China Teacher (David’s big adventure)

I’m hard at work back in Nanning after my holiday trip. The weather has cooled off here in the past few days thanks to typhoon Parma which followed me back to China from the Philippines. I flew to Manila on October 1 and on the way in I could see some of the flooding that has impacted Manila. I then flew on to a city called Bacolod which is about half way from Manila to the far south of the Phils. This city was rated by a magazine as the best city to live in the Phils. I spent almost 5 days there and wasn’t sure why it was named the best city for living. They were having a big festival there so that made it a bit more interesting but otherwise it wasn’t a very interesting place. I then flew back to Manila and took a bus to Tagaytay which is about 35 miles south of Manila. It is a small city located on a ridge with a nice view of a lake and a volcanic island in the lake. The volcano blew its top not so long ago so it makes for a nice view except that I barely got to see it because of the bad weather. The weather there is generally cooler than Manila with a nice breeze and it was cool and rainy during my time there thanks to the return of typhoon Parma’s outer bands. Tagaytay was a pretty comfortable place to stay because of the weather and plenty of restaurants. It is a resort area frequented by people from Manila wanting to escape Manila for a few days. There are also many foreigners living there and I ran into a gathering of about 20 foreigners in the bar/café next to my hotel. I joined them for a beer and learned about their experiences living there.

Since I have lived in China I have come to appreciate how lucky I am to have been born in an English speaking country and the USA in particular. English has become the global language and through my teaching I have come to appreciate how big the U.S. economy is relative to the rest of the world. I think most of us who grew up in the states take these things for granted and have a U.S. focused view of the world because so much of the world’s media and entertainment are based in the states. Friday I went to the provincial Personnel Department building to interview doctors to test their English level (the Personnel Department contacted my school and asked for 3 foreign teachers to help conduct the interviews.) The doctors have applied for an exchange program to go study for a short period of time in Germany. When they are in Germany, they will use English to communicate with the doctors there. Nobody expects them to speak German. When I was working for Dreyer’s, I learned after we were acquired by Nestle that English is the common language for Nestle for their operations all over the world (they are based in Switzerland). I have since learned that other multinationals also use English as the common language. I have also learned in my travels that English signs are common in most countries and English is almost always the second language used.

China has been in the news recently for its economy having recovered quickly from the recession. They are expecting 8% growth in the economy this year but there is some skepticism about that number because there is other information that suggests otherwise. Power usage has been reported as being down vs. the previous year. Apparently government spending is what is driving the economic growth these days although car sales are a bright spot. Car sales are up 25 to 30% vs. last year and now china is #1 in the world for new car sales. The government provided some incentives to purchase new cars with engines smaller than 1.6 liters and many people took advantage of the opportunity. Most cars of this size are made in China so the incentives were targeted at cars made here.

After looking at my pictures, some of you may wonder if I only have one or two shirts since you see my orange shirt in many of the pictures. Actually, I have 2 of those oranges shirts and they are special travel shirts made to protect me from the sun and they dry very quickly after being washed. So when traveling I can hand wash one of those shirts in the evening and it will probably be dry the next morning if I want to wear it again; perfect for traveling light.

Classes started a week ago and I have an interesting schedule. I teach Tuesday morning and afternoon, Wednesday morning and afternoon, Thursday morning, and Sunday morning and afternoon. So my weekend begins at 10:15 a.m. on Thursday and ends on Sunday morning. I am teaching 3 sections of International Business, 3 sections of Finance and Accounting, and a class called English Interest Corner. The reason I have classes on Sunday is that is the only time that juniors and seniors are free to take that class. The juniors and seniors are former full time students of SCIC (Sino-Canadian International College, which is the school I work for) but are now studying something other than English at another college within the university. They want to have English as a second major so they come back to SCIC for that. SCIC is only full time for freshmen and sophomores. I guess you could think of it as a junior college with all of the students having English as their major. There are a total of about 1100 full time students and 29 foreign teachers at SCIC which is a money making enterprise. Except for my Sunday classes, all of my students are sophomores. There are two other colleges at this university that employ foreign teachers so in total there are over 50 foreign teachers here with all but a handful of them teaching English. The other languages taught as a major are Japanese, Thai and Vietnamese.

