Brooke Meets China

你好!!

Brooke — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 18:24:36 +0000

你好。

Ni hao.

Wow, time has just flown by here. Xichong has been amazing mainly because the people here are wonderful and treat us all like we’re family members. We’ve mostly gotten to know the teachers at Xichong Middle School where we teach but we’ve also met a few other members of the community through them. Our time here has pretty much been spent teaching and eating out every lunch and dinner. Eating out is a huge ordeal. And people always take us out to meet us and/or get to know us and/or show their hospitality. Friendships develop and grow at there meals. They’re so important in this culture. So we’re always the guests of honor at these amazing dinners where they make us eat more than humanly possible (or more than Americanly possible). J

We’ve also had a LOT of homework to do for GC. Reading books and answering questions about them/journaling about our time here, writing a 6+ page paper about the environment in Xichong, and a 10+ page paper about whatever we want to research about China. I chose to research the color red, because it is so auspicious here. This of course has been wonderful and exciting for me, and has been feeding my obsession with color. It’s soooo interesting. Perhaps I’ll try to find time to give a little blurb about what I found.

On Sunday I got to go to Bai Fu Si Forest Park, which was pretty much a state park in the mountains/countryside. It might be the most beautiful place I have ever been. It was so wonderful. My host mother, Miss Huang (Huang Lian) figured out that I love walking and being in nature, so she planned the little hike. It was so great.

On Friday we will leave Xichong to go back to Nanchong (where we first lived) for a few days, then to Chengdu so we can catch the train to travel to Xi’an and Beijing. Then home! I can’t believe how fast the time has passed. I am really going to miss it here but I can’t wait to see all of you again. I miss you all so much and I look forward to seeing you in 2 weeks (!!!!!). I just wish I could bring China with me. J

Cheers!

何可人

First week of Teaching in a Chinese Middle School (part 3)

Brooke — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 03:05:25 +0000

Part 3 of a 3 part post on my first week of teaching in a Chinese middle school.

Read part 1 and part 2.

Many teachers observe me teach – I will have maybe 2-6 teachers at the back of the classroom at any given class, taking notes about my teaching, as they all want to learn more about the American style of teaching. Therefore I have many teachers asking me to come and teach their class. I have explained the stress of teaching so many classes in one day to my host mom, Huang Lian and to Lucia (the woman in charge who also happens to be my host mother’s best friend and considers herself my other host mother). Huand Lian was upset to learn that I have been teaching so many classes, and when teachers ask her directly if I can teach for them, she refuses. So I am really, REALLY thankful for my host mother protecting me like that.

Tuesday I was asked to teach a Unit from a lesson book for a lower level class in the future (in my host mom’s class), and after hesitation, I agreed. Then they told me I would start the next day. WHAT!? The next day!?!? I thought “the future” meant in 2 weeks. I convinced my host mom to let me observe her teach one class with the same Unit so I knew how the students we used to teaching… I can’t walk into a classroom of non-English speakers and start teaching them American-style lessons when I can’t communicate with them in Chinese. So after I watched her (the 1st period) I had a better idea of how I should teach and taught my class (the 3rd period) pretty much the same way (I used the 2nd period to quickly prepare).

But just because I am used to the American style of teaching, they thought I was loads better than them, and now many teachers want to learn how to teach from me. It’s a compliment, but a stressful one. I have been told several times that I am clever, have a beautiful voice, pronounce things very well, am a great teacher, and will make a good teacher in the future. I am happy about this but at the same time kind of upset by this, because the better I am at teaching, the more classes I am given to teach without help. So while I am happy that I have had some teaching experience I kind of wish I was bad at teaching so the teachers here would give me more help. ‘

Still, I am able to find joy in the teaching experience. I do like teaching. I wish about everything could be different, but when I am in the classroom my focus is on the students and I forget the mess of everything else. I don’t even think about the teachers observing me and taking notes in the back of the classroom. I have already had teachers and students ask me/suggest to me to come back and/or stay and teach English permanently. I always laugh and say, “maybe” or “we’ll see.”

I know it will get sorted out soon and we will get schedules, we just have to wait it out.
‘

First week of Teaching in a Chinese Middle School (part 2)

Brooke — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 03:03:07 +0000

Part 2 of a 3 part post on my first week of teaching in a Chinese middle school.

