-Finally it's time to add another chapter to this blog thing. For a while I was questioning whether or not I even need to keep it up, as my days have become more routine and there wasn't so much to write about other than "my roommate said something funny today..." But! That is not true. I guess it's just getting to the point where it will take a bit longer to accumulate enough interesting things to justify creating a post. So here we go:
-First off, I have to talk about how I finally EXERCISED today! It was pretty amazing. As cold as it's been so far, I haven't had any desire to do anything physical outside. And there aren't exactly any indoor basketball courts for me to play on. Even the gym only has weights outside. But the weather has gradually improved, and suddenly it is amazing out! Today it got up to 65 degrees, and a group of us went out to the sports fields to play some soccer. The pickup game was huge, with a good number more than 11 on each side most of the time. Yet we were playing on only half a field. That turned out to be a blessing because, in case you hadn't heard, when you haven't done so much as run in over two months, it becomes a little difficult to do so. I still had a ton of fun, getting the old endorphins going and remembering how much I love the game. We split teams between Chinese and foreigners, just a team could actually communicate. The locals here are pretty good and SOMEHOW beat us. But I blame it on the fact that it was really a game of 'which team is outnumbered this time?' as people kept coming in and out so often. I came back feeling good, and the pollution was not so bad, as far as I could tell.
-My teaching job has been going pretty steady. It looks like I've locked down a regular time on Sundays, which is the best anyways because it's movie day. Last time we watched Casablanca, a much more interesting movie than I had remembered. We put the subtitles on, and I wrote down difficult words or expressions as they came up. Then every 10-15 minutes or so, we stopped and explained the words. My roommate Mike helped me out this time. Him, combined with the fact that we had such a structured format, made things a lot smoother and sooo much more fun.
-I can't exactly say the same about my OTHER teaching job, however (yea that's right). I walked into the Study English Bar one day and the Peng, owner immediately jumped on me. "Do you want to teach tomorrow at a high school? They will come pick you up." Sure why not, I thought. I had to be there at 1:30 the next day, and a gruff Beijing man came right away to take me. He of course didn't speak any English, but I was able to hold some conversation with him on the way. He pointed out a good place to hike in the mountains and an indoor shooting range...surprising because I had always thought guns were illegal in China. I guess you can only use them there. The school turned out to be way out on the outskirts of town, a 30 minute drive with no traffic. When we arrived I was brought into a small room with 3-4 young women, all of whom were teachers. They all were very happy to have me there. One woman introduced herself and gave me my brief instructions. The regular English teacher had suddenly told them she could no longer come on Wednesdays, so they were very glad that I could come on such short notice. Apparently I was to be teaching two classes. The students' English was very poor she said, which makes sense because middle school is usually when kids here begin learning, at the earliest. I asked her if she wanted me to speak only in English. She told me that I should for the most part, but if they have a difficult time understanding I can speak Chinese. She then quickly had to leave for a lecture but told me she would come get me when my class was to start. I had 'some time to prepare,' but that didn't mean much because they didn't give me anything to prepare with. All I had was a pocket-sized phrase book that Peng had given me before I left. The book began with various things you would say in the morning. "Good morning." "Did your alarm clock go off?" "Did you sleep well last night?" Pretty simple. I wrote down a number of phrases and copied down the characters and pinyin to make sure I could explain their meaning. While I waited I talked with the other teachers. They were all about my age and were very, very nice. A few times people (I couldn't tell if they were teachers or students) would come into the room for a minute, and they seemed to smile when they saw me there. I got the impression that foreigners aren't so common at this place. After about 45 minutes, I was taken upstairs to a small classroom with 12 desks, a blackboard and some chalk. The students came in pretty quickly, and I immediately could see that this was going to be very different from the adult classes I had been teaching. These were not people that came to learn of their own accord; these were kids...who had to take English because of a requirement. There was a large amount of apathy, and they acted pretty much the way you would expect a high schooler to act around a substitute teacher. However, there weren't too many problems. Those who were being disruptive I just made participate more, and the woman who had given me instructions sat in the back to help keep order. I started with a few phrases and had them repeat. Then I would put them together to create a short dialogue and had them recite it, with one or two blanks in each sentence where they could pick their own word to use. I was a little surprised at how long it took them to understand, but I guess I had overestimated their language level. The only difficult part was the complete blank stares I got. On difficult words I wrote the meaning out in Chinese characters and tried to explain it in Chinese. Still, they barely even reacted. The time actually went by pretty quickly, and I was told the next group would be middle schoolers, who would be "better behaved." They were for the most part, except for one especially loudmouthed kid. He was funny, though and loudly said "Hey teacher!" when he came in. This time I decided to try to make things more interesting (the last class had seemed painfully bored) and skip the book for a while. I just started talking with the kids and asking them what they liked to do for fun. I again made a little dialogue that I put on the board. But once again, all I got was blank stares. This time it was even worse. They didn't seem to know hardly any English at all. Whenever I asked them a question, they looked around, confused, and could only respond after I basically outlined what they should say. Again, my Chinese didn't help either. After class I was invited to eat at the cafeteria. The food was all Korean...pretty good, but not quite up to the Chinese food I usually eat. I guess it was cafeteria food anyways, what should I expect? At that time, I learned something that was good to know. It turned out that all the students were KOREAN and spoke Chinese about as well as they spoke English. That explained why their dialect sounded so foreign! Plus it was good to know that I didn't need to bother speaking Mandarin anymore. Though I realized it is going to be really difficult to teach with no common language whatsoever. After dinner the teachers sat with me and asked what kind of schedule I wanted. Apparently I was not just substituting for the English teacher, I was the new English teacher. We decided that I would come in on Sundays and Wednesdays, and they would come pick me up every time. Not a bad deal. When I went to the English Study Bar again, however, Peng told me that he needed me to work for him Sundays, and he had already arranged for one of my classmates to take over for me at the school. That was actually a relief, because I wasn't sure I wanted to deal with that twice a week.