We will have a holiday from October 1 to 9 to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the founding of modern day China and also Mid Autumn festival. It’s amazing to me to think that China has only been a country in its modern form for 60 years considering its long history and culture. The government is really making a big deal of the celebration. Anyplace worth traveling to in China will be packed with people during the holiday so I’ve decided to get out of the country. I’ll be going to the Philippines. Until next time….

On August 7, I took the overnight train to Kunming, then went to the airport and met a friend. We took a flight to Shangri-la in western Yunnan Province (not far from Tibet and Myanmar). We stayed there for 3 nights and visited the old town, Pu Dacuo National Park and the local grasslands. This area was primarily inhabited by Tibetans and Naxi minority people before it became a popular tourist area. The weather was nice and cool in the 50’s and 60’s as the elevation there is about 11,000 feet. It was nice and picturesque but I don’t think it deserves the name Shangri-la. (It was renamed Shangri-la to promote tourism.) We left early on the 11th and headed to Tiger Leaping Gorge where we used Tina’s Guest House as a base for a nice hike down to the river. The gorge was definitely worth the visit and would be worth spending a couple days there if you like nature and hiking. The gorge is more than 3000 feet from peak to the river. We hired a local guide to lead us on our hike for the afternoon for about $6. After our hike, we continued on by bus to Lijiang and spent one night there in the old city. From there, my friend flew back to Kunming and I took a bus for 8 hours back to Kunming. After spending a day in Kunming visiting friends there I took the overnight train back home to Nanning arriving on the 14th.

After relaxing and catching up on things at home for a couple weeks I went with a friend to Longsheng in the northern part of this province to see the Longji rice terraces. We spent one night in the small town of Longsheng (about 170,000) before going to the tourist village of Longji nestled in the mountains and surrounded by the rice terraces (also called Dragon Backbone Rice Terraces…see pic’s). The rice terraces were created 600 to 700 years ago and are quite beautiful. We spent two days there hiking through the mountains and enjoying the cooler weather. Then we went to Yangshuo for 2 days where we toured a cave that is only accessible via boat (not too exciting if you’ve seen other caves) and visiting a local park famous for a huge 1500 year old Banyon tree. One evening we went to see the Zhang Yimou production called Impression (Sanjie Liu) which was great. Zhang Yimou is the man who created and produced the opening ceremony for the Beijing Olympics. This production uses over 600 people dressed in local traditional costumes and takes place mostly on the river using flat rafts and portable bridges. It uses the karsts (small limestone mountains) in the area as a backdrop and lights them to highlight the beautiful scenery. This was my third visit to Yangshuo which is one of the most famous tourist spots in China and where you will see more foreigners as a percentage of the total than anywhere else in China.

I’m now back in Nanning and start back to work on Monday the 7th with a week of meetings and lesson prep before starting classes the following week. It’s been so hot here the last few weeks with the temperature often reaching the mid 90’s with high humidity. Recently I took a cold shower trying to cool off after being outside but the water wasn’t cool enough to cool me down……lol. Even the rats try to stay indoors as I saw a family of them in the nicest restaurant on campus recently. Actually, they live there full time and I often see them there……such is life in China……we all have to get along to have a “harmonious society” as the leaders here like to say!

On Monday, July 13, I left Nanning on an overnight train to Guangzhou. I needed to go to Guangzhou before I went to Japan to buy my Japan Rail-pass. I bought a 3 week pass for about $600 which allows me to ride on any Japan Rail company trains, buses or ferries without any additional cost but the pass must be purchased outside Japan and I couldn’t buy it in Nanning. I spent 1 night in Guangzhou then went to Hong Kong and spent one night there before taking off for Japan. I found a cheap hostel in HK for $20 for a room that was about 5 feet by 10 feet including the bathroom but it was clean and sufficient for one night. While I was in HK I was reminded how HK is an “anything goes” town with so many people from all over the world.

