So I know it took me a long time to get this first entry out. Things have been a little busy for me over here. So I guess I should start at the beginning. I got here (I am not going to say the name of the school because I don’t want someone doing a Google search and finding the blog in case I ever say not so great things about the school) and was told I am teaching 1st grade. They give me literally 16 textbooks and three days to get ready. I am working in the international program at my school which means the student get 3-4 hours of English and only 2 hours of Chinese everyday. It is an interesting theory on teaching. I use normal American 1st grade textbooks, not ESL books. Unfortunately ,my students don’t really speak English. I have a Chinese assistant who is supposed to help me by translating instructions and other things I need but she is usually on her cell phone in the hall.
My school has both day and boarding students. Being that I am in 1st grade I see a lot of tears. Of my 25 students 9 are boarders. It is so sad. They are 6 or 7; I was 9 when I first went to sleep-away camp. I was in the youngest bunk and did my share of crying but that was only for six weeks and the staff was nice. I originally thought that the kids who lived here did so because they lived too far away to commute. I was wrong. Their parents want them to learn independence. I think they could wait till they are 10 to be independent but what do I know. On Fridays all the parents come in to pick up the kids. It is nice to see how happy the boarders get when they see their parents.
For the moment I am living on campus but I think my days of living here are numbered. The room is fine, it’s like a very small studio. I need more space but I also need quiet. Because this is a boarding school I get woken up at 6:30 every morning when the bell goes off for the kids. This is not one quick bell that I can ignore. It goes from 6:30-7:00 starting of with some nice loud music but ending with a man screaming attention and then other things at the kids. I have been told that during the screaming portion of the morning the kids are outside exercising. Since during this time my head is squished between two pillows I have never been able to confirm this.
So, as I said, I am living in Suzhou. It is about an hour away from Shanghai. I am hoping to get there soon. We have a week off at the beginning of October and my friends and I have yet to decide where to go. The entire country of China is off for that week so flights are expensive and hotels are booked. We have tried looking at other Asian countries but we are not the only ones with that thought so we are running in to the same problems. I have a feeling we will probably end up making some day trips into Shanghai that week and staying here on campus. Hopefully they won’t have the bells on that week and I can sleep past 6:30. If not, one of the other international teachers already has a plan to find the speaker by us and cut the cord.
On a completely random note, at the moment I am sitting in my classroom. We just had lunch and in America the kids would be at recess or taking a nap, but not here. I am not really sure what the Chinese teacher does during this time because it is in Chinese but it always involves a lot of yelling. My kids are worked quite hard. They get here around 7:30 the first batch leaves at 4:30 and the second at 6. With the exception of 20 minutes for lunch they are working the whole time. After 6 the boarding students just sit in the classroom watching TV until 8:30 or 9. Compared to the High School kids my kids have it easy.
My school has several different programs but they are all on the same track. The parents who send their kids here expect their kids to go to University outside of China. As I said I am in the International program, which at the moment only goes up to fifth grade. My kids are supposed to feel like they are going to school in America, hence the American teacher. That is why most of their classes are in English. As opposed to kids in other programs who wear tracksuits, my kids wear cute little traditional private school uniforms. Due to the fact that my program is slightly more “laid back” as well as the fact that they learn both English and Chinese from an early age the classes have kids from all over the world. About a third of my class is Korean. I have one kid from Indonesia and one from Singapore. Pretty much all of the international classes including mine have at least one non-Asian student.
My school is kinda far away from anything good. It takes a half hour on the bus to get downtown and an hour to get to “Singapore Industrial Park” AKA SIP (will talk about that next time) There are several apartment communities around my school as well as about 30 more getting built. If I had come in a few years it would be a whole different ball game. They are building a subway stop right next to the school. We are starting to explore the little communities around us. In large part because we are hungry. I love Chinese food. This time around I am not keeping kosher which has made Chinese food even better. The first time I had a dumpling with meat was amazing. Now I understand why people were always getting them; in the past I had only had veggie ones. That being said, I have no idea what they serve here in the cafeteria. For the record I am not that picky of person over here. Some of my favorite food items are street food. The food on campus is unrecognizable. There is supposed to be a western dining room on the third floor but none of the new teachers has gone yet, in part because you have to pay for it. If they can’t make Chinese food edible why would I pay for them to make American food?
So I am trying to get a lot in this one entry but a lot has happened and I have to teach again soon so I will end this entry with a fun story. On my third or fourth day I went out with some of the other teachers. Somehow I left my wallet in the cab. I was already having a really bad day. I was homesick and having issues in my class so I was so not in the mood for this. (Random again, my students are on a break right now and they keep pointing out letters on my screen and telling me the name of the letter, kinda cute. I would be more concerned about them reading this if I had taught them the whole alphabet already.) I realized it was gone as soon as I got to my door and went for my keys. We ran across campus to the girl who paid for the cab to see if she kept the receipt, she had not. They talked about calling the cab company but we had no idea which company we were in. I was not holding my breath. I went back to my room, called my mom and told her to cancel all my cards. I assumed that was the end of the story. Fast forward about a week, I am sitting in my room and I get a phone call from one of the Chinese teachers I talk to. Teacher- “Hi Blake it’s teacher, did you lose your purse?” Me- “um yea I did about a week ago. Why do you ask?” Teacher- “I was watching the news and they showed your purse, I saw the picture and thought it was you.” Me- “OMG are you serious? That’s amazing! Did they say how to get it back?” The conversation went on a little more but I am assuming you get the point. I asked if she could call the number since my Chinese is not great. She called a while later and told me she could not get through but would try the next day.
I get to class the next day and find out why she could not get through. It seems she is not the only person who watches the Suzhou Sunday news. Most of the teachers I work with, including the principal of the whole school and the women in charge of my program all saw me on the news. This was apparently a big deal. A few days later, armed with an official thank you letter from the school someone took me to the TV station where I was met by a TV crew. In pure Chinese fashion the return of my wallet was a well-orchestrated event for the media. They told me what to say in Chinese and I handed them the letter and received my wallet several times before they decided it was TV ready.
Once the official hand over was completed I asked how this all happened. Apparently this guy found my wallet in the cab and brought it to the TV station where they decided to put it on the air. I was told the story would be airing that night so I watched the news for an hour and a half. I never saw it and the next day no one said anything so I am assuming something important happened that day and I got the boot. Or maybe they are just waiting for a slow newsday.
Well that’s all for now. I have to go grade homework. If you read through to this you are awesome as I am now on the third page in Word. I promise I will do this more often and the entries will be shorter in the future. Also, while there are many things I love about my adopted home it has some faults. Since the Olympics Blogspot has been blocked in China. Therefore I am emailing the entries to my mother and she will post them. If you leave comments it could be a while before I hear about them and I might not respond but feel free to email me. Hopefully sometime soon I will have time to go sit at Starbucks where they do not block the software used to get around the blocks that China puts up.
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