I'm nearing the end of second week of teaching, so I'm pretty sure I can call myself teacher now if I want. The first two weeks have been pretty simple stuff, though, with introduction activities and general exercises that allow me to see how good my students already are with English.
To introduce me to the class I did a question activity that I first saw Matt Yasgar talked about. I told my students to write down five questions that they'd like to ask me. After they had done this I had two students come up to front of the class, one to ask their questions and the other to pretend to be me. The person pretending to be me had to guess what my answer to the question would be, and I would then say if they're right or not. Here are some of the common questions I got:
• Where are you from? (Though the first questioner assumed, for some reason, that I was from Canada)
• How long have you been in China?
• How long will you be in China?
• Do you speak Chinese?
• Why did you come to China?
• What is your favorite place in China?
• What do you think of China?
• What do you think of Shijiazhuang?
• Do you have a girlfriend?/Are you married? (One person asked if I had kids)
• Do you think Chinese girls are cute? (One asked who I thought were cuter, American or Chinese girls)
• How old are you? (Kind of awkward when I'm maybe one year older than some of my students)
• Do you like Chinese food?
• What is your favorite sport?
There were definitely a few weird/awkward questions. A girl asked why my eyes weren't blue. Another girl asked how much I was getting paid. And a guy that knows English better than most asked if I had a girlfriend. After saying "no," he put his arm around me, in front of the class, and told me that he would set me up with a girl. I quickly moved on to the next question.
I also have some students with unusual English names. My first class had both Bruce Lee and Lucifer in it. Just yesterday I found out that the Chinese like the Godfather movies because I now have both Vito and Michael Corleone as students. I'll be having students pick English names again tomorrow, so I'll be interested to see what they come up with.
This week I've been getting the students even more comfortable with talking in class. I've been doing an activity where I've written down 52 various questions that are assigned to a playing card. A student then comes to the front of the room, picks a card and must answer the question with at least three sentences. Most of the questions I found online, and they range from softballs like "What's your favorite movie?" to more complicated ones such as "Is it ok for a couple to have a child before marriage?" or "What is your opinion of China's one child policy?" With some of the questions I'd then ask the class their opinion in an attempt to get a large-scale discussion going. The likelihood of thoughtful answers correlates to the students' strength with English (of which there is definitely a wide range), but I was surprised to see several students speaking up and disagreeing with each other over topics like the one child policy and the death penalty. I'm hoping this attitude towards discussion can continue and strengthen as all the students become more comfortable speaking in English.
All my students seem nice and happy to have me as a teacher. My only real complaint so far is that some students refuse to speak loudly, even when in front of the whole class, which causes other students to start talking and ignoring what's going on. (Again, that's something I'm hoping will change as students become more comfortable.) After Monday's class I had a few students come up to talk with me and invite me to spend some time with them during the Mid-Autumn Festival (which is next Wednesday, September 22). I told them I'd get back to them to make sure, but I might as well accept their offer. It would be an adventure at least. I also had a student Monday hand me a hand-written letter (though she said she first tried to email it but it didn't work). It was a pretty sweet letter, wherein she explained the origins of her English name (which is Rucy-wei...not very English), told me a bit about her family and said why she was taking English. I was caught a bit off guard by a comment she made about my apparently "beautiful eyelashes," but I'll just take it as a compliment.
Besides teaching, everything else has been pretty much the same. Over the weekend we did make a terrible discover: the beer garden that we had been to at least once a week since arriving was closed, like for good. We showed up on Friday and all the lights were off and the tables had disappeared. This was the place where we were always given free drinks, so we couldn't help but feel a little guilty, but it was fun while it lasted. We ended up hanging out again at a club called Mazzo (this and the foreigner bar, aka McDonald's Bar, have now become our kind of regular places). We've made friends with other foreigners at Mazzo, two of whom are rappers from Africa who frequently perform at the club. They are treated like VIPs, with an apparently endless supply of Skyy Vodka being provided by the club. Saturday night we were treated to KTV by a woman who works as the city government's head foreign affairs contact...a pretty good friend to have. The karaoke was fun, and the night was topped off by them bringing us plates of french fries. Granted, the fries were cold and the ketchup tasted a little...off...but it was still a nice treat.
This coming Friday the 9 of us in the Shiz are meeting up with 3 from Chengde to hang out in Beijing for the weekend. Shijiazhuang has certainly been fun so far, but it's gonna be nice to have a change of pace for the weekend. The plan is to see some of the basic Beijing sites (Tienanmen Square, Forbidden City, etc.). There is also apparently a pretty awesome Mexican restaurant in the city that we plan on visiting. Xian jokes that that's the main reason why were going to Beijing. (At least I think she's joking...)
Check out my photos as I've just uploaded a new set. I'll definitely have more after this weekend's trip, so be sure to check back soon.
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