On Thursday, the 16th I left HK for Tokyo and after 1 bus ride, two flights, 3 trains and a short walk later I arrived at my hostel. I had a 5 feet by 8 feet room without a private bathroom for $28 per night for the first two nights before I moved to the hotel that was part of my tour package with Intrepid Tours. On Friday, I began exploring Tokyo on my own and at lunchtime a Japanese friend I met while we were both living in Tampa joined me and spent the rest of the day showing me around. We visited some of the famous sites after having a nice sushi lunch. We had dinner at TGI Fridays (I know you will find this funny but remember, I don’t get a chance to eat at western restaurants where I live except McD’s, KFC or Pizza Hut). On Saturday I visited some other places in Tokyo on my own before joining the tour group folks Saturday evening. I had booked a two week guided tour and the tour started Saturday evening. Our group was only 6 people and most of the group was mid 40’s to late 50’s in age (and 4 of us are teachers). It turned out to be a great group and we all got along well. There were 4 Americans, 1 Brit/Aussie and his Brazilian/Indian wife. Our tour guide was a Japanese lady who lived most all of her school years in the states and has traveled more of the world than all the rest of us combined.

My overall impressions of Japan are that it’s an incredibly clean, organized, and rule abiding country. Everyone obeys traffic signals including pedestrians and you rarely see anyone talking on their cell phone on buses, trains or restaurants although they are using the phones for text messages, playing games or to do other things. The people are very polite and generally use soft voices when speaking. Yes, you can really set your watch by the trains and the trains are a great way to travel……so clean and efficient although the subways are incredibly crowded during rush hours and they really push and shove to cram into them. The train stations are also very clean (including the rest rooms) and have tons of places to buy food with much of the food being very good. There are also tons of vending machines in the train stations and everywhere else and they have cigarettes and beer (not too common) in vending machines. One thing I saw very little of in the stations was trash cans which is apparently due to the Serin gas attack they had in a Tokyo train station many years ago. Another thing I saw very few of was places to sit. The trains run so frequently that you rarely wait very long for them. Some of the long distance trains are bullet trains that go up to 180 miles an hour and we were on some that went up to 120 miles an hour. Surprisingly because Japan is such a high tech country, there are not that many atm’s in Japan and most of them have limited operation hours.

Hiroshima was the city that I enjoyed the most as it was big enough to have plenty to do (population of about 1.2 million) but small enough that it was easy to get around. We visited the atomic bomb museum and peace park there and also had a private meeting with a bomb survivor. The museum treats the dropping of the bomb as a singular horrible event and doesn’t do much to put it in the perspective of the entire war. There were about 140,000 people that died in Hiroshima as a result of the bomb and of course the museum mostly focused on the civilian deaths of women and children. After spending about an hour in the museum I found myself wanting to tell the people in charge to tell the rest of the story. There were references to the deaths of the foreign prisoner workers as a result of the bomb and also about the death of 100,000 to 300,000 Chinese as a result of the atrocities committed in Nanjing, China (although they glossed over the brutality of the Japanese soldiers). There was one small mention of the “mistaken national policies” of Japan in starting the war.

The traditional Japanese inns that we stayed in most nights were sparse rooms with tatami mats on the floors and futon mattress on the floor for us to sleep on. The last couple nights which were after the guided tour ended were spent in Osaka where I stayed in a capsule hotel for about $29 per night. Check out the pictures……I slept in the capsule and they have some common areas for you to relax, watch tv, shower, etc. along with a locker room where you store your stuff. Soaking in a hot tub is a big deal there and many hotels have special rooms with big tubs. Below is a detailed list of where we went and what we did provided to us by our tour guide in case you care to read all the gory details (I suspect most of you won’t). We had several non-Japanese meals since 4 of the 6 of us in the group don’t live in our native countries and were hankering for other foods. (Of course you know where I live, my roommate lives in Bangkok, and the married couple lives in Papa New Guinea.)

