A mid-semester update.

Hello faithful readers,

Because of the lack of consistent access to this site, I haven't been updating it. Well, now I am.

I figured now would be an appropriate time to update you on my travels because last week was mid-term week for my school. So I'm going to give you a general update on my feelings, attitude, and findings about China.

Before I left, many of my friends asked me what I expected from my time in China. I gave them all the same answer: I have no expectations. I simply want to travel, meet people, explore cultures, and discover hidden ideas about the world and myself that I did not know before. My no-expectations attitude towards China has made what could have potentially be a disastrous trip to a much more manageable one. Whenever you are in another culture, particularly one as opposite to ours as China, patience and flexibility are the key characteristics to not going insane. In fact, the amount of Westerners who come to China without those qualities and then cease to complain about their misfortunes baffles me. ("I didn't order this. This is ridiculous. Why can't they EVER get my food right?" "Well, that's because you're the only person this month who has spoken to them in English. Get over it.")

My school is still a joke. An absolute joke. While Buckland, the recruiting agency, was phenomenal, professional, and quick to assist me in any of my concerns, the school, particularly the administration, has been the opposite. Not once has anyone from the school shown me around the city. Not once has anyone offered language lessons. Not once has anyone from the school said anything complimentary about my work. The only time I get brought into the office is to be criticized over something insignificant that I most likely did not do. Just last week, I was told that I needed to stop coming late to class. I have not been late to class once this semester, but of course, I smiled and nodded.

I am frustrated by the lack of Chinese that I know. I have never been good at taking initiative. I'm more than content staying in my apartment in the evenings. Given the choice of learning Chinese on my own and brushing it off, I will, more times than not, brush it off. However, if you give me a Chinese tutor and a time to meet, then I'm there, prepared, and ready to learn. Of course, the school has not provided the contractually-obligated teacher, so I have been stuck using Rosetta Stone during the times that I feel compelled to learn. And while Rosetta Stone has taught me some basic words such as some of the colors and animals and whatnot, none of it is applicable to conversing with the Chinese. I doubt I'll be able to order at a restaurant before my time is up.

I do not travel as much as I would like. I'm quite jealous of my Aston friends - they work Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, which means they have four days a week off. There are so many cities in the area that I would love to visit (Chengdu, for example, is a 8 hour train ride away. If I had four days off, I could leave Sunday evening and ride through the night, spend four days there, and take the train back in the evening, getting back just in time to teach.) I'm also jealous of some of the stories of the other Buckland teachers - getting full weeks off for mid-terms, getting TWO weeks off because of H1N1 (yes, every day I show up to work I pray that a few more kids have it), while I'm stuck at my job.

The silver lining is that because of my lack of social life (see later in this entry), I have been saving up quite a lot of money. When my contract expires in February (it actually expires in July, but they don't know I'm leaving yet [I assume they can't read anything I type within parenthesis]), I will be have more than enough money (At least 12,000 yuen [About $1750]) to travel around China, and I will not need to worry about the return flight home because the school is supposed to pay for it. Since I don't have anything to do until my family's cruise in late March, I'll be able to leisurely explore China at my own pace.

Where do I want to go? Everywhere. China has a surprisingly thorough train system, which Westerners do not use nearly enough. The top of my list is Beijing, of course, but there's two major problems with that. 1) Beijing. February. COLD. Cold Cold Cold. I hate the winter, and I hate the cold. 2) February happens to the month of a little holiday called "Chinese New Year", where 1.2 billion people return to their homes to celebrate life, renewal, good health, fortune, and of course, family. What this means is that the train systems will be PACKED. And they will be packed with people going to Beijing. But...It's Beijing. How can I live in China for a year (six months) without going to Beijing?

Where else do I want to go? Well, everywhere I can. Of course, there's the big cities: Shanghai, Chengdu, Changsha, Shenzhen, Guangzhuo, Kunming (There's an ULTIMATE tournament there in February), Hong Kong, Macau (gambling!). But then there's the smaller, more historic/cultural sites that are out of the way but I would be foolish to pass up. Can I fit all this in with my money/time limitations ? Who knows.

Classes. The classes, much like the school itself, is a joke. I teach 9 classes twice a week, for 40 minutes a session. I teach 2 third grade, 4 fourth grade, 2 fifth grade, and one sixth grade class. The third grade classes are the only classes that have a Chinese teacher in them. Of these classes, the only classes that listen to me are one of my grade four classes (There is a boy who speaks excellent English who does a very good job of keeping the others in line) and my grade six class (This class is absolutely unbelievable. They respect me as they would a Chinese teacher, and we have so much fun together). The third grade classes are rowdy, but they are fun, and they are just so darn cute that even though we don't accomplish a thing, I look forward to that class. The rest of the fourth and fifth grade classes are simply ridiculous.

