Starting a New Adventure!

Sunday, August 30, at 9:25am, I will fly toward my new teaching adventure at the Sino-Canada Concord School in Lanzhou, China! I am excited and nervous all at the same time. This opportunity was a complete surprise but the process has been smoothed by my Father from the beginning.  Please remember me as I strive to be all He would have me to be and do all He wants me to do.

Follow me here and on my website for information and pictures!

Faces we see, hearts we do not know

I borrowed the title of this page from a blog post of one of my WorldTeach colleagues.  She has this tattooed in Spanish, it is a Spanish proverb.  It means something different to her than it does to me though.  Of course if I had not just read a very eye opening story, maybe I would have took her meaning and not gave it another thought. 
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Here is the eye opening story:

A man sat at a metro station... in Washington DC and started to play the violin; it was a cold January morning. He played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time, since it was rush hour, it was calculated that 1,100 people went through the station, most of them on their way to work.

Three minutes went by, and a middle aged man noticed there was musician playing. He slowed his pace, and stopped for a few seconds, and then hurried up to meet his schedule.

A minute later, the violinist received his first dollar tip: a woman threw the money in the till and without stopping, and continued to walk.

A few minutes later, someone leaned against the wall to listen to him, but the man looked at his watch and started to walk again. Clearly he was late for work.

The one who paid the most attention was a 3 year old boy. His mother tagged him along, hurried, but the kid stopped to look at the violinist. Finally, the mother pushed hard, and the child continued to walk, turning his head all the time. This action was repeated by several other children. All the parents, without exception, forced them to move on.

In the 45 minutes the musician played, only 6 people stopped and stayed for a while. About 20 gave him money, but continued to walk their normal pace. He collected $32. When he finished playing and silence took over, no one noticed it. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition.

No one knew this, but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the most talented musicians in the world. He had just played one of the most intricate pieces ever written, on a violin worth $3.5 million dollars.

Two days before his playing in the subway, Joshua Bell sold out at a theater in Boston where the seats averaged $100.

This is a real story. Joshua Bell playing incognito in the metro station was organized by the Washington Post as part of a social experiment about perception, taste, and priorities of people. The outlines were: in a commonplace environment at an inappropriate hour: Do we perceive beauty? Do we stop to appreciate it? Do we recognize the talent in an unexpected context?

One of the possible conclusions from this experience could be:

If we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world playing the best music ever written, how many other things are we missing?
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What do you think?  Faces we see, hearts we do not know.   Yes, it could mean that people hide their real self from us; that we don't really know their real intent.  But after reading the story of Joshua Bell, I have to think that maybe I am the problem.  Maybe I see the faces but do not take the time, or make the effort, to see the hearts.

Dorm Life

The dorm life for my students is very difficult.  There are 12 students to a room (6 floors).  All of their stuff has to be lined up, etc just like in basic training of the US military.  Nothing can be out of place or the whole dorm is in trouble.  There is a light but no electrical outlets and lights are out at 10:15, no exceptions, no excuses.  The toilet is also in the same room where they sleep.  A Chinese toliet is squatting over a hole, so the sewer line is open and the smell is horrible.  There is no heating or air-conditioning.  There are no washing machines or dryers (hand wash/hang dry).  There is no hot water in the rooms.  If you want hot water to bathe or wash clothes, you must take a bucket to the first floor and get the hot water and haul it to your room.  For that matter, if you want a bath or to wash clothes you must do it during your free time: 40 mins at lunch and 50 mins at dinner.  As all other time is spent in class of some kind and when the students are released at night to go to bed, they have 15 mins to get from class to dorm and in bed before lights are out.

We, and our childern, are spoiled.  We have it made and still we complain and try to have more.  Yea, part of my apartment is cold; but, I have hot water when I want it, I have heat in one room, I have a regular toilet so no smell, I have a stove refridgarator, microwave, and washer, I have electrical outlets that I can plug up an electric blanket or floor heater if I want and I have plenty of time to bathe, wash my clothes, eat, go to town, etc. Please forgive me for ever complaining.

Guangzhou and the taxi ride from H_ _ _

Took a weekend trip to Guangzhou, the third largest city in China.  It is close to Hong Kong.  Rode the fast train (309 kmh), which I thought would be the most exciting part of the trip, boy was I wrong.  Guangzhou has a metro system as well as a bus system and the metro was inexpensive and easy to navigate.  Even though I only saw a small part of the city, I enjoyed it.  To be as large as it is, I thought it was very quite, more quite than Changsha or Liuyang, and very clean.  The cost of goods and services also seemed very reasonable, sometimes even less expensive than Changsha or Liuyang, which are smaller cities.  Again, I hope to have pictures on my web site if I can get them to load.