Sat July 18 - We met in Ueno (part of Tokyo) and went down the street to Japanese modern tapas bar Wara-wara where I ordered and we shared different dishes. After, we went to Shinjuku to go to the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building, then had a look around the East Exit, visiting Memory Lane with the yakitori skewer shops.
Sun July 19 - Free day in Tokyo – most of you went to Harajuku to see the girls dressed up, maybe checked out Meiji Jingu Shrine and saw some weddings in there, or Shibuya for Hachiko Crossing (the 8 way crossing) and in the evening we took trains to Nikko
Mon July 20 - Toshogu Shrine in Nikko. We visited the sake brewery in Imaichi before heading to Hipparidako for yakitori.
Tues July 21 – We did a morning walk to Ganmanfuchi Abyss with the rows of Jizo statues, and the walk up to Taki-no-o Shrine before taking the train to Odawara. This is where you went in the food hall of the department store. Then we arrived in Hakone by bus. We took the pirate ship over to Hakone-Machi where we visited the Detached Palace Garden and Cedar Avenue. We went to Hoshi-no-an for dinner (most of us had some sort of soba noodle dish)
Wed July 22 - Sightseeing in Hakone — bus, funicular, cable car, sulphurous vapor erupting area, the Hakone Open Air Museum. Dinner was at Hanasai – our first sitting-on-the-floor experience!
Thurs July 23 - We were trainspotters and arrived in Takayama. Our orientation walk took us to Hida Kokubunji Temple and we split up in the Old Town. We had the lovely included dinner at Asunaro Ryokan. We all went for archery after dinner (Japanese archery is called Kyu-do)
Fri July 24 - Morning Markets, Hida-no-Sato Folk Village, Hamburgers, and boooowwlinnng!
Sat July 25 - Travel to Hiroshima, dinner at Okonomiyaki Village, the pancakes cooked in front of us (cabbage, konbu seaweed, tempura bits, egg, bean sprouts, optional noodles, bacon). Mac bar for your favorite music requests.
Sun July 26 – out to Miyajima in the rain. Gyukaku for Korean BBQ dinner, drinks at Kemby’s.
Mon July 27 – FREE DAY – you guys went to Otis! For dinner and Kemby’s after.
Tues July 28 - Talk with Kei-san, Hiroshima A-Bomb Survivor. Himeji Castle, Kyoto arrival. Tour of Kyoto Station.
Wed July 29 – Early morning start with walk to Kiyomizu-dera Temple, passing through Ninenzaka and Sannenzaka. Kodaiji and walked through Higashiyama area and Jingu-michi area.
Thurs July 30 - Morning hike at Fushimi Inari Taisha (10,000+ Torii gates), finished up at Tofuku-ji, free afternoon. Met for final night dinner, all-you-can-eat Shabu-shabu and Sukiyaki at Gyuzen.
Added by David: Friday/Saturday – stayed in a “capsule” hotel in Osaka and spent most of the day Saturday in Nara, an old capital of Japan. Visited the Nara National Museum which in addition to its regular stuff also had a special exhibition called “Sacred Ningbo: Gateway to 1300 Years of Japanese Buddhism” which covered the impact that Ningbo, China had on Japanese Buddhism.

Facebook has been blocked here so I haven’t been able to log in for about 5 days. Some of you Facebook users in the states could post a comment letting others know that it’s been blocked here.

About 3 weeks ago I played a small role in a made for tv movie. One of the national tv networks here is making a movie about Deng Xiao Peng, one of the former leaders of China, and needed some foreigners to play French soldiers. That part of the movie took place in 1929 in South China and our scene was very short. A single Chinese man wanted to pass through the road we (French soldiers) were guarding and we refused to allow him. We had rifles and he had nothing but he defeated 7 of us using Kung fu. I was the last soldier and he jumped high in the air and kicked me in the chest causing me to fall backwards to the ground. No, I didn’t have a stunt double but they did put a mat on the ground for me to fall on. The movie is supposed to be shown on national tv in November or December. It took all day to film the scene and they paid me 300 yuan (about $45). I posted some pictures for your enjoyment. Autographed copies may be purchased at davidisnowastar.com.

