this I explained that I have no idea what's happening ever. The response, in Chinese, "just write down random things in English, it's OK." Very soon, whoever is in charge of this, will be looking at English song lyrics interspersed with things like "something about a test," "teachers must....uhhh....do something every day," "in class...students.....fish tacos???"

Eating Meat

One of the things about living in rural China is that you are constantly aware of what exactly the meat that you eat is. You see pigs being taken to market, you see the raw cuts of meat on the side of the street, today I saw a rabbit being skinned, and it's a part of everyday conversation. I got invited over to dinner at a friend's house, and he told me that he was going to kill a chicken for me. It was a tasty chicken, but there's a certain lack of separation that I'm used to in the states.

Today I had lunch with two of my students, and we were eating in this courtyard staring straight at the pig pen (that was also in the courtyard). It was an odd experience looking at the animal whose fellow you're currently eating playing in its pen and knowing that pretty soon it'll get eaten too. My friend, a vegetarian, was walking around her school, and made friends with a donkey. A few hours later, she saw the donkey's head sitting in the refuse pile.

Graphic story time. Seriously. Do not high-light this if you want to remain happy for the rest of your day. Some of the second year fellows were walking along when they saw a cute little puppy, so they stopped to play with it. One of them decided that this puppy was so cute that she wanted to take it home with her and keep it as a pet. So, they told the owner of this dog that they wanted it. The owner says OK, and says, "just wait a sec." He then heads inside. They assume he's going to grab dog food or a leash or something. He comes out about 5 minutes later with a platter of raw meat. They decide not to pay him for the puppy. 


Another fellow, also a vegetarian, ran into a field because she saw a cow and wanted to go say hi and get a closer look. She gets close, and the cow gets its throat cut. She freaks out, starts screaming, sobbing, and puking everywhere. So there's blood, vomit, tears, and a crowd of very bemused Chinese people wondering what the crazy foreign lady is going on about. 


Anyways, all this tends to make you much more aware of where the food you're eating is coming from, which while disconcerting, I think is in general a good thing, and something that people tend to forget when just buying a hunk of meat at the grocery store or biting into a hamburger at a restaurant.

My Town!

While I am in rural China, I'm living in one of the larger towns for my district. In recent years, China has been pushing towards consolidating elementary schools, middle schools, and high schools. My town doesn't have a high-school, but it does have a large middle school where kids come from villages up to three-four hours travel away to go to class, and that's where I teach.

Apart from the middle school, there are also a lot of businesses around here that are involved in buying produce from the surrounding fields. This industry means that the town also has things like multiple restaurants, a plethora of small shops, and tractors parked everywhere. It's also on the main (2-lane) road between Dali (population: 600,000) and Lijiang (population: 1,300,000) so that means that it has three small hotels. Thankfully, my small little town also has a supermarket, which is a huge luxury for rural China.

Despite the agricultural businesses and hotels that make their home here, it's still a very small village; if you walk in any direction for five minutes you'll end up in a field with Chinese farmers looking at you and wondering what the strange foreigner is doing. We also get to say things like, "meet at the intersection in 15 minutes," and it's not confusing because we only have the one intersection.

I've been really enjoying my town so far, and it's fun to have the shop owners slowly get to recognize me and meet people around here. It's going to be a nice place to live for the next two years. Sadly, I'm encouraged to not say the name of the town where I'm living because then people would be able to look up the name of the school. I'm also not allowed to share a lot of things on this blog, so just be aware that you're not necessarily getting the full story by reading this.

Cheating

Cheating is a huge problem here. I knew that intellectually, but I hadn't really realized the extent of it until last night when I was grading homework. The assignment involved writing questions and answers, and well over half the class either copied their answers from someone, or allowed their answers to be copied. It was pretty depressing. I had way too many people who asked "Is your last name uhat" (someone had originally written "is your last name what?" and it must have gotten miscopied) told me that "My name is Neville," wrote that their last name was "Guopeng" (which is a first name coincidentally) or told me about a white key, a red orang, and a blue pen, and said that "am is student."

I'm not too worried about this as a long term problem though. It's what these kids do in every class, and this is what happens in every school in China. Even in college, most Chinese essays are copied off of the internet. They're soon going to realize that it's impossible to copy homework for English class, unless you actually understand the grammar patterns so that you can change key words (which is what I'm trying to teach them in the first place) and they're going to understand that the consequences are going to be more of a pain than actually doing the work themselves. As a long term goal, I want these kids to understand that copying homework is wrong, and that they should do the work themselves so that they can learn the material. For now, I'm just going to settle on being terrifying.

I've got a bike!

I've got a bike / you can ride it if you like / it's got gears and disk brakes and things to make it really light/ I'd give it to you if I could/ but it was really expensive

(here's hoping people actually recognize the song)

Visitng some houses

So, I did two house visits this weekend, and the difference between the two places I visited could not have been more pronounced. Both of the girls whose houses I visited are some of the best kids in my class, but one of the girls is apparently the daughter of the richest man in town. I walked into their house and my gast was extremely flabbered. The flat screen sitting in the living room, surrounded by huge leather sofas, was bigger than my wingspan, and the stone staircase went up at least two stories and maybe more. It was the nicest looking house I've ever been in, and I went to the Academy and then to Georgetown so I've been in some nice house. 

In contrast, the other place that I visited (actually the mother's hair cuttery) was in another village about 20 minutes away by car, and was much more poor. The floor was cement, it was small and cramped, and you could just generally tell that they weren't that well off. That said, I've got many students that are much much poorer than this family. It was just startling in contrast to the opulence that I had experienced the previous night. 

I mostly talked with the fathers, and they were both really convinced that education was the route to success for their daughters which made me really happy. They were very welcoming, and it was great to see where my students are coming from. 

And....it's Sunday night, so that means I should be frantically preparing for the coming week so I'm off to do just that.