Sunday, May 29, 2011

再见小兔子!Bye Little Bunny!

3 weeks following my students finding a little white rabbit and my subsequent tending to it, the original owner was found.
I hesitated to hang flyers for fear a student might claim the rabbit out of poor intentions. Yet, I posted "Missing Rabbit" on Saturday and today found its owner--the 10-year-old daughter of a teacher at this school. It was a fun 3 weeks but, realistically, perfect timing since I'll be out of town in Wuhan this weekend. Plus, carrying a rabbit overseas for my return visit to the states is one difficulty I'm fortunate to avoid. While I'll miss the little gal, I've got nice memories and some fun photos. Later Days.


Saturday, May 28, 2011

A Week of Evaluations

The last week was one full of "evaluations," there were two competitions, one test, and an interview.
I spent almost the entirety of April/May preparing for these moments.  Read below to see the story and results.

It began with Thursday (May 19) and the students' singing competition.  Each class sang both a pro communism song and a song of encouragement.  My class 6 students asked me to help them combine Michael Jackson's "Heal the World" and "We are the World."  Thus, I completely arranged a new number for them.  This picture is the Chinese song--the red papers should resemble the Great Wall.

To introduce the Jackson number, a student read his words in English and I read Jackson's words in Chinese.  I then conducted the song.
Class with me together. (Please excuse the low quality; these are snapshots from a cell-phone recording.)
To give you some idea about this competition, listen to the video above.  It's not always about sounding pretty. Okay, it's not about sounding pretty.  The entire class sings together, regardless how many of the classmates are tone deaf.

Saturday was Dominick's English speech competition.  He placed first in the Zhengzhou East region and moved on to the entire city level.  I worked by coaching him for this competition.

Dominick (a student among the best in the 11th class) and I at the speech competition site just before he drew his topic.  He was given 15 minutes to prepare a 3 minute speech about a topic he would draw at random.  I gave him a bit harder topics to practice (For example, "Should China continue its open border policy") and, come contest day, he was relieved when they lobbed an easy question his way.

Dominick (郭维-guo1 wei2-his Chinese name) in the speech competition.  The Chinese above says "Zhengzhou City's High School Foreign Language Speech Competition"
The following day was my own evaluation.  I sat the Level 3 Chinese language test, requiring knowledge of 600 characters.
Finally, this past Thursday, Dominick had an interview for a full ride scholarship and admission to the best universities in Asia--National University of Singapore or Nan Yang University in Singapore.  He passed the written test and needed to interview in English, thus the main motivation for entering the English speech competition.
Now comes the big question... how did they do!?  What happened?

Well, the summarized results are as follows:
A) Singing Competition--Class 6 earned a 98.12 out of 100 and placed in the top 3

B) Speech Competition--Dominick earned 1st prize and ranked 3rd in the entire city

C) Chinese Test--results are not published, but I feel comfortable with it, because I currently know and can use about 1,000 Chinese characters.  (The challenge will be June's test--Level 4--which needs 1,200 characters

D) Singapore Interview--He passed!  He is among the 13 students selected from Zhengzhou, and the only student from his school, that will be given a full ride to a university in Singapore, including a living stipend, round-trip airfare, and guaranteed 6 years of employment with a Singaporian company following graduation.  He'll leave in December and this will truly help his future.

It was a great week with plenty of work showing positive results.  I'm pretty happy--I'm kind of counting it as a birthday present to myself.

Later Days,
Rick

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Big Party Pooper

With my birthday coming, I was planning a birthday celebration with my students. Today, I told them the plan for the next month, which included a nonspecific class party on my birthday. This is also China's Childrens Day, which I hoped would confuse them. It turns out that my students actually remembered. After hearing about my plans, a student told me that a month ago they started planning a surprise birthday party for me even! I totally ruined their plans! I, thus, am the big party pooper.

(Yet, on a positive note, I am really flattered that they wanted to do something.)

Friday, May 20, 2011

Finally food at my doorstep!

I DID IT!!! As the pictures evidence, I finally successfully ordered food for delivery! I realize this sounds too simple an achievement to declare, but it's taken so many failed efforts to get here. First there were the phone numbers that never worked, then online ordering not available in my city. Innumerable language barriers and misunderstandings--pizza is not delivered in China, but KFC and McDonalds are. (The guy at Pizza Hut certainly got an earful when I, through my broken Chinese and his spotty English, learned this.) Add to this finally getting through to learn it's after hours, or, most frustrating, that delivery would take 100 minutes.

After all these attempts, 9 months of trying, I finally ordered take-out!
Hooray.

Monday, May 16, 2011

Science Class-Teachers and Tape

Students regularly have random competitions like an upcoming math contest, an 11-legged race that did NOT end well, and a singing competition. Well, they turned to me for help with the song of "encouragement," asking me to combine Michael Jackson's Heal the World and We are the World. I got out the music composing software and got it done. Every day I've been helping a somewhat-tone deaf group of 60 students prepare these songs.