Now to the excitement, although I am not sure the dictionary has enough words to describe the experience.  Lucifer himself was driving the taxi I took from Changsha to Liuyang.  It had to be Lucifer because he did not care about dying or who he took with him.  Now the speed limit on the highway is 100kmh.  Okay, that is about 65mph, not too fast, and one would assume that the speedometer in the car was also kmh since everything here is metric, right?  So, the fact that the speedometer is showing that the car is going 100 - 120 should still be okay.  WRONG.  Let me tell you, we were NOT going only 65mph.  It felt like 120 MILES PER HOUR.  Add to that total disregard for any and all rules China does or does not have such as: using all four lanes, regardless of which way the traffic is supposed to be going on them;  no turn signal/look to see if you can pass, just weave in and out/blowing your horn/I'm the only one with the right of way here; other vehicles stopping in the middle of the road/people walking/motor-scooters parked on the side/transfer trucks backing up down the middle of the street traffic; passing in the two lane TUNNELs.  AND when he realized I was talking about his driving to my student and that he might be scaring me, he had the gall to tell me I should PRAY???!!!!!!   Why did he think I was on my knees in the back of a taxi for???!!!!  ADD to that him pumping the gas like he was keeping the beat or playing the drums so my head was bobbing like one of those bobble head dolls you put on you dash.  Did he slow down when we got to town? Yea, to 80!  in the middle of town.  It was like driving downtown Winston during rush hour running 80.  That is when I snapped.  I ask my student if she knew any bad words in Chinese, she looked at me and said bad "words"?  I said, yes, like Hell.  She started to laugh, and told me what it was in Chinese and I told her to tell the taxi driver that I said to "SLOW THE HELL DOWN!"  Of course by now she is laughing so hard she can hardly breath and we are almost to our stop. I told her that if he ever came to pick me up again I would walk before riding with him, that I would NEVER forget what he looked like and would NEVER get in a car with him again.   By then she is bent over laughing and I am laughing too, hysterical, OMG, laughing on my part.

Birthday party and Halloween Trick or Treat

Pictures can be found on my web site of both the birthday party and Halloween, if I can get them to post with the slow proxy server I have been dealing with lately. 

First the birthday party:  Everything started out great; the room was decorated beautifully, students sang, flower candle lit and wish made . . .  We were in the middle of cutting the cake when the teacher that let the students have the room and was kind of supervising told them they had to pack up and move because there was going to be a meeting there.   ????  If there was a meeting scheduled then why did he let them have  the room to start with?  Anyway, we started trying to get everything packed up and moved (balloons, cake, food, drinks, candles, etc etc)  But were to go?  The only room they could find open was the computer room.  Geez, trouble just waiting to happen.  I was not happy with the choice but they all moved in and we went back to cutting the cake and ran out of plates.  What did they do?  just took their forks and went to eating from what was left of the cake!!  How did it taste, you ask.  I don't know because I did not get even one bite of it!!!!   Hahahahaha   LOL  I swear!  Not one single bite!  Then I made the mistake of hitting one of the balloons at one of the students and then they were all hitting them and they were falling in cake icing and then getting it all over the computers!  Took me a minute to get them to stop and make them clean up.  All I needed was them to spill drink or something on the computers.  After I got them to clean up some of them decided to sing to me.  They are actually pretty good singers.  Then they decided we would go up to the gym where we would have more room.  People were playing and we ended up on one of the roofs in the dark!!!
I got several beautiful hand-made cards, some candy, and a teddy bear.  The students were soooo disappointed that they had to move rooms and were worried that I was disappointed.  I assured them that all was okay, to not worry, that I was very thankful for the trouble they went to, that the room had been beautiful and the cake was beautiful.  (I did not mention that I didn't get any).

Halloween:
I now know how employees feel when they first open the door on black Friday!!!!!  I was afraid that someone was going to get hurt in the mob that descended on my office as soon as the bell rang for dinner!  Everyone was pushing with out-stretched hands to get to the door like I was giving away 64 inch TVs or something instead of a couple pieces of candy!!  I finally had to threaten to close the door and not give out anymore if they didn't stop pushing and line up down the hallway.  Sill it was a little edgy until most of the crowd was gone. 

I decorated my office door and window with bats, witch, ghosts, dead tree and graveyard, and a jack-o-lantern (they loved the jack-o-lantern).  I dressed up in black, made a witches hat, and used some black cloth to make hair.  I used green make-up powder to make my hands and face take on a green tinge.  I am pretty sure the kids got a kick out of it!

Some of the Senior 2's saw me and came to see what was going on.  They would walk up with their hand out and I would just look at them.  Of course I was waiting for them to say "Trick-or-Treat" and they did not know they had to say anything because they had not had the lesson I taught my Senior 1's.  I would grin.  They would grin back.  Then either