Even this update will probably not be one of my largest. We are now well below the 3 month mark on our time left in China, and I am ready to leave.
I won't lie, I've still had quite a few hard days. Things are still quite stressful here. But, in light of the ticking time bomb of my remaining tour of duty, I've tried to live one day at a time.
These last two weeks have been surprisingly anecdote-free. This month has been "Geography" month at our school and we had originally been asked to give lessons that are "world" themed.
The month culminated last Thursday with a huge school-wide recital/dance show. True to form, the teachers decided that the recital was the most important aspect of Geography month, and literally cancelled every class for the entire month so that the kids could practice.
As such, I was only able to do one or two classes on Geography! The classes they cancelled were all the ones we were told to use to focus on the World.
Oh well, I still had a lot of fun with it. I've spent the last few weeks learning all of the countries in the world and learning a lot about Oceania, which is the continent I was told to focus on with my classes.
We did some fun crafts and learned some fun songs. Every foreign teacher was assigned a continent about which we were supposed to give a 15 minute presentation on the school's TV network. It was fun being a TV star! I could see it becoming an addicting new hobby...
By and large the most fascinating part of my experience these last few weeks was getting a front row seat at discovering how Chinese people view the rest of the world.
Talking to my students about other places in the world, I learned that they don't really know anything beyond their own back yard. They knew about China, Japan, and Korea. Several kids knew about Vietnam and Thailand. Everyone knew about the USA.
That was it.
This was not exclusive to the kids either, a lot of the Chinese teachers were shockingly ignorant about things that I completely take for granted, like being able to use a map. Aside from China, most of my kids could not locate a single country on a map! Some of them didn't even know where China was.
Knowing anything about animals, food, native peoples, or anything else was also exceedingly rare. What's an Australian animal? What kind of food do they eat in Mexico? What is Africa? Nobody could really answer these questions.
This all came to a head during the big show. Each class was assigned a continent or a country, and they put on a song/dance show based on the cultures they were assigned.
There were several comical missteps. South America was labeled "South Africa", and not a single teacher who saw it thought to correct it (and no one listened to me either!). North America became known as "home of the rugby balls".
The class that was assigned Asia, shockingly, just did a show about Chinese culture. They did a quick bit about India, since one of our foreign teachers if from India, and they also had a brief segment on K-Pop. It was all surrounded by lots of kung fu.
And then there was Africa. The African show had all the children wearing leopard skin loin clothes, wearing bone-themed jewelry, and running around shaking bones and spears at everyone. At this point, nothing in China surprises me.
They also played a Ricky Martin song to represent both Africa and South America. The exact same song. Nevermind the fact that he's from Puerto Rico, how could they have thought the same song was representative of both continents??
The Foreign teachers were once again co-opted into the show. Laura and I were cast as sheep farmers for the Australian number. They bought me some of the biggest overalls I've ever seen, and overall it was a lot of fun. I got to do my best Australian accent on the stage and, since nobody knew better anyway, the whole audience went nuts.
On Friday the Geography festival month wrapped up with a food fair. This day was equal parts fun and nightmare. On the one hand, we got to eat a ton of free food and didn't have any expectations or work to do. On the other hand, we still had to be at work for the whole 8 hour day and had to walk around the festival and let the Chinese people take pictures of us. We had to wear our costumes from the night before, and I was roasting in my jean overalls in the 90 degree heat.
I'll be honest, the constant cameras really got to me after a while. You can only be treated like a dancing bear at a circus for so many hours in a row in sweltering heat before you snap. It was not entirely a good day.
There were some interesting choices for the food. Once again, each continent was represented and there were several food specialties at each place.
Some highlights:
-Every single continent had Fried Chicken and French fries cooked from our school cafeteria. Including Antarctica. The North America station had fried chicken from the school AND fried Chicken from KFC.
-They had Korean beer at the Asia station. Presumably this was for parents, but there was very little supervision, and everyone thought I was weird for questioning having cases of beers at an elementary school.
-The Australian station had dim sum.
-South America had "tacos". Some of the foulest and grossest things I've ever tasted.
-Africa had nachos and cheese as well as plain sliced bread
I ate too much and then went home early.
Our weekends have been spent doing very little lately, I am sad to say. Laura and I have both had to work on the last few Sundays, so we have been unable to go away for the weekend. Also, we have been trying to save money because are headed to Beijing this coming weekend!
Great Wall here we come!
Only 74 more days and then my whole year in China is already over...
Some photos
Here's me as an armadillo. My example from a class writing prompt.
People shippin' trees
Leon becomes an architect
And a Penguin
Some of my kids
Farmville
The big performance! The kids in the audience got lightsabers.
The "Asia" show
As part of Geography month, all the foreign teachers had to design this big poster boards. Laura and I are proud of ours.
Found a nicer place than my apartment
No comments:
Post a Comment