Well, this is from lunch today where I was invited by that classes's head teacher, Ms. Dai, to hot pot, a really popular style of dining in China. Ms. Dai is on the right in red and Della, an English teacher of my other class is on the left.
This marks two proud moments as I held an entire lunch in Chinese and my colleagues are starting to respect that I'm not a lazy foreigner! Hooray!

Next, we have a great student, Catherine, writing her essay. See what she has in her hands? Tape. Why? Chinese students must worry about handwriting in their test scores. It's not the rational illegible=unscoreable, it's the prettier the hand writing, the higher the score. One student writes ok with beautiful handwriting. Another writes wonderfully with a boy's handwriting. The handwriting wins out always.
Therefore, Catherine and others use tape to peel off that outer layer of paper to "erase" their pen marks. There are so many students that evaluators may only spend 20 seconds on a paper; this then drives handwriting clarity to higher importance than content or ability

Saturday, May 14, 2011

Taxi drivers with no sense of direction

Right now I sit in a taxi after buying things for the rabbit. I hop in and inform the driver of the destination. Ok, he says.
15 seconds later he's still going the opposite direction.
I tell him "we want to go East."
"Yes, yes," he replies.
"we're going west now."
"I don't understand" is his mutterance.

Now we're on a highway and he's asking me "Where can I turn around?" This guy...

Will I ever get home? Probably...but slowly.
My solace comes from thinking "It's only 3 US dollars. And "you don't want to end up in a Chinese prison."

Friday, May 13, 2011

I'm a (potential) (rabbit) parent?

It being the year of the rabbit, I've enjoyed the luck it brings. Yet, I didn't expect it would bring a real rabbit!

My 11th graders found a rabbit on the school campus and, being they can't care for it in the classroom, asked me to take care of it. I'm horrible at saying no to any reasonable request of which I am capable. Thus, I took the rabbit home and have had it in my sunroom for two days. Yet, before I can say "I now have a pet," I have to put up the poster "Rabbit found." If there's no response then I'll give it a name, proper cage, bed, and litter box. But until then, I've made due with a variety of greens and carrotts and am waiting till the weekend.

Monday, May 9, 2011

The best part of waking up

While traveling in Yunnan province, I saw, for my first time, this amazing device--a siphon coffee maker. Again, I'm behind on the times, as they are rather old, but this is now my new best friend. It uses the expansion and contraction of air to push the water up into the grounds and then vacuum the coffee back out. It's coffee and science!

Plus, my new favorite way of enjoying this crisp cup of coffee—my new mug. The men at Folgers really know what they're singing about when they say coffee's the best part of waking up.

Good morning!

Saturday, May 7, 2011

Begin Daily Adventures

I recently purchased a new phone. As one who always purchases the "basic functions only," it's thrilling to have e-mail and a camera in my phone! I completely acknowledge I sound like a geezer, way behind on the times as I exclaim, "My phone has e-mail AND a camera! Doesn't that just blow your mind?!"

This is my first attempt to use those features and my blog (I know, I'm cutting edge with technology. I know.)

As I stroll through daily life, I am continually amused by things like that in the photo attached (hope the post works).

Available in every supermarket and likely present in every dish--MSG! Mmmm. And this here's clearly high quality--it's 99%!

Comments on daily life in China.

Staring is common, so being a foreigner means you get the attention of a celebrity.

I'd love to tell the starers to just go fly a kite, but they literally would, because it's a common pasttime.

Almost everyone assumes I don't know the word foreigner, so they don't change their volume when talking about me and are surprised when I turn around, understanding them.

There are innumerable kinds of electric bikes, far more than just the moped, and they don't hesitate to drive anywhere.

Red lights, speed limits, and police guards are only suggestions, as are one way roads.

A youth's bathroom is defined as the place where the urge to urinate hits--mall entrances, restaurants, pedestrian roads, or, considerately, a lone tree.

Somehow a cigarette on a sign encourages smoking, even if the image is behind a dark red circle and line.

It is appropriate to leave left-over food on the table instead of eating everything, but it is wasteful to leave rice remaining--the commodity more common than grass or dirt and sold by the sandbag.

Avoid asking for logic in Chinese pronunciation. More often than not, the answer is "it just is."

Babies and toddlers don't often wear diapers. Their pants simply have a slit down the back. Thus, a youngter's private business is a public affair.

To get someone's attention, you address them by their family name. I don't mean surname, I mean, if you want to offer your seat to a random elderly woman, you would say, "Grandma, would you like to sit?"

Similarly, I often follow students' stories of "brothers" or "sisters" with the question, "Actual brother from the same mother?" only to hear, "What? No. His parents live down the street."

If a stranger is your brother, than what do you call your best friend? How do you indicate you're, relatively, closer? You can call him/her your wife!