Read part 1.

It just so happens that 4 out of 7 GC students here want to be teachers, and while I am the only one who has had my student teaching experience, 4 of us are more comfortable than the others. Therefore, they don’t see the current “method” of scheduling us to teach as an issue, because they think we generally do very well. I think they see us all as good teachers just because we teach the only way we know to teach – the American way, which is much more affective than the Chinese way (which is simply copying the teacher, and the teacher reading the the lesson straight from the book, word for word). It is not creative. It is not engaging. It is down-right boring. Students chant monotonous words or sentences after the teacher to “learn” the information.

I have been asked to mainly teach the lowest level of English learners: Junior, Grade 1. These students are maybe 7,8,9,10, or 11 years old. Mostly 8-10 years old, and have learned English for about a month. I don’t speak enough Chinese to communicate with them and they don’t really understand my English. It’s pretty hard to teach and I have no idea how to teach new English-learners. The older classes (Senior Grade 1-4) can communicate with us pretty well, have solid conversations with us, and benefit from us more.

The students treat us even more like celebraties than we ever experienced in Nanchong. They run up to us and grab our hands and ask us to be their friend, sign their paper, take a picture with them, give them our phone number and e-mail address, and about 1,483 other questions. They follow us and stop us and make it hard for us to go anywhere. They take pictures or movies of us in class with their phones. During breaks between classes when teachers are grabbing us and pulling us every-which-way, students are filling us the room, backing us/trapping us into a corner and yelling at us to talk to them and be their friend. Some teachers act as bodyguards for us and some have to blow whistles constantly to get them to leave the office, and that doesn’t always work. And whistles are supposed to be used for really serious situations. It.is.intense.

First week of Teaching in a Chinese Middle School (part 1)

Brooke — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 02:57:44 +0000

Part 1 of a 3 part post on my first week of teaching in a Chinese middle school.

First I should explain the grades:
Junior, Level 1 (this is maybe 4th, 5th, and/or 6th… I’m not sure yet)
Junior, Level 2 (this is maybe 6th, 7th, and/or 8th… also don’t know yet)
Senior, Level 1 (this is like 9th)
Senior, Level 2 (this is like 10th)
Senior, Level 3 (this is like 11th)
Senior, Level 4 (ans of course, this is like 12th)

Class Periods: There are 4 classes before lunch, 4 after lunch (12-2:30pm) and maybe 3 before 11pm. They go to school most of the day and on the weekends, but they have a really lone lunch break where they go home or leave school and often nap before coming back.

So far teaching has been much more chaotic than we hoped it would be, but I think we all knew it would be. There is no schedule so between every class period we go to the English Teacher’s Office and get grabbed by a new teacher each time to teach his or her class on the spot, and they all ask us what we have planned. ‘Ok, really? You just asked me to come to you class which starts in 4 minutes, I have no idea what age they are, what their English level is, if they will understand me, and you haven’t told me what your current lesson has been. How could I possibly have anything planned? I can’t teach by the seat of my pants.’ It’s been stressful and hectic and we don’t usually get a break.

There are 40 English teachers and around 12 of them surround us each break between classes to snatch us for their next class. We also have to teach alone, without help from another GC student or the teacher of that class, which we did not expect. Sometimes the teacher isn’t present in the class or leaves in the middle. This is not what GC agreed to. We we all suppost to teach in pairs or a group of 3, have planned lessons from the teacher (we aren’t suppost to have to plan a lesson), the teacher should be there at all times, and the teacher should translate anything the students don’t understand (and some of them haven’t been or refused to). We have been teaching more classes each day than the teachers here ever teach in one or two days. We are getting tired fast.

Our GC professor, Steve, is presently working all this stuff out. They had agreed to a lot ahead of time and the school here isn’t holding up their part of the deal. I think most of the issues come from a lack of schedule. We are supposed to teach 3-4 classes a day, not 6-8 like some of us have been teaching without breaks. If we had a schedule, the teachers couldn’t grab us to teach if we had a scheduled break. But they’re all eager for us to come to their classes and a few of them cry if we refuse (mind that’s only been 2-3 out of the 40 teachers and maybe 10-15 student teachers). Also, the woman in charge (Lucia) didn’t expect all the teachers to swarm us and doesn’t always see it happening. Once I told her it was happening she told me to come to her office between classes if I wanted a break and avoid that situation. I was thankful for this and have done that, but it really doesn’t solve the problem – she needs to confront the teachers and tell them to stop, but confonting people is not culturally done here, so that makes it a little frustrating.

