What is that bright thing in the sky??
What is that bright thing in the sky??? I asked my students this question and they told me “sunshine”. It had been so long since I had seen the sun I forgot what it looked like! It was so nice to see it again. Apparently the rainy season has almost come to an end and we can expect to see lots of sunshine going forward. After a couple sunny days the clouds and rain and cool weather returned. I purchased another heater and got another blanket from the school so I shouldn’t have any trouble staying relatively warm now. The superintendent for our building came to my apartment and did some work on the windows to get them to close better. It was a baling wire and duct tape sort of solution…..an example of typical Chinese craftsmanship……lol. In my last post I misspoke about my plumbing fixtures. Actually 2 of my 3 fixtures have the hot and cold reversed. At least I have a shower in my apartment with hot water. The students here have shower facilities in their dormitory buildings but don’t have hot water so they go to another building if they want a hot shower. The tap water here is pretty cold so I can’t imagine taking a cold shower. An Australian friend of mine here lives in an apartment near downtown and has a shower but often does not have hot water. From time to time in our building there is no water at all. It happened the other morning just after I had finished shaving but before I had taken my shower so I used the water from my water cooler to wash up a bit before heading off to class.
The cost for the students to attend this school is about $750 to $850 per year for tuition and another $70 to $160 per year for their dormitory rooms. On top of that they need money for books, food, transportation, etc. I know it sounds very cheap to us foreigners but for the locals it’s pretty expensive. One student was telling me that both of his parents are university teachers but they together they make less than $600 per month. I think many of the Chinese teachers make less than us foreign teachers. There are some scholarships available for students from very poor families. The dorms are quite basic and the really cheap ones in the older buildings are just 1 step above poverty conditions. The apartments across the courtyard from me are being used as a dorm and it looks like in an apartment the same size as mine they put 8 students (4 in the bedroom and 4 in the living room). There is no central heat or air conditioning in any of the buildings on campus. There does not seem to be any campus wide computer system that is available to the students and teachers. When I get an e-mail from my contact in administration it comes from her personal address and not a school address.
A Chinese friend was telling me that she taught for a year in a public school in a city with cold weather and the classrooms did not have heat and she suffered some frostbite on her hands (there was snow on the ground outside). There was a program on tv today talking about the financial problems of many Chinese universities. Apparently about 10 years ago many universities started borrowing money from the banks so they could expand but didn’t have a plan for repayment of the loans. There is a big debate about where the money should come from to repay the loans. The schools here don’t have big endowments like schools in the west and don’t get a lot of funding from the government. Apparently the government told the banks to make the loans to the schools or at least approved of the loans so many people think the government will need to provide funding for the loans.
Over the last couple weekends I have finally started taking in some of the local sights with the help and company of some local friends. Yesterday there were 8 of us that went to Chengjiang which is about a 2 hour drive southeast of Kunming. There is a large lake there that is similar to Lake Tahoe in that it is nestled among mountains at a high elevation and has very clean water. There is very little development around the lake and part of the road to go there was very rough. Among the 8 of us were 5 Chinese, 2 Americans and 1 Slovak. The previous weekend I went to a park and lake in the south part of Kunming and hiked up Xi Shan (West Mountain) to see the temple carved into the mountain. There was one guy that worked for 14 years to carve the temple into the side of the mountain. Also last weekend I spent part of Saturday evening on Wen Ling Jie (the locals call it foreigner street because it’s where all the laowai hang out). There are restaurants there that serve poor to not-bad imitations of western food. The most popular place there is Salvador’s and it serves some Mexican, Italian, and American food. Whenever I go there it is likely I will see someone I know even though I’ve only been in Kunming less than 3 months now. The laowai (foreigners) community had a Halloween party that night and I ran into them by accident and joined them for a bit (sans costume). The locals were quite curious as to what the heck the foreigners were all doing in the strange costumes acting crazy.
School is going better now that I’m more comfortable with my lesson plans. One class that I really struggled with coming up with good lessons was my class called “English Listening”. The students in this class are all sophomores majoring in International Accounting. Some of the students were complaining to me this week about their accounting class. The class is their first accounting class and they were concerned that the book was not very good. The book is in English but their teacher (Chinese lady) does not speak much English so they are not getting much help understanding the principals. I looked at the book and told them the book is fine. I told them in class this week that starting next week I will spend at least half the class time teaching them accounting. They were all very happy to hear this. Too bad I didn’t figure that out 6 weeks ago…….lol. Some of my students would like to have western penpals to practice their English. If any of you would like to be a penpal or know someone that would, send me an e-mail address and some basic information about the person (name, age, sex, interests). High school or university students would be best but others are welcome too. Well that’s it for now.
Tags: Travel
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