About a week ago I went to Kunming (the city where I lived last year) for the weekend to visit friends there. It was nice to go back and see everyone there. The weather was nice……not as hot and humid as Nanning but the people there were complaining about it being too hot. The teachers that I worked with there were telling me about how bad the living conditions became at the school there. They said there was construction noise almost 24 hours a day preventing them from being able to sleep and frequent unannounced water outages. I’m so glad I left there to come here as I would not have been happy if I had stayed there. I need my beauty rest!

This week is finals week and after I finish grading the exams and do the paperwork I’ll be on vacation for the summer. On July 16, I’m heading to Japan for 3 weeks, 2 weeks of which will be with a tour group. Then I’ll come back here and do some travel in China assuming I’m not stuck in quarantine due to H1N1 concerns.

I have been busy recently preparing for the final exams and the end of this semester (July 3) and also preparing for next semester. I will teach two different classes next semester: International Business English, and Finance and Accounting English. The second class is a new class that I will develop. At this point I don’t have a textbook for the new class so I will have to find and develop my own materials. It will be a lot of work but I think I will enjoy teaching those subjects much more than teaching Writing.

At the end of May we had the Dragon Boat Festival holiday and I had 4 days off including the weekend. I went to Chongqing which is located in the middle of China. It is a municipality reporting directly to Beijing similar to the District of Columbia in the states. It is about the same size as South Carolina and has about 31 million people with about 5 million being in the central urban area. For comparison, South Carolina has 4.5 million people and the most populous state in the U.S., California has 37 million people. Chongqing is an industrial area with many factories and thus the air there is very bad. Even after a couple days of rain and holidays when the factories should have been closed, the air was very bad. Chongqing became the capital for Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists during the second world war when Japan had occupied much of the East Coast of China. It also hosted some American troops during that time as the U.S. was supporting China primarily via the Flying Tigers supply services flying in material via India.

While in Chongqing I visited the Dazu Rock Carvings which are “a series of religious sculptures and carvings, dating back as far as the 7th century A.D., depicting and influenced by Buddhist, Confucian and Taoist beliefs. Listed as a UNESCO World cultural Heritage Site, the Dazu Rock Carvings are made up of 75 protected sites containing some 50,000 statues, with over 100,000 Chinese characters forming inscriptions and epigraphs.” It was about a 2 and ½ hour bus ride to get to the Carvings site. I also visited the Great Hall of the People, the Three Gorges Museum (so-so), and the Ciqikou Ancient Town, a 1000 year old area which is now mostly shops and dining. I also visited the General Stillwell Museum and the Flying Tigers Museum which are located across a small road from each other. Chongqing is famous for its spicy food such as hotpot and its beautiful ladies. The food is definitely spicy; I had a dish that they said was just a little spicy and it almost made my tongue numb….lol. Some of the ladies had skin that was more white but I didn’t think they were any more beautiful than ladies elsewhere in China. The Chinese consider white skin more beautiful. I have posted some pictures of Chongqing so just click on the link on the right hand side to view them.

I will finish with some information I read on the Wall Street Journal website that I found interesting. “China followed this general trend, and has seen its software piracy rate drop from 90% in 2004 to 80% last year, thanks to better enforcement and a government push to encourage the use of legitimate software in its computers. Worldwide average last year was 41% pirated.”

This time I am going to write mostly about how schools here work. From elementary school through college, kids are put in a class and that group of students does most everything together. My students are all freshmen and when they arrived here they were assigned a class number from 1 to 12 (there are 12 classes of 40 freshmen each). They are assigned to classes in a manner to ensure that the average college entrance exam test scores are about the same for each class and that each class has some students with high scores and some students with low scores. I teach Writing to classes 3 and 4 and I teach Listening & Speaking to class 3 so class 3 is my primary class. Another teacher teaches Reading to both class 3 and 4 and teaches Listening & Speaking to class 4. The students have almost all their classes together as a group and they also form sports teams from their class for intramural competition. Doing almost everything together facilitates them forming a strong bond that will last a lifetime and reinforces the group culture here. I know people here in their 40’s who still often get together with their high school and college classmates. These former classmates become part of their guanxi (network of contacts) that acts as an “old boys network” would in the west.