They yell, fight, yell at me in Chinese, and generally ignore me. A 40 minute class typically begins with me standing for about 15 minutes, waiting for them to stop talking (They know that I will not try to fight with them over their attention. If they don't want to learn English, that's more than fine with me), 10 minutes of me standing still after I say "Good morning class" and they begin talking again, a 5-10 minute introduction, and 10 minutes of actual lessons. The most frustrating aspect of this is that the moment a Chinese teacher walks in, they are SILENT. Completely silent. The Chinese teacher leaves, and it once again is like I'm not even there.

Fortunately, and as sad as this sounds, I have learned very quickly not to care about my job. For the classes that pay attention to me, I will go to no ends to make sure that you are learning English and developing your conversation skills. For the two or three kids in each class that DO want to listen, I will stand next to you during the class and help you go through the books. However, I'm not going to try, in vain, to teach over a class of 60 when it is clear that they are uninterested and are unwilling to respect me as a teacher.

Oh well.

Ah, my social life. It seems that most of the Buckland teachers either have a wonderful social life and terrible classes/school, or fantastic classes but a non-existent social life. I am lucky enough to pick the bad ends of both of these straws. Hanzhong, a city of 500,000 to 4 million (The numbers are arbitrary), has 14 Westerners. Of these 14, there are 4 that are my age and have a decent enough personality that spending time with them isn't an exercise in patience in itself. Unfortunately, 2 of them live across the river. The river with the bridge. The river with the bridge that was recently torn down so that it could be expanded. Thus, it takes them about an hour's trip to get to downtown, where I live. The other two teachers work for Aston, which means they work on the weekends, so we do not get to see each other as often as we'd like.

That, combined with my lack of Chinese, means that I have very little to do on the weeknights and even less choices on the weekend. The frustrations of the weeknights tend to be relieved at a local bar, but being the only Westerner at a bar and not knowing Chinese can be very hit-or-miss. Some days I am lucky enough to meet some people who know English and we have a fun conversation (and they inevitably pay for the booze). Other times I spend a few hours talking to a group of people....and then I find out they are sixteen years old.

Needless to say, my social life is not as complete as it could be. Another frustrating thing about China.

Now, with all my complaints that I've listed, people may be under the impression that I'm not enjoying myself, but that could not be further from the truth. In fact, my experiences here have confirmed my desire and passion for the things that I was not too sure about before.

1) I love teaching. I hate teaching these kids, but I love teaching. The time that I spend in the classroom has shown me that teaching is very enjoyable. You know that look in a kid's eye when he finally comprehends something that he has been struggling with? It is impossible to beat that. I get an incredibly amount of joy knowing that I've positively impacted a kid's life. Do I see myself in a domestic classroom setting anytime soon? Probably not. But I could certainly do ESL again, although probably in a different country. My time in China has shown me what to look for and what to avoid.

2) I love traveling. Regardless of what happens at the end of the day, i am able to look outside and ponder the improbabilities of me ending up 15,000 miles away from my home, in a culture dramatically different from my own, surrounded by a language that could not be further linguistically from English. And that makes me smile. I want to continue traveling, continue meeting people, and continue exploring the hidden wonders of Earth.

3) People. The best part about my trip to Xi'an was meeting the other Westerners and getting to share our lives with each other. People who travel have the most wonderful stories of faith, love, and hope. They are forced to rely on other strangers for the most basic necessities of life, and even though they are more than aware of the evils of humanity, they continue to put their faith in people. The fact that people still travel reveals the basic nature of people - we are desperate to know people and to have them know us.

Now, I've said multiple times that I would be coming back in February, but that may not be the case. Am I going to stay at this school? Absolutely not. However, I can definitely see myself going to a different school and having a completely different experience. I want to come back for many reasons: I miss my family, my friends. My family is going on a cruise in March that I'd like to go to. A close friend of mine is getting married in June. If I stay until July and get accepted to my graduate programs I'll be home for about two weeks before I make another trans-continental trek. But with all these reasons beckoning me back, I will have a deep desire to stay.

Like I said. It's China? I am lucky, blessed, and fortunate to take this journey, and I want to make the most of it.

Well I'd say that was a pretty sufficient entry. Hope you had fun reading that book.

For those of you who haven't seen them yet, I've uploaded a few videos to my youtube page.

www.youtube.com/cckrspnl56

There are more to come.