I've been thinking about what I wanted to share with you all next and one word kept coming to mind: perspective. Obviously, living in a new place it doesn't take much to gain some and living in a city as populated as, or as one of my co-workers' student's would say as peoply as, Shanghai I usually gain new perspective everyday. I've also found that if I leave school feeling frustrated, or I grow tired of the staring mixing up my routine and changing my perspective help me to snap out of a crappy mood and help me to appreciate this experience for what it is. Sometimes for me its as simple as walking on the other side of the street for a change, or its as simple as seeing the lady in our apartment complex with her white poodles The mama and papa, she tells me and their three absolutely adorable little white puffball puppies that she carries around in a basket. It literally doesn't get much cuter than that, except for Gus of course.
My one month anniversary in Shanghai came and went without much excitement. Trent caught a nasty cold that kept him locked up in the apartment for almost a week and I had to give my students a quiz at school. The quiz brought out a whole new dynamic in the classroom, they take it very seriously but rather than putting the effort into studying they put the effort into trying to cheat. As students go, some things never change regardless of culture, oh well, luckily I only had or I should say I only caught two cheaters.
I teach three sections of Introduction to Business English to three very different groups of students. The material is an introduction to the terminology as well as Western Business concepts. My first class is very proficient in English and has a good attendance record, they keep me challenged and entertained and it is refreshing to start each day teaching a group of students that genuinely seem interested in learning and improving their English. Not all of the students at the school are as dedicated, unfortunately. This class has some shining stars that understand my humor and are able to poke some fun back at me. For example, whenever I attempt to describe a word or concept in English through the use of pictures I ask them if I could be an art teacher. This running joke started a couple of weeks ago and without hesitating one my students said no, no you could not be an art teacher. I feigned shock and try to elicit their support on a weekly basis, and yet each time I met with laughter and a firm chorus of "nos" from them.
My second class has a very different dynamic. The attendance rate is abysmal, I usually end up with anywhere from 4-10 students in a class with a roster of 20. I believe their attendance is poor because their English is poor and the level of English is the text is too far out of their grasp to even try to comprehend. So, I slow things down significantly and teach to the 6 or so students who understand most of what I'm saying and seem to care about learning English. I thought up until yesterday actually, that they resented me and that we had no rapport but then when it was just 4 of us and we had kind of a casual lesson (they were writing a little paragraph long presentation about anything that interested them Henry wrote about clothes, Iko wrote about Shanghai, Ding-Iko's boyfriend- wrote about his home country Taiwan and Frank wrote about Cats and Dogs, much to my pleasure of course!) Then they read their presentations which was actually a big success in and of itself because Chinese culture is very group orientated and even my best students are terrified to give presentations in front of the class especially in English in any class. After they finished presenting I was kind of running down the clock, we only had a few minutes left in class and I try to have conversations with them just to make them practice thinking and speaking conversational English. They were talking among themselves in Chinese and then Henry said Iko wants to ask you something, and then they all giggled embarrassed but I pressed them to tell me and finally they invited me to go to lunch. They seemed only half serious so I went along with it and asked where we would go, and what we would eat. After discussing among themselves again in Chinese, they suggested Japanese in Pudong. Which we all laughed at because they know I live in Pudong and Pudong is like over an hour away from the school so it would be impossible to go there and come back for lunch. It was a small gesture but it meant so much to me that they wanted to spend time with me outside of the classroom and I think it will help me relax a little more in that class because we had a moment of understanding each other. It is truly stressful trying to teach a group of students who are understanding possibly as little as 20% of the lesson. But moments like hearing them present about something they care about or are confident speaking about and then having an entertaining discussion of lunch make all of the effort very worthwhile.
