David's Big Adventure in China

Well I’m pretty much finished with the class now. We did more teaching in local schools this week. The classrooms at the local schools do not all have air conditioning so it gets incredibly hot. I taught two lessons back to back and it had to be at least 95 F in there and very humid. My shirt was so wet with sweat that it could not have been more wet if I had just pulled it out of the washing machine. The students are used to it so they handle it okay.
Jenny, our Chinese teacher was telling us that the public schools here are very good and have plenty of money. The public schools are better than the private schools and the teachers are paid much more at the public schools. The private schools are for the children of people who are not originally from the local area. The local governments issue resident permits to people whose families have lived in an area for a long time. Having a resident permit entitles you to send your children to the public schools and other benefits. Since Jenny and her family are from another province they do not have a resident permit for this area and have to pay to send their child to private school. Since Jenny does not have a resident permit for this area she could not get a job teaching at a local public school although she is well educated and well qualified. Apparently you also have to have GuanXi (pronounced Guanji and means connections) to get a job at the public schools. The Chinese government has some of these policies to discourage people from moving from the countryside to the cities to find jobs.
I was watching the news (we get 1 English news channel and it is a government run channel thus the news is filtered and slanted) and they were talking about car license plates in Shanghai. They are trying to discourage people from driving in Shanghai so they are limiting the number of new license plates they issue and they are auctioning off the ones that they do issue. The going price for a new license plate is about $6000 U.S.!
Since my job does not start until September I plan to some traveling but I have not finalized my plans yet. There is an online Business English class that will take several days to complete that I want to do and will plan to do it soon.
I added some new photos in a new album called teacher training. Several of the pictures are from Macao when I went there a couple weeks ago. We saw the dragon boat races when we were there.

When I loaded the pic’s that I referred to in my last post I missed a step and didn’t get them posted properly so if you looked for them right after I posted the blog update and they weren’t there you should be able to find them now. The pic’s labeled morning exercises show a group of people doing dancing or Tai Chi as their morning exercises. This is very common in China to find groups of people (normally mostly ladies) doing these forms of exercise together in the morning in any public places with room to accommodate them.
I have now moved into the bedroom in the apartment that was occupied by the Australian couple since they moved to another place. This room is much bigger, has an attached bathroom with a western style toilet and has a bigger bed (almost a big as a U.S. size double). The other benefit to the bathroom is that since it is attached to the bedroom which has air conditioning it is also therefore air conditioned and I can take hot showers. It’s one of those simple luxuries we take for granted in the U.S. There is not a hot water heater like we have in the west though. There is a small heater mounted on the shower wall about eye level that heats the water and it has a small reservoir. There is a 10 gallon propane gas tank in the bathroom that provides the fuel for the heater and when the heater is running the flames are about 6 inches from my head when I’m under the shower head rinsing. Doing laundry here is fun. We have a very small washing machine and no dryer so we have to hang the clothes to dry. I couldn’t find fabric softener in the store because I would have to use liquid softener in the washer and they were not labeled in English. I had someone at the school write it for me in Chinese so I could buy some so the clothes would not be so stiff.
Saturday night the school organized a party for the English students and us at a tea plantation. As I mentioned before, most of the students are in their 20’s and 30’s and are learning English to improve their career opportunities. About 150 students attended the party. It is a bit surprising the amount of respect and admiration they show towards the teachers. They treat us like teachers since they assume we are teachers. I was walking around the plantation with a group of about 8 students when we saw a reservoir in the distance. They asked me what the English word for it was and all listened intently while I told them what it was and pronounced it for them slowly. They asked me to spell it and several of them took out small notepads and wrote it down. I felt like a guru imparting wisdom.
The class is going pretty well and we’re now doing some teaching practice at a local school. We are teaching junior high and high school students that have basic English skills. Nathan (one of my fellows students from America) and I co-taught two classes to 10th graders. Our lesson topic was “taking a bus” and the kids seemed to enjoy the lesson. It seems the teaching here in the local schools focuses more on reading and writing than speaking since that is what they get tested on. When we said “good morning class” to start they class they all stood and said “good morning teacher”. I also did a lesson with the students here at the school where we are studying. Even though they are adults their skill level is pretty low. The lesson was about things to do on a holiday weekend. On Monday I will be teaching a 4th grade class at a local school on the topic of “Where is it?”. We’re half way through the class now and it’s supposed to get easier the rest of the way.
I have been in China more than 5 weeks now and I have not driven a car since I’ve been here. I’m sure it will feel a bit strange the next time I drive but who knows when that will be ….maybe not until I’m back in the states. I’m guessing that I will probably be back in the states during the Chinese New Year holiday in February. If not then, it won’t be until July next year.

Today is Saturday and we don’t have class today. Some of us are going to a barbeque at a tea plantation with the students from the school. The school has arranged this outing for the students. ... [Continue reading this entry]

I’m in Zhuhai now (near Macau and Honk Kong) learning to teach English. I can’t believe I’m diagramming sentences. I didn’t enjoy it when I did it 38 years ago and I’m not enjoying it now! ... [Continue reading this entry]