Adam’s Not Here

Am I ever tired after my first full week of classes. So far it has gone quite well. Coming into it I was worried that I didn’t have what it takes to be a teacher and that I wouldn’t be able to handle a class of 8 year olds. The students are a bit of a mixed bag. At one school the students are all angels. They don’t give me any problems and we have a lot of fun. Another school is proving to be quite challenging, none of them are that bad but it is a struggle to get them to be quiet and pay attention. I have pretty much settled into a schedule of dragging myself out of bed at 7 am, watching old people do Tai Chi in the courtyard as I shower (the shower is beside the window), metro and cab to the school and then teaching 4-7 classes. I then come home, wash my feet (with sandals, they get pretty grimey here) and then pass out for a couple hours.

Friday was Teachers Day and so I received a couple of roses from one of my classes (they later started to tease me by calling me a girl, so maybe there was an ulterior motive with the flowers : ). I also received a few cards, one of which was addressed to “Mr. Alen.” I think that makes it even cuter. There are 10-15 minute breaks between classes at which point I get swarmed by the kids. They especially like tickling me and punching me in the butt. It can be a little overwhleming sometimes as all the classes are on break at once, so there will be 50 kids swarming around and working themselves into a frenzy. I once made the mistake of holding one of the kids’ arms, counting to three and swinging them about 10 feet as they jumped on 3. As the other kids saw this I immediately got a line up of 20 kids waiting for their turn. Its a lot of fun playing with them, but is it ever exhausting.

Last weekend was the weekend where everything was breaking, and I was not happy. My bathroom sink was leaking for about the 5th time. I screwed up this blog site and my computer was breaking. I finally called in my landlord to fix the problem after a string of unsuccesful shady Chinese semi-professionals. My landlord showed up at 8 pm on Saturday night, looking all dressed up for a night out. She is a middle aged woman and she had her hair permed and was wearing a red dress that was mostly just the top (read - really short!). She is here to look at the leaky sink but brings me a bottle of wine, a jar of cashews, a cookie, a dish towel and a clothes hanger. She is very sweet, but I do not understand this woman. As the repairman was fixing the sink we were hanging out, but she can’t speak English and I of course speak no Chinese. She spied the cowboy hats that Mike and I had “acquired” the previous week and decided to try one on. I tried on the other one and we stood there for a minute chuckling and making cowboy poses together. I thought it was a very funny situation and one that makes me really love the people here. Despite the fact that most of the time the Chinese and I don’t understand eachother, they still make the effort with me and sometimes we are able to communicate, albeit in an unconventional manner.

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 10th, 2005 at 7:52 am and is filed under China. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.