My third class has 28 students in it and most of them show up on a daily basis. Their English is excellent and they energize me because when I can keep them from having little side conversations we accomplish a lot in our lessons and their extent of knowledge always surprises me. When I first met all of my classes I of course told each class I was from Michigan and asked if they had heard of it, most students said no and some recognized Detroit when I asked. However, one student in my third class said "Ah yes Michigan with the 5 lakes" which was thrilling for me! He has turned out to be one of my best students, his name is Julian and he usually catches me before class to ask me about an article or fact he has recently read about the US. Some of the topics have included: The tradition of removing our hats and covering our hearts during the Star Spangled Banner, the right carry and conceal weapons, and something about a blind man who was able to escape 9/11 when other people were not. As of late, I have been competing with his new cell phone during class to get his attention but he is a wonderful student. There are also three girls Cathy, Rose and Anna that sit in the front row and always compliment me on my clothes and literally seem to hang on every word I say. I like them so much and I try to talk to them during the breaks and get to know more about them. Then there is a group of 4 girls Jenny, Amy, Karen and Charlotte that are inseparable and quite goofy. When I'm teaching and writing on the board I usually repeat vocabulary as I write it so they can hear the pronunciation and I usually hear Amy mimic my pronunciation in the corner which I don't mind because I can remember doing the same thing in foreign language classes in High School and College. I was working on a lesson about E-commerce and when I said the word 'browse' Amy repeated it back with the exact, nasally intonation that I had said it in. I turned around immediately and said Yes, Amy is that what I sound like? which sent them into a fit of giggles. I was laughing too because it was just too perfect! So I said you are like my little echo. And then they all said echo? echo? what is echo? So I wrote it on the board and continued with my lesson. Then another fit of laughter erupted from their corner because they had punched the word echo into their translators and now knew what I meant. They were quite proud and mentioned echo yesterday during class as well.
We had low attendance towards the end of the week because students started to head out of town, we have 7 days off for Golden Week. Trent and I tried to make travel plans but they didn't work out because literally everyone in China is travelling to visit relatives and sight see so it was impossible to find flights. It's just as well because there are plenty of parts of Shanghai that we haven't visited yet. We had a teachers dinner two weeks ago at a delicious Indian restaurant which was a lot of fun because it gave me the chance to get to know more of my colleagues from the other teachers office and to spend time with the ones I do know outside of the school. I enjoyed it very much, and while most of my colleagues will be in the Philippines attending the wedding of two former teachers, a couple will still be around so I hope to get together with them over this holiday break as well. Now, I should mention that China does holidays a little differently than the US. We get Monday-Friday of the week coming up off but we have to return to work for Saturday and Sunday to "make up for" the time we had off! I would rather return on Thursday and Friday and still have my weekend, but that is not how it goes. My colleagues said students will be there to attend class, because a lot of our students are from Shanghai so they will not be travelling.
The photos I'm posting today are from my trek to work everyday on the Guilin Road side of the subway. I truly enjoy walking down Guilin both in the mornings and the afternoon, I see familiar faces in the shop owners and street food vendors and its nice to have a routine. I visit the Family Mart that you see a photo of, almost everyday picking up a bottle of milk tea or putting minutes on my cell phone its similar to a 7/11 which we have on the other side of Gulin and all over Shanghai. This past week some trees all over the city bloomed and filled the air with a refreshing floral citrusy scent. I asked my students what they were and they called them Gui Hua which literally translates to fragrant flower, the scientific name is Osmanthus. You can also see some photos of the school, starting with the bridge that goes across Cao Bao (pronounced Tsow Bow) the road the school is on. The bridge connects one side of campus with the other, we share two buildings with other schools including Shanghai Institute of Technology where some of our students come from. My third class is a group from SIT. We occupy the top two floors of the brick building with the Chinese flag waving out front. You can see the hallway leading to the teachers' office and my co-worker Jette on one of our computers as well as my desk with my bag and coffee cup on it in the bottom left. There also photos of Thumb Plaza the huge shopping area we look down over from one side of the apartment and where we usually end up when we're hungry. You can see the Carre Four which is where we do most of our grocery shopping and a paddle of beer from the Kerry Parkside Hotel which is a short cab ride up Fangdian Road, they brew their own beer so Trent and I naturally enjoy going there.
