It’s been a slooooww start!
It has been a bit of a slow start to the school year. I only had 1 class all week and it was on Friday morning. The school staff did a terrible job of helping us get started. There has been no organized welcome or orientation process and it has been like pulling teeth to get any information out of them. Fortunately there are two returning foreign teachers to help us out. In my building where I live there are 6 foreign teachers including myself. There is a lady from Florida in her mid to late 20’s (returning teacher), a man in his 50’s from Australia, a man in his 30’s or 40’s from Canada (returning teacher) and two young ladies from the Midwest that recently graduated from Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa. The two young ladies were especially troubled by the lack of welcome and orientation since they had never been to Kunming before and nobody bothered to tell them that there were other foreigners here in the building. They were basically dumped at the apartment and left to their own devices. I didn’t run into them to meet them until after they had been here for 2 or 3 days and when I did meet them they were so excited to meet someone that spoke English and could answer some questions for them. There are some other foreigner teachers that are living on another part of campus or off campus but I don’t yet know how many.
Many of the classes don’t start until the second week because the freshman didn’t arrive until this week and some of the upperclassmen are assigned to assist the freshmen. The freshmen took their college entrance exams the week of July 22 and received their scores the week of August 12. Between August 12 and the end of August they find out to which university they have been accepted. The process is different here and they can only be accepted by 1 university and it is possible that they are assigned a major different from the one they wanted.
I still do not have my complete schedule but what I know so far is that I am teaching 2 classes of English Speaking, 1 English Listening, English Practice (either 1 class 3 times a week or 3 classes once a week – won’t know until I ask the students), and Business Communication. The only class for which the school has provided a textbook is the Speaking class. For the other classes the material and syllabus is entirely up to me. Even for the Speaking class I think we are free to teach whatever lessons we choose. The class I had on Friday was Listening and I arrived early to get familiar with the room and get set up. The room was locked and I couldn’t find anyone with a key. Class was scheduled to start at 8:00 a.m. and nobody came to unlock the room until about 8:20 so at 8:05 I started class in the hallway. The students in this class are sophomore International Accounting students. I am not teaching any Writing classes but the ladies from Drake are teaching some Writing classes. It seems strange to us that Speaking, Listening, Writing and Practice are taught in separate classes but we will coordinate amongst ourselves to try to give the students a rounded set of lessons without duplicating what each other is doing.
We have managed to find restaurants and food to give us a taste of home when we want it. We found a local place where we can get mashed potatoes and PBR (Pabst Blue Ribbon) beer. There are a few western restaurants in town owned by westerners so the food is authentic. There are also several western restaurants owned by Chinese but the food is usually not as authentic. We are allowed to eat at any of the cafeterias on campus but we need a campus debit card to pay and they have not allowed us to get cards yet as they are supposedly changing to a new system. Of course the students all have their cards already. One of the more popular cafeterias is a Muslim cafeteria. Today for lunch I “cooked” in my spacious kitchen…….I had the all American favorite of PB&J sandwich (found bread at the bakery) and Pringles…….yum, yum!
After talking to the others it seems I ended up in the best apartment. The other apartments are in worse shape than mine and have assorted issues with plumbing being the biggest issues. Apparently they had first planned to tear down this building then they were going to remodel it but in the end nothing was done. Everyone’s apartment was dirty when they moved in. Getting issues addressed is almost impossible as they seem to be deaf when it comes to requests for assistance. I have experienced great kindnesses from many Chinese people since I have been in this country but there seems to be great indifference when it comes to work duties.
Now for the usual odds and ends. I saw a news report on TV that said that the government here is now using pop up ads on the internet to remind users that their online activities may be monitored. I haven’t seen any of them I assume because my pop-up blocker is working well. I assume that my blog may be monitored and you should assume that if you send me an e-mail that it may monitored as well. Later today I will probably meet a friend from Nanning for dinner. She and about 30 of her co-workers are in town as part of a 5 day vacation organized by her employer. It is quite common here for employers to organize trips for the employees.
Tags: Travel
admin