Vowel movement
I've put off writing for too long now.
It's such an effort sometimes. I guess there are lots of things I could write about: the end of the school year, thoughts on how it all went, job interviews, house hunting, friends' departures to all corners of the country, me staying here in Chengdu, my forthcoming trip to Thailand. To be honest I don't know what to write but if I don't put something down on screen soon I may never do it again.
Think of what follows as a kind of laxative.
The school year barely even whimpered at its end. There was no raucous party, no tears, not even a handshake from our Vice Principal. Even amongst ourselves we couldn't manage a rousing send off when Bick - the first to leave - left. We just went to Cheers, had one too many gin & tonics with our Hui Guo Rou and went to bed by ten. We didn't even say a proper goodbye to the staff at Cheers as we'd planned. Everything just stopped.
Some of the students had made an effort which was nice. Cards and little gifts but, best of all, an exercise book with a 'Thanks' message from each member of one of the senior classes. It feels good to have made some kind of impression anyway. But I still feel a bit of a fraud being referred to as 'Teacher' which is why I'm taking myself off to Thailand to take a CELTA course. It's only a month but it's meant to be intensive and something that's recognised around the world. Better than nothing anyway.
So, what did I 'learn' this year - as I put in my blog byline?
Number one: have a point to your lessons; know what you're teaching and why. Too many times this year I've been no more than a children's entertainer (on a good day) just keeping them occupied for 40 minutes at a time. Having said that, the school never gave us any objectives either so in a way we were bound to flounder.
The school didn't really pay any attention to what we did at all. But it looked good on a Friday afternoon when the D&G mums and the Land Cruiser dads came to pick up their darlings and see - look! - foreign teachers. I have a funny feeling it's going to be a similar story even at university next year.
Living on campus sucks. Sure, it's handy for getting to lessons on time but after ten months it felt like a prison. The bells! Every forty minutes, whether you were teaching or not, there was the constant reminder that you were still at school. The music! At 7.10am every day martial tunes would start blaring before some stentorian voiced woman would screech her rousing message of the day seemingly to the whole of China through loudspeakers fixed to the roof of each school building. The traffic! Everything comes to a halt on Friday when the parents come but worse than that was the roar of buses, one after another, past my apartment on Sunday afternoon: the weekend's over, the kids are back, it's all about to start again.
A complimentary apartment - on campus - was thrown in as part of the job package offered by the university I'm off to in September. No thanks. Apart from anything else, it was bloody awful: a dark, dirty, cold place. We were also told that having anyone - that is, a woman (and particularly a Chinese woman) - stay over would be against 'Chinese morality' and was absolutely forbidden. It wasn't so much the prohibition of having someone stay the night - the chance'd be a fine thing! - but the idea that I would be constantly monitored that got me.
Instead, I've ended up here in a virtually brand new, beautifully appointed two bedroom apartment in Chengdu proper. Twenty minutes from work. Twenty minutes from the centre of town. It's a different world. It used to take up to two hours and several buses to get to the south side of the city; now I can do it in one go and in fifteen mins. And no cockroaches! Not even a mosquito!
They say moving house is one of the most stressful things you can do. Ha! Try doing it in Chinese. Or Pidgin Chinese. This was another learning experience. You wouldn't believe the days of frustration I've spent trying to get my message across to well meaning but baffled estate agents and the grim bedsits they've shown me.
It turns out there are two main types of apartment blocks: elevator buildings and non-elevator buildings. The latter are older style tenements, great for the feeling of living in a Chinese community - old folk playing mahjong in leafy courtyards - but the apartments I viewed were pretty rough. Call me picky but top of my list of 'wants' was a 'proper toilet' - not a squat one - and I'm afraid none of the traditional blocks could meet this most basic requirement. So it was an elevator building for me which basically means a modern block with, surprise surprise, a lift (unless, that is, you live on Floors 1-4 where it doesn't stop for some reason).
So it's from the seventh floor that I'm plotting my next move: to Sichuan Normal University (no, I don't know the significance of 'Normal' either) where I begin my new job in the second week of September.
Great. Two full months to worry about it.
Still, it feels good to have got the blog ticked off the things to do list. I feel better for it.
I'll try and keep a bit more regular in future.
PS. Thanks for the message, Christine. But unfortunately your blog isn't viewable in China either! I'll catch up with it once I get back to the UK.