I learn a lot from reading my students journals that are part of their Writing class. One thing I learned about is a meeting that the class held to assess the previous semester. Some of the group felt that they were not unified enough as a class so they talked at length about how to become more unified. Shortly after the meeting there was a basketball game between my class and another class (1st and 3rd quarters were played by the girls and the 2nd and 4th quarters were played by the boys). Most of the class members who were not playing attended the game (as I did) to cheer on their classmates. They were playing a team that had more talent but because of their strong efforts, they were leading near the end of the game. The other team made a strong effort to tie the game and we went into overtime. During overtime, the kids in my class just ran out of gas and were overpowered and lost. Even though we lost, the entire class felt proud and unified because they had really pulled together and fought hard.

The school requires the kids to do some “society practice” such as spending some time teaching at an elementary school or something similar. Some of the kids went to a school for the blind to do some teaching. China is not handicapped friendly as very few places are handicapped accessible. It was nice to learn that there are some special schools for the handicapped. The kids are also required to do some work on campus such as lawn work. They don’t really have typical lawn care tools that would make the work easy so they make up for it by using a lot of manpower (the students). They do get some college credit for this work “class”.

A few weeks ago I saw the students having some sort of meeting outside one of the buildings. When I asked them what was it about I was told that it was a meeting to recruit them to join “the party”. I was told that most of them signed up to join. Being part of the party will help them down the road with their career and will also increase their guanxi (network). Many of them will probably not stick with it long term as most people I know are not active members of the party. The ones that join will be required to attend a lot of meetings to learn about the party and keep up with new developments in the party.

The last thing I will write about is the anniversary of the earthquake in Sichuan Province that occurred on May 12, 2008. There were over 85,000 people killed and millions that were made homeless. I don’t know how many are still living in temporary shelter but I know that they are building like crazy to try and get them in homes. I read about one town where 50% of the population of 10,000 were killed. Some of the worst hit towns have been fenced and made off-limits and they are building a new town nearby. Here is a link to reports provided by NPR (National Public Radio). NPR reporters happened to be in Sichuan last year when the quake occurred and they returned to report 1 year later. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90430135

Well it’s been 2 years since I left my job and began this little adventure of mine. I arrived in China on May 10, 2007, and it’s been quite a ride. I’m still having fun but working harder than I care too. If not for the economic crisis wiping out more than 40% of my net worth I’d probably find an easier job even if it didn’t really pay enough to support me. Originally I thought I’d do this for 4 or 5 years then fully retire but now it looks like I’ll need to keep going a bit longer. Because of the economic crisis it seems there are more people coming here looking for jobs which creates a more competitive job market for the foreign teachers. My school recently fired a teacher due to student complaints and I heard that the Dean made the comment that it’s easy to find new teachers now because of the economic crisis. My student evaluation scores were good so hopefully I won’t have any problems.

A while back we had the Tomb Sweeping holiday and May 1 was the Labor Day holiday. One of the customs for the Tomb Sweeping holiday (like Memorial Day) is that people go to their ancestors’ graves, clean them off and leave food for the ancestors to eat. After leaving the food at the tomb for a short time, they take it back with them and eat it.

I’ve seen on tv recently talk about intellectual property rights and they have shown local authorities destroying hundreds of illegal copies of dvd’s, etc. Of course you can still buy whatever you want. At the small dvd stall next to the fruit juice stall where I often buy watermelon juice, I saw MS Office software for sale. I asked the lady how much and she told me 8 yuan which is about $1.20 U.S. Amazing! One thing I forgot to mention about buying my toaster oven at Wal-mart is that it’s common practice that anytime you buy something electrical here that they take it out of the box, plug it in and turn it on to show you that it really works. Obviously, the Chinese don’t have a lot of confidence in the quality of their own products. My last shopping story is about my visit to an upscale shopping plaza here. I went into the BMW store (goods with the BMW car company logo) and looked at the prices on a couple things. The polo shirts were priced at more than $175 U.S. I was shocked since not many people in the U.S. would pay that much for a polo shirt no matter what logo it has on it. There were no customers in the store so they probably don’t sell much and what they do sell is probably to people who buy it just so they can brag about how expensive it was.

