It's Sunday, our one-day weekend. Actually, this is the first day I've had totally off since I got here. Most of the rest of our group went off to Hangzhou, a couple of hours away. I could have gone, it sounds like they might hang out with some friends of our Chinese assistant, but my tour goes there next week anyway. So I'm 'stuck' here with my internet on my friend's computer...
This morning, me and the other person who's still here went to the Haining leather factory, which is this huge indoor mall - I mean huge - and it's all leather products. I think there might have been a bank, for people to withdraw money, and I also saw a small convenience store...just so people don't pass out during their leather shopping...other than that, it was just acres of leather. On the way back, it was kind of hard to find a taxi, so while I was waiting out on the street someone offered me a ride in his motorbike. He spoke okay English, and he had a helmet, so I accepted. Surprisingly enough, I made it back safely, so I gave him a tip, and he accepted. I'm never really sure about these things, they have a strange money culture here where sometimes they will get offended if you do these things (tipping isn't customary here.) I heard one time one of our people (actually his assistants of course) got in an argument with a cab driver, and they eventually left the cab. Just so there were no hard feelings though, he left some money on the back seat - and the cab driver saw this, crumpled it up, and threw it back at him. I've also heard a couple of stories about people bargaining, and actually getting lower prices than they bargain for. Like someone saw a leather belt for 120, and asked for seventy, and then the lady offered sixty five...I don't know if that's an expression of shame, or what. I know other places in the world you'd never get away with that...
Anyway, I'm enjoying our kind of rare down time, next weekend we will be off again, and then starting our final assignment...I have a few hours left before I have to give this laptop back to my friend.
Saturday, July 28, 2007
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Been a while
I'm at my new school, and internet access has been impossible. We have internet at school, but just about all of the sites I use are either blocked, or inaccessible for some reason. Yesterday I was able to sign on to gmail by using a url they haven't publicized for a couple of years; today, I couldn't.
So I'm done with Hongda middle school (though I will be back at the high school) and new we're at a new primary school. For whatever reason, all of my placements for the summer are in this one city, Haining, which I guess is good, because there are some things that are familiar. All of UCE's placements are here in Zhejiang province, so it's not like I'm missing anything too different anyway.
Our new school is pretty different. It's a little bit less, well, capitalist, a little bit smaller, and we've seen the headmaster more in the last two days then we did in the entire time at Hongda. The classes are much better behaved, and also somewhat better prepared, in terms of resources and such, but they do work us harder than in Hongda. (Our contract for the summer specifies up to 36 teaching hours a week; in Hongda we had to work in the low twenties, here were are about thirty, and all of us are exhausted. Another six hours would probably put us over the edge.) All in all, most of us like it better here, although the amenities are pretty spartan. (I will have to learn to do my laundry on my own - no washing machine or dryer.) Also the food is pretty basic, so I'm doing more eating out - which is kind of nice in its own right. Anyway, I'll keep in touch when I can. Even though we're working harder, things feel like they've slowed down a little bit, because only a few of us from our last placement came here.
So I'm done with Hongda middle school (though I will be back at the high school) and new we're at a new primary school. For whatever reason, all of my placements for the summer are in this one city, Haining, which I guess is good, because there are some things that are familiar. All of UCE's placements are here in Zhejiang province, so it's not like I'm missing anything too different anyway.
Our new school is pretty different. It's a little bit less, well, capitalist, a little bit smaller, and we've seen the headmaster more in the last two days then we did in the entire time at Hongda. The classes are much better behaved, and also somewhat better prepared, in terms of resources and such, but they do work us harder than in Hongda. (Our contract for the summer specifies up to 36 teaching hours a week; in Hongda we had to work in the low twenties, here were are about thirty, and all of us are exhausted. Another six hours would probably put us over the edge.) All in all, most of us like it better here, although the amenities are pretty spartan. (I will have to learn to do my laundry on my own - no washing machine or dryer.) Also the food is pretty basic, so I'm doing more eating out - which is kind of nice in its own right. Anyway, I'll keep in touch when I can. Even though we're working harder, things feel like they've slowed down a little bit, because only a few of us from our last placement came here.
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
So I haven't said anything yet about the actual teaching. Really, it's not like there is much that qualifies as learning. We are only here for two weeks (two and a half more teaching days) and there are no textbooks or curriculum. There is one paperback with five lessons in it - only one copy - which I got a couple of days ago, they don't really make it obvious that they were there or how to get them. Mostly, it's a matter of games, or whatever teachable thing I can think of at the moment. Both of my classes are supposedly third grade, but one of them doesn't know much of anything, and won't behave. Mostly they just like it when I watch movies with them - in Chinese - to the point that they start chanting "watch TV, watch TV" and I can't do much else. I'm trying to find what else I can do that they like that has some educational content - today I stumbled upon hangman, which they apparently know and like, and that did them for the entire period.
