It's not not freezing cold here

I whole heartedly apologize for the long duration between postings. My goal is for this to at least be updated weekly. This new school in Changchun is working me much harder than the one in Wuxi. The six day week thing is wearing a little thin but I’m sure I’ll get used to it. My schedule has been changing every week so far. My consistency is always having Thursday as my lone day off. It’s kind of weird having it be Tuesday and feeling like it’s almost the weekend. So far I’ve taught kids as old as 13 and as young as 2. The two year old was part of an experimental class that the school was trying out called “Tiny Talk.” It consisted of me and a TA trying to keep six kids from crying because they had to go to the bathroom, crying because they missed their parents (who were sitting ten feet behind them in plain sight, no joke,) and simultaneously attempting to teach them the correct way to say “hello.” It lasted 45 minutes and promptly got the boot.

For now, my schedule has me going to a school called the 103 middle school three times a week (pictured to the left.) Public transportation is huge here and I’ve gotten so I’m fairly comfortable navigating the bus system. The one I take to get to 103 takes about 30 minutes on average, though sometimes as long as 45 and as quick as 20. This school is not run by our program, but rather “rents” the foreign teachers from our school to come and teach their students for 40 minutes a section. There is supposed to be an English speaking Chinese teacher in each of these classes, but that doesn’t always happen. There is an immensely strong correlation between how well these teachers speak English (and oddly, how cute they are too) and how attentive and well learned the students are too. China does put an amazing amount of emphasis on the importance of looks (not that we don’t in the U.S.) so that could have something to do with it. We had a parent take his kid out of a class and leave when he found out that I was going to be subbing for one of the female teachers who had gotten sick one night. I kept it together pretty well, by which I mean I didn’t cry until after class when I was in my hiding place in storage room B.

The biggest reason why finding a teaching job here is so easy to come by is because there is a huge push in China for everyone to learn English. One of the simple pleasures of living in here is getting to see all of the English translations on billboards, signs, and various products that are just a wee bit off. Here are two of my favorites so far (note, the emphasis on UNSALTED lip gloss. Also, you may need to view a larger image of the Star Wars movie, but I promise it will be worth it.) Sadly, the best sign I’ve seen I was unable to photograph as it was in Wuxi and I was without my trusty camera. It had a picture of a smiling man and beneath the photo it read “Father of all buns!”

As this is a quasi “Mom and Pop” run program, the onus is on us to advertise for the school. This entails heading out to various schools around the city and passing out flyers to parents (and kids) as school gets out. We also will go to some of the busier places downtown which reults in a lot of uninterested passers by, but also some hilarious people watching (for example, look at the giant inflateable mouse! There's actually a person in there!) It wasn’t so bad at first until I realized we do this every single week, and we always go back to the exact same schools. I would also wager that 60% of our flyers end up in the hands of kids… something just doesn’t seem quite right about that. I would say at least 15% of them end up on the ground, leaving about 25% of them in the hands of adults. However, as we keep going back to the same schools week after week, doesn’t it seem like the adults might be just a tad tired of getting the same flyer EVERY single week? For the amount of paper that we end up going through (again, I wager 5% of which probably gets recycled) I can’t imagine we get more than one or two phone calls per several hundred flyers passed out. I think this school needs to hire a statistician to figure out a new way of getting people to come to the school.

And in fairness, they have made some other attempts at advertising. The other location that I spend a significant amount of time working at just opened recently (the “New Branch”) and to celebrate they had a Halloween open house where the kids got to come in and play some Halloween games (see the picture of Batman helping a kid whack a “piñata” to the right.) We’re also throwing a Christmas open house where our classes will be performing various Christmas themed songs and skits. Someone also started a rumor that I can sing and so the owners have asked that I “perform” a solo vocal act at the event. I have absolutely no idea what to sing, though if no Christmas songs come to mind, I’m pretty sure I could get away with belting out a little Kelly Clarkson… (if anyone has any, read ANY other suggestions for what I should sing, please please please send them to me.) Okay, I must be off to sleep as tomorrow is my earliest morning, but I will have about 60 straight hours off so hopefully I’ll be blogging again in no time.