Training

The first week I spent in China felt like a vacation, and rightly so. I just spent my time exploring with the other teachers, trying out a new restaurant every night and going clubbing after that. But now that the orientation for the teachers has started, we’ve stopped going to clubs every night, although we’re still finding new restaurants. And since the training takes most of the day, my exploration of the city has dropped considerably. That’s what the weekend and my time off from classes is going to be for, I’m assuming, although I feel responsible enough towards my students to make good lessons, so I’ll probably spend a good amount of time planning exactly what I’m going to do in class. Luckily, I’m teaching one lesson a week, so my creativity can be focused on one thing rather than being spread out over fifteen different classes. And I seem to have actually realized that this is my job, because I’m putting a lot of effort, much more effort than I ever put into my work at school. Mirroring that, my Chinese study has been progressing well, which is giving me a lot more confidence. I was actually excited to study yesterday, which was an odd feeling, considering how much I usually enjoy studying.

More English teachers have arrived since I last wrote, and we’ve been exploring places in groups, like Fuzimao, an area of markets surrounding a temple devoted to Confucius. Markets in China are like the markets I saw in Mexico, except even crazier, with people yelling everywhere to get my attention, and about 5 bootleg DVD stores down each aisle. I’ve already picked up some more DVDs.

One day when I was walking back from breakfast at the dumpling place, I saw a bunch of people dressed in army uniforms in the middle of the schoolyard, apparently waiting for something to happen. By the time I got up to my apartment, they were all in formation and being yelled at by officers. Adam, Nick (another teacher), and I ran up to the roof with our cameras, and we started taking pictures of what turned out to be the students marching. Apparently, they do military marching as an orientation activity. They marched around the courtyard, and then each group would jog in formation to the middle and do kung fu moves together in front of one head officer. Then they marched some more and stood at attention while someone spoke to them over a loudspeaker. Coming from my American background, I would’ve hated doing something like that for an orientation activity, but Lee, the teacher who’s training us, told us that it was one of the students’ favorite activities. It made them feel much more patriotic, and patriotism is a very powerful emotion for the China, much more so than in America, even.

~ by jonathanaugat on August 31, 2007.