It's such an effort sometimes. I guess there are lots of things I could write about: the end of the school year, thoughts on how it all went, job interviews, house hunting, friends' departures to all corners of the country, me staying here in Chengdu, my forthcoming trip to Thailand. To be honest I don't know what to write but if I don't put something down on screen soon I may never do it again.
Think of what follows as a kind of laxative.
The school year barely even whimpered at its end. There was no raucous party, no tears, not even a handshake from our Vice Principal. Even amongst ourselves we couldn't manage a rousing send off when Bick - the first to leave - left. We just went to Cheers, had one too many gin & tonics with our Hui Guo Rou and went to bed by ten. We didn't even say a proper goodbye to the staff at Cheers as we'd planned. Everything just stopped.
Some of the students had made an effort which was nice. Cards and little gifts but, best of all, an exercise book with a 'Thanks' message from each member of one of the senior classes. It feels good to have made some kind of impression anyway. But I still feel a bit of a fraud being referred to as 'Teacher' which is why I'm taking myself off to Thailand to take a CELTA course. It's only a month but it's meant to be intensive and something that's recognised around the world. Better than nothing anyway.
So, what did I 'learn' this year - as I put in my blog byline?
Number one: have a point to your lessons; know what you're teaching and why. Too many times this year I've been no more than a children's entertainer (on a good day) just keeping them occupied for 40 minutes at a time. Having said that, the school never gave us any objectives either so in a way we were bound to flounder.
The school didn't really pay any attention to what we did at all. But it looked good on a Friday afternoon when the D&G mums and the Land Cruiser dads came to pick up their darlings and see - look! - foreign teachers. I have a funny feeling it's going to be a similar story even at university next year.
Living on campus sucks. Sure, it's handy for getting to lessons on time but after ten months it felt like a prison. The bells! Every forty minutes, whether you were teaching or not, there was the constant reminder that you were still at school. The music! At 7.10am every day martial tunes would start blaring before some stentorian voiced woman would screech her rousing message of the day seemingly to the whole of China through loudspeakers fixed to the roof of each school building. The traffic! Everything comes to a halt on Friday when the parents come but worse than that was the roar of buses, one after another, past my apartment on Sunday afternoon: the weekend's over, the kids are back, it's all about to start again.
A complimentary apartment - on campus - was thrown in as part of the job package offered by the university I'm off to in September. No thanks. Apart from anything else, it was bloody awful: a dark, dirty, cold place. We were also told that having anyone - that is, a woman (and particularly a Chinese woman) - stay over would be against 'Chinese morality' and was absolutely forbidden. It wasn't so much the prohibition of having someone stay the night - the chance'd be a fine thing! - but the idea that I would be constantly monitored that got me.
Instead, I've ended up here in a virtually brand new, beautifully appointed two bedroom apartment in Chengdu proper. Twenty minutes from work. Twenty minutes from the centre of town. It's a different world. It used to take up to two hours and several buses to get to the south side of the city; now I can do it in one go and in fifteen mins. And no cockroaches! Not even a mosquito!
They say moving house is one of the most stressful things you can do. Ha! Try doing it in Chinese. Or Pidgin Chinese. This was another learning experience. You wouldn't believe the days of frustration I've spent trying to get my message across to well meaning but baffled estate agents and the grim bedsits they've shown me.
It turns out there are two main types of apartment blocks: elevator buildings and non-elevator buildings. The latter are older style tenements, great for the feeling of living in a Chinese community - old folk playing mahjong in leafy courtyards - but the apartments I viewed were pretty rough. Call me picky but top of my list of 'wants' was a 'proper toilet' - not a squat one - and I'm afraid none of the traditional blocks could meet this most basic requirement. So it was an elevator building for me which basically means a modern block with, surprise surprise, a lift (unless, that is, you live on Floors 1-4 where it doesn't stop for some reason).
So it's from the seventh floor that I'm plotting my next move: to Sichuan Normal University (no, I don't know the significance of 'Normal' either) where I begin my new job in the second week of September.
Great. Two full months to worry about it.
Still, it feels good to have got the blog ticked off the things to do list. I feel better for it.
I'll try and keep a bit more regular in future.
PS. Thanks for the message, Christine. But unfortunately your blog isn't viewable in China either! I'll catch up with it once I get back to the UK.
posted by PatRawle at
5:17 pm
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