I saw an interesting demo on the street a couple weeks ago by a guy that was apparently selling some sort of miracle powder. He was putting wooden skewers straight through the head of a live chicken. After putting about 5 of them through he then took them out, poured some powder into the holes in the chickens head, then folded the head under the body and put the chicken in a basket which he covered. Then he ate some of the powder. After talking for a few minutes he began to pull the chicken out of the basket but teased us a few times before he actually pulled out. After he pulled it out, he hit the chicken on the head a few times before it started walking around. I didn’t stay to see if anyone purchased any of his miracle powder.

A recent lesson was about food and the chapter in the book had a page talking about strange foods eaten in different places around the world. I asked my students what was the strangest thing they had eaten. One of the students told me that she had eaten human placenta. They make a soup out with it and consider it to be like medicine to make you stronger. You can only get it if you know someone at the hospital that can obtain it for you. I was told by a friend that it was common years ago when you had a baby to ask them to give you the placenta from your own birth. I’ve been pretty brave about trying the different foods here but I’m not sure if I could try this one. I did a quick Internet search and found that there were references to eating this on the net.

I have one last comment on the topic of babies. I may have mentioned this before but I was reminded of it recently when talking to a couple of the ladies that work in the office that are pregnant. It is illegal here for a doctor to tell parents the sex of their baby before birth. This is because of the one child policy and the strong preference for sons. Well that’s enough for now.

I’ve been busy with my teaching recently and next week is mid-term exams week. I’ve also been busy making some travel plans for a couple upcoming holidays and for the summer vacation. For summer vacation I’m planning on going to Japan for 3 weeks with the first 2 weeks being a guided tour with Intrepid Tours and then I’ll try doing the last week on my own. After Japan I think I’ll come back to China and do some traveling within China. Anyone want to come join me? For my winter break next year I’m thinking about going to Egypt.

I’m planning on staying here at Guangxi University for another year which will take me to July 2010. After that, I am hoping to become an IELTS Examiner. IELTS is an English exam for people that want to demonstrate their English proficiency and is used by many western universities as a factor in evaluating admission for foreign students. The work is mostly on weekends but apparently I can make as much money as I make now by working 3 weekends a month. That job would also give me much more flexibility regarding when I can take vacation time. I’d really like to be able to travel when not everyone else is traveling and this job would make that easier. Tentatively, my next visit to USA will be in summer or early fall of 2010.

Exiting News Flash! – I bought a toaster oven and now I can make toast and cook other things. It cost me about $80 U.S. I could have bought one cheaper but the clerk at Wal-mart (there are sales people readily available in every department at Wal-marts here to assist you) convinced me to buy the imported model instead of the Chinese made model. So recently, for the first time since I moved to China I purchased butter and salt and pepper. I started cooking a little bit but it’s just not worth the effort to do much cooking considering the poor kitchen facility (no hot water, I have to move the cooktop to use it, etc.). I was so excited the first time I made toast…..lol. One thing I cooked was spaghetti but the spaghetti sauce I bought at Wal-mart was really just tomato sauce with no seasoning.

Recently while grading some writing assignments I found that more than 10% of the students had plagiarized. One student was a student I caught twice last semester doing this. After the second time last semester I gave her a 0 for that assignment and made her write a paper titled “What is Plagiarism”. When I caught her this time, I told her I am reducing her score for the entire semester by 6 points. She came back to see me later with another student to help translate because she is not confident in her spoken English. She said she was only trying to improve her scores and how could she improve them because she was not happy with her final score the previous semester. I reminded her that her score on her previous writing assignment was 92 and that her writing is good so she just needs to quit trying to cheat! The assignment she plagiarized on was her journals which are not directly graded for writing quality. Sometimes Chinese thinking drives us crazy……lol.

I have posted some new pictures from trips to a couple parks and the zoo, and a picture of our students performing the play “High School Musical” (they did it in English and did a great job). They are in the folder GU (Guangxi University) under “Recent Pictures”. As a reminder, you can find the link for the pictures on the right hand side of the blog. Until next time….