Driving lessons

Brooke — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 02:50:53 +0000

My host mother is learning how to drive, and here they only drive stick-shift. I arrived on Saturday and on Sunday I found myself in a small SUV with a driving teacher and 4 adults learning to drive stick. 3 of them drove for the first time that day. It was a bit scarier than I would hope it to be. ‘ After they took turns driving for about 20 minutes each and made it through one cycle, they asked me to drive. I tried to explain that I can’t drive stick (I learned a few times but don’t drive stick enough to keep it up – but I told them I didn’t know how) and that in the U.S. I drive an automatic – an of course it took a long time to explain what that was… But they told me that the driving teacher could teach me how to drive. So I was suddenly sitting in China, in a stick-shift SUV, driving for the first time since August. ‘

I can honestly say I never expected to find myself there. haha. The hardest part was definitely starting, but after I got going I was fine. And when I was done they were all clapping furiously for me, shocked at how well I did. I tried to explain that I have been driving for 6n years, I just don’t know how to do stick-shift, but I’m not sure any of them understood. Oh well, it was an adventure and we had a good time. ‘ haha.

Food in Xichong

Brooke — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 02:46:54 +0000

The food is even better here – if that is even possible. Sichuanese food is known for being heaven in your mouth and it lives up to its reputation. It is also known for being insanely spicy, and again, it holds true. I am getting used to the spicy food. It doesn’t really faze me now. I like having tea and something close to bread, but they don’t really “do” bread here and they hardly drink anything with meals, which was a little hard to get used to at first. Most places give you tea but it’s in a cup maybe 1/3 the size of a mug. So you drink really slowly or you have to flag a waiter down pretty often, which isn’t always easy to do here (the culture is just different and they generally leave you alone unless you call and wave for them – although we can usually get waiters a bit easier just because we’re foreigners and they are so curious that they watch our every move).

The only frustrating thing about food is the fact that everyone always tells us to eat more, because they eat maybe 3 times the amount of food we are used to eating at any given meal. Everyone eats a good sized breakfast (it is unheard of to skip breakfast, in fact it is down-right scandalise!), and it is customary for families to gather together for lunch, a huge ordeal taking up to 2 hours and then napping before returning to work or school (I must say I rather enjoy the napping part). Dinner is also large here but smaller than lunch, which makes it about the size of a U.S. supper (since supper-time in the U.S. is a big meal when families usually gather together). Long after we’re full and busting at the seams, they’re getting after us for eating too little. We all get the same lectures every meal and periodically throughout the day. We try to explain the cultural differences but that’s not good enough. They really have to see us eat “so little” for a few weeks and see that we’re still healthy before they slow down on the lectures.

We went through this same thing with our previous host families but it wasn’t as bad for me because I couldn’t understand their lectures – they could have been telling me the sun was beautiful or that they don’t like wearing flip flops and I wouldn’t have known. But here I can understand and I have to explain myself every meal. They all mean well and I know they are showing their hospitality and care by telling me to eat or giving me more food, and that is keeping me from getting upset at them. ‘ I just have to be patient and do the same little dance until they see me in a few weeks, healthy and not wasting away. ‘

Second Home in Xichong

Brooke — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 02:46:34 +0000

Wow, Xichong is suprisingly very different. Living conditions are much easier here. Read on for part 1 of a 3 part post…

The city is geographically smaller but it is still made of large, tall buildings, 4-6 lane roads, round-abouts, etc….. things you usually see in big cities. I expected 2 lane roads, smaller buildings, stop signs, etc. It’s interesting. The city is smaller than Nnchong but built in the style of a large city, like Nanchong. Interesting…

My host mother, Huang Lian, is an English teacher and I can communicate very well with her. ‘ She is a really sweet, soft-spoken, petite woman who is independent and always positive. Her husband is off working in Malasia and her daughter (20 years old) is studying art/interior design at China West Normal University in Nanchong – where I was studying! But that school is soooo huge, so i didn’t meet her. But she came back yesterday for a few days and I have been enjoying getting to know her. She speaks little English and I speak little Chinese but we try hard to communicate. My bed is king-sized (Sa-WEET!!), but it is still harder than what we would sleep on in the States. BUT it is NOT a piece of wood!!! ‘ I sleep so well on it. ‘ And it’s a really nice apartment, bigger than my last one which I didn’t expect, and there are 2 bathrooms…wait for it….one with a Western toilet!!!! AND she has a washing machine!!! (Up till now I had been washing all my clothes by hand). Her apartment is beautiful and clean. I will hopefull get pictures up soon.

We live about a 10 minutes-walk away from the school. I can see it from my window. It’s maybe 4 blocks away (if there were blocks). We live in the “Teachers Village.” It’s a group of 7 large apartment complexes that only teachers and administration can live in with their families. So luckily the other GC students live here too and it is really easy for us to see each other. Additionally, my host mother, Huang Lian, told me to invite my friends over whenever I wanted, and because they are my friends, they are family. So on Monday 4 of them came over and we watched a movie together. Having friends over isn’t common in China. If you hang out with people, you go out. But she told me that I can have my friends over to play whenever I wanted – and yes, she said, “play.” ‘ When I was asking if they could come over that night, she repeated it so we made sure we understood each other… “You want your friends to come over and play with you?” Me (*smile*), “Yes, is that ok?” Host mom, “Certainly!!” (almost aghast that I would have to ask!) ‘ She’s cute. ‘

Poem

Brooke — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 17:41:13 +0000

I don’t remember if I ever mentioned that my host father (being a poet) wrote a poem about me. Yeah, I was so shocked and flattered. He has also taught me to memorize it and wrote out a copy for me. Alas, it is in characters, so you won’t understand it, so I have translated it into pinyin – the use of the English alphabet to write out the pronounciation of characters, as well as English. So if you read the pinyin you’ll get an idea of how it sounds in Chinese. And I should also note that translating it into English looses much of the poetic sound/quality, but you’ll get the idea (and I did this translation after being explained the meaning and using a dictionary, so I took some liberty).

Also, ‘ke ren’ is my Chinese name…

(title) jia lai yang mei

(by) Wang Guo Lun

fa cheng fu bai liang qing chun,

wan li peng fei lai ke ren.

zhong mei feng qing tong gan shou,

ge shen ban xue yi sheng xin.

(title) our family welcomed our younger sister from over the ocean

(by) Wang Guo Lun

White skin, reddish hair, and Spring-blue eyes,

Ke ren flew many miles to get here.

China and America mix as we accept and understand each other,

Learning at Goshen brings new thoughts and chances to grow.

It’s a really rough translation and I tried to translate it so it’s easily understood, but don’t take my translation as a good representation of the poem. I hope to get someone to translate it into English before I leave, but we’ll see. If I explain the meaning to someone in English I usually use much more words that I have typed above, but that’s basically what it is saying. No matter what I was really flattered to have my host father write this poem.

Tomorrow I leave for Xichong for 5 weeks, and then I will come back and see my host family for 3 days before leaving for good. We’ve had ups and downs but I am really going to miss them. They want me to come back on the weekends but I don’t think I will have the time or money for that, plus I have a new host family to get to know in Xichong. I am banking on having internet access somehow but I have no idea right now what it will be like, so I’ll have to see if I can blog some more or not.

But no matter what I love getting all your e-mails and comments. They make my heart smile.

‘

Last Week in Nanchong (part 2)

Brooke — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 02:30:21 +0000

It’s my last week here in Nanchong. Read on for part 2 of a 2 part post about another exciting weekend and how my last week has been going…

On Saturday morning (your Friday night) I got to talk to Meg and Dave on the phone! Woot! Then my host brother Wang Liang and Cherry came over and we all had a really nice lunch here. Then Cherry took me to a big book store (like Barnes’n'Nobles) and I bought a few books, including the U.K. version of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban! I love that book! Then Cherry and I met my host parents (and two other professors from the university) to go somewhere that they had planned… and it was hiking up a mountain again. I should have known. ‘ I love hiking I just like to know ahead of time, but that’s besides the point… and we all had a great time. We walked up and down the mountain for about 4 hours. And you would NOT believe what happened on the mountain (I hardly believe it!) – I BREATHED FRESH AIR!!!!! CRAZY!!!! Who knew they had fresh air here!?! ‘ I was to happy and stunned that I stopped and just took it all in. ‘ They all stopped to see what I was doing and I just smiled and kept going. Then a bit later Cherry offered me one of her ear pieces to her iPod and she was listening to Enya. It totally fit the setting. And the next song was even better – The Sound of Silence by Simon and Garfunkel. When that song came on, on the top of this beautiful mountain, with fresh air, everything just felt perfect. I stood rooted to the spot and just took it all in. That moment was so beautiful I could have cried (happy tears of course ‘ ). Then we went and had a GINORMOUS platter of jiaozi for dinner.

On Sunday I went to church! Yes, church. Chinese church. With two other students (Alyson and Kaleem). The building was huge and could have probably fit 1,500-2,000 people (esp. Chinese people because generally they are smaller) but there were probably 600-800 attending. We think they have multiple services, but we’re not sure. I want to blog about religion in China sometime, so I’ll say more then, but it was pretty much a Western church service that we’re accustomed to with Chinese aspects thrown in here and there. They were reading from Mark 3 but that’s about all we figured out. They had screens, projectors, a piano, microphones, pews, a balcony, a pulpit, etc. The two pastors that we saw were women, as most pastors in China are women, and more women attend church than men. It was like a contemporary church in most ways. They sang songs that sounded like Christian songs, prayed, gave an offering, and invited new-comers to go up to the front at the end. We couldn’t really understand, but it was still really good to be there.

This week has been good and a bit strange, knowing that it is our last week here. We’re trying to go to our favorite places one last time before we leave, and wrap up our classes. And that also means that I had to go say good-bye to Cherry tonight because I probably won’t see her again before I leave on Saturday, but I hope to see her when we come back for a few days in November. And on top of all this we (the SST group) are trying to throw together a thank you party for our host families… last minute because everything is last minute here – we were told that to make plans for a wedding you do it all 3 days in advanced!! No thank you!

Otherwise we are all trying to get our heads around the idea of teaching English to 70-odd Chinese high school or jr. high school students on Monday. Holy goodness. And I’m not even sure if my student-teaching background will help me much here, because the education system here is soooooooo very different. So we’ll see how big that hurtle is.

Last Week in Nanchong (part 1)

Brooke — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 02:32:03 +0000

It’s my last week here in Nanchong. Read on for part 1 of a 2 part post about another exciting weekend and how my last week has been going…

Wow. I can hardly believe that the first part of my SST experience ends in two days. I have really enjoyed it here and will miss many aspects of Nanchong, my host family, the friends I have made here, and even the restaurant and shop owners who have gotten accustomed to having us here and greet us with warm, familiar smiles. Being in a new city will bring new excitements and places to be discovered, but it has been nice really getting to know where things are here, being able to find our way around this city by walking, bus, or taxi, having “usuals” for lunch and dinner, depending on if it is a week day or weekend. We have found a routine in different niches of Nanchong and it is a bit sad thinking about leaving it. One exciting thing we found out, however, is that we will come back to Nanchong for 2-3 days after our service/teaching period. On Friday 21 Nov. we’ll come back to Nanchong and stay with our current host families until Monday 24 Nov. when we take a bus to Chengdu, then a train to see Xi’an and Beijing (which will be SWEET trips!) and then back to the good ol’ U.S. of A. So it’s nice to know that this is only the first good-bye. Additionally, my host parents told me I can leave some things here that I won’t need to have on service, so I’m thankful for that.

This past weekend was really good. On Friday my host father showed me how to make jiaozi (a yummy dumpling filled with meat and/or veggies… like ravioli or tortellini – that idea at least – and they can be boiled or fried and are DELICIOUS!!!!!). We had circles of pre-cut dough slices, put a small ball of the meat/veggie mixture in the middle, and folded the dough circle into a half-circle, using a special technique to pinch the dough, closing the meat/veggies inside). Oh.my.goodness. It’s soooooo good. Ever since I told my host parents that I love jiaozi (wo ai jiaozi) I have gotten it for every meal. I kid you not. No exaggeration here. I cross my heart. I have other things too, but jiaozi is ALWAYS present. ‘ I tell ya, hospitality is amazing here.