Year of the Rat

Title was inspired by the events of tonight. You can skip to the end if you want.

So this week has been pretty eventful and rather a joy despite the non-stop pace of teaching and everything else that seems to fill up my schedule. I have a Sony Clie - palm pilot - that seems to beep every 30 minutes to tell me what is next in my life and/or to accomplish. I have to say that I am enjoying the challenges of becoming forced into developing my - much lacking - time management skills. (I must give props to my buddy Joel for giving it to me - it is a blessing - thanks!)

Teaching @ Nanchang Blue Sky University

Teaching has been good, but challenging. It is amazing what kinds of 'highs' and 'lows' you can have when you are teaching. One day you feel elated that your students are able to understand you. The next moment - like today - I asked my students for their homework and over half the class hadn't done it. I felt crushed and very disappointed - I didn't even know what to say at first. I was like "Uh, oh...." I love my kids too; Chinese kids just seem more innocent and love-able at times than Americans. I know this is not entirely true. It is probably just my bias in liking China, not fully understanding everything that is said around me at all times, and finding students enjoyable. Mind you everywhere I go I hear: 外国人 (wai guo ren) which literally means outside country person and/or foreigner, 老外 （lao wai) which means once again foreigner), and wai jiao - don't know the characters, but means foreign teacher. One must remember that when you are in China you will be - and will always be - a foreigner. This is twice as true when you teach in a rural part of the Southern China with a population of only 4 million. Because in China, 4 million people is a small city; basically we are living in the equivalent to that of Georgia. Maybe this is a bad analogy, but I can't think of anything else based on the similiar size of geography of China in relation to the United States.

The Office: Why Starbucks is Important

Every week in the office is an interesting. All of us - my team - is required to keep a minimum of 10 office hours each week. My hours are in the morning from 8:00-10:00 am Monday through Thursday with some office hours scattered in the afternoons on Tuesday and Thursday. At any rate, Monday and Wednesday have become Shannon and I's coffee time. Thanks to the French press I sent and the the 3lbs of coffee I sent myself, we have been enjoying French presses in the office about twice a week. It makes the day that much better and definitely gives me energy to make it through the longest days of teaching, which involve me being at school from 8:00 am to 4:00 pm.

Classes

Basically each of us have 4 classes that we teach. I teach all Business English students. More precisely, I teach all FRESHMEN Business English. Each class meets twice a week for 100 minutes. So the class runs for 50 minutes before you have a 10 minute break and then continues for another 50 minutes. It is definitely different than the way we run things in America, but what can I say, we're in China.

I should point out that the Chinese have their own siesta, except it isn't called a siesta. Its called a SHOUXI = Rest in the middle of the day. So this is what happens: At noon everyone goes and eats as fast as they can before heading back to their dorms or offices were they fall asleep. So basically you have tired students in the morning and afternoon, becuase everyone is always getting to class in the PROCESS OF WAKING UP. I constantly have to call on students who are falling asleep in class - it cracks me up.

On the campus we teach at - which is the New Campus - the dorms are located quite a distant from the classroom buildings. So just before classes start in the afternoon - 2pm - students start to migrate back towards the campus in droves and it is something to see. I will give you a pictures of what it looks like from outside our office from a perspective before the 'masses' attack and after. : )

(Before: Notice pathways are clear)

(After: Students heading to Class)

Home Life

After showing the pictures above it reminded me that I have been wanting to revive the subject about how much Chinese love to play basketball. I really don't think that my descriptions have done justice to what my eyes have seen over here. Therefore, to satisfy my desire for you to understand this I am going to post some pictures below of what the basketball courts look like all day from around 7am - 10pm.

Year of the Rat

So tonight after our Tizo (team time) my teammate Laura had left to go back up to her apartment before everybody, but returned again after a short while freaked out and telling us that there was a RAT in her KITCHEN. I guess being the guy that I am said, "Come on Jonathan, we gotta go check this out." Sure enough, we got upstairs, went into the kitchen - which she had shut the sliding door to - and started poking around and found it underneath the burner next to the sink. We tried to get it to budge, but were still formulating a plan on how to capture it, when her roommate Rachael just decided to force the rat to make a decision by moving the burner and that is when things got very interesting.

As soon as Rachael moved the burner, the rat jumped from the counter where the burner is located and tried to run away but was confused by the mass of human bodies in every direction it turned since all of us - 7 - were up there. It did a FULL ON BODY SLAM into the sliding glass door before managing to make it out of the kitchen to where the rest of the girls were. This - of course - caused all the girls to start SHRIEKING and looking for the nearest chairs to climb. In the end, after the rat escaped, it looked a little something like this:

(Laura, Shannon, Jodi, and Joelle)

Well, that is about the whole of it. I will make another post here hopefully this weekend. Hope you are all well!