I guess for a lot of these schools, having foreign teachers is kind of a show piece. They charge pretty hefty fees - I heard it's like a thousand dollars for a two-week program - and nobody really knows where that money goes. The Chinese teachers get paid about a thousand yuan ($130) for the two weeks, and our assistants do it as a sort of volunteer internship-type thing. Even our flights over here probably only cost UCE something on the order of $1,000 each, and I can't imagine our other costs add too much more to that. (And there is one of us for every 25 kids.) So, this whole operation is probably pretty profitable for somebody. Our principal for this section of the school, who is the highest person we've had contact with (there is a whole high school attached, and I think somebody who has control over both units) is a pretty young guy, doesn't speak any English...but knows how to drink. He's gone out with us occasionally, and paid for us.
I guess none of this has much to do with me though...as long as they're willing to pay my airfare and give me spending money (they will starting in September) then I won't ask any questions.
I guess for a lot of these schools, having foreign teachers is kind of a show piece. They charge pretty hefty fees - I heard it's like a thousand dollars for a two-week program - and nobody really knows where that money goes. The Chinese teachers get paid about a thousand yuan ($130) for the two weeks, and our assistants do it as a sort of volunteer internship-type thing. Even our flights over here probably only cost UCE something on the order of $1,000 each, and I can't imagine our other costs add too much more to that. (And there is one of us for every 25 kids.) So, this whole operation is probably pretty profitable for somebody. Our principal for this section of the school, who is the highest person we've had contact with (there is a whole high school attached, and I think somebody who has control over both units) is a pretty young guy, doesn't speak any English...but knows how to drink. He's gone out with us occasionally, and paid for us.
I guess none of this has much to do with me though...as long as they're willing to pay my airfare and give me spending money (they will starting in September) then I won't ask any questions.
Sunday, July 15, 2007
Festivities
Yes, I'm not going to feel too bad about being ripped off for $16 in the streets of Shanghai when my credit card company comes along (just to put things in perspective) and rips me off for at least $80.
So yesterday, we had a sort of induction ceremony into the town of Haining. We went into the best part of town, this little upscale development which is kind of hard to describe - it's almost a city onto itself, with houses, shops, playgrounds, etc. except that it's probably less than a half square mile. First, we sat on stage, while local politicians and stuff made speeches, then we were paired with Chinese families to go eat dinner. That was kind of cool, although you'd be hard-pressed to say that they really represented Chinese families - their house was almost as big as you'd get in the states. Afterwards, there were a bunch of mini-performances from students, these old retired ladies I guess doing opera and dance, and the security guards. The police guys actually had the coolest show, they did a martial arts demonstration, doing things like flipping their adversaries over their shoulders. At one point, one of the guys actually twisted the other guy in a way that AFAICT involved almost pulling the guy's leg out of his socket. Whatever your take on Chinese politics, they do make having a police state look good.
Tensions have calmed somewhat between us and the administration - one of the main guys from our American organization (UCE) has come over for the time being, and he's been really helpful. Now if we could only figure out to do with our crazy old guy - it seems that every once in a while you get some crazy old guy (reading the blogosphere it sounds like this isn't too isolated a phenomenon) who comes to live in Asia because they can't get along with anybody in the states - only problem, we still have to put up with him until he goes out on his own. Last night he insisted on doing interpretive dance while we recited the pledge of allegiance...I think several of us inidividually are about to blow up on him, at least one person already has...
So yesterday, we had a sort of induction ceremony into the town of Haining. We went into the best part of town, this little upscale development which is kind of hard to describe - it's almost a city onto itself, with houses, shops, playgrounds, etc. except that it's probably less than a half square mile. First, we sat on stage, while local politicians and stuff made speeches, then we were paired with Chinese families to go eat dinner. That was kind of cool, although you'd be hard-pressed to say that they really represented Chinese families - their house was almost as big as you'd get in the states. Afterwards, there were a bunch of mini-performances from students, these old retired ladies I guess doing opera and dance, and the security guards. The police guys actually had the coolest show, they did a martial arts demonstration, doing things like flipping their adversaries over their shoulders. At one point, one of the guys actually twisted the other guy in a way that AFAICT involved almost pulling the guy's leg out of his socket. Whatever your take on Chinese politics, they do make having a police state look good.
Tensions have calmed somewhat between us and the administration - one of the main guys from our American organization (UCE) has come over for the time being, and he's been really helpful. Now if we could only figure out to do with our crazy old guy - it seems that every once in a while you get some crazy old guy (reading the blogosphere it sounds like this isn't too isolated a phenomenon) who comes to live in Asia because they can't get along with anybody in the states - only problem, we still have to put up with him until he goes out on his own. Last night he insisted on doing interpretive dance while we recited the pledge of allegiance...I think several of us inidividually are about to blow up on him, at least one person already has...
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Hello
So I've been in China for about a week now, even though it feels like much longer. First we went we went around in Shanghai, did all the tourist stuff for a couple of days, before coming here a couple of hours away to Haining. I'll have pictures of Shanghai to upload at some point, but figuring out how to do that is going to be a bitch and a half. The computers here are slow, but the bigger problem is that everything is in Chinese. I can't even view my blog the regular way typing in the URL like (hopefully) everyone else can; If I want to see it I have to do it an alternate way as a pop-up window so that it doesn't have the blogspot in the URL. I had one of our Chinese assistants translate the error message I got, but it sounds like just the standard "this page is not available" message - I don't know whether or not that means it's blocked, but it happens anytime you try to access a page with .blogspot in the url. (When you just edit the pages the url is blogger.com.)
Stuff here is incredibly cheap, even if half of it doesn't work. I discovered I needed a watch, so I got a fake Omega, figuring if I needed the time I may as well look pretentious also. I paid 120 yuan (about sixteen dollars) for it...when I got back to the bus, people were telling me "man, you got ripped off, you could have gotten that for fifty." As it turned out, they were right, it stopped working the next day. So a couple of days ago, I went into a real store, and found one for twenty (which still works) - and then what I heard was "you can get those for four." Basically I guess you can get stuff arbitrarily cheap, if you know where to look.
The Chinese are very down-to-business, sometimes too much. They don't listen to people lecturing them until they show their hand, by which time it's sometimes too late. There was a whole thing going on between the teachers and the administration (and between the administration and the administration) about curfews. Hongda is a "middle school" (meaning grades 1-8), but most kids live on campus, and the entire compound is walled with security guards and such. Originally the rule was that at least two teachers had to go out together, with their assistants, and all come back by 11. Some of us wanted to stay out later, or go without the TAs. A lot of people just didn't like "the idea of it," which is kind of stupid, because you come to new countries to learn new ideas. But anyway, now two people that I know of are planning to break off early and go back home, this whole dispute apparently being a major factor. They weren't even the ones leading this revolt - I didn't even really know they had opinions on the subject. (Someone else actually stole the remote to the gate from the security guard - also not a particularly good reaction.)
I personally found the whole process of checking in and out to be kind of cumbersome, but I've also been perfectly happy to not stay out late and get rested. I also usually like having my TA when I go out to translate, so I wasn't one of the ones making the fuss. When the headmaster found out that people might be quitting, he relented on the rules, but not everyone seems to have been communicated this fact - we have a meeting with the headmaster in an hour and hopefully we will find out what's really going on. In any case, I'm still here, the food is great, though I can't quite keep vegetarian, and I'm about to go have some.
Stuff here is incredibly cheap, even if half of it doesn't work. I discovered I needed a watch, so I got a fake Omega, figuring if I needed the time I may as well look pretentious also. I paid 120 yuan (about sixteen dollars) for it...when I got back to the bus, people were telling me "man, you got ripped off, you could have gotten that for fifty." As it turned out, they were right, it stopped working the next day. So a couple of days ago, I went into a real store, and found one for twenty (which still works) - and then what I heard was "you can get those for four." Basically I guess you can get stuff arbitrarily cheap, if you know where to look.
The Chinese are very down-to-business, sometimes too much. They don't listen to people lecturing them until they show their hand, by which time it's sometimes too late. There was a whole thing going on between the teachers and the administration (and between the administration and the administration) about curfews. Hongda is a "middle school" (meaning grades 1-8), but most kids live on campus, and the entire compound is walled with security guards and such. Originally the rule was that at least two teachers had to go out together, with their assistants, and all come back by 11. Some of us wanted to stay out later, or go without the TAs. A lot of people just didn't like "the idea of it," which is kind of stupid, because you come to new countries to learn new ideas. But anyway, now two people that I know of are planning to break off early and go back home, this whole dispute apparently being a major factor. They weren't even the ones leading this revolt - I didn't even really know they had opinions on the subject. (Someone else actually stole the remote to the gate from the security guard - also not a particularly good reaction.)
I personally found the whole process of checking in and out to be kind of cumbersome, but I've also been perfectly happy to not stay out late and get rested. I also usually like having my TA when I go out to translate, so I wasn't one of the ones making the fuss. When the headmaster found out that people might be quitting, he relented on the rules, but not everyone seems to have been communicated this fact - we have a meeting with the headmaster in an hour and hopefully we will find out what's really going on. In any case, I'm still here, the food is great, though I can't quite keep vegetarian, and I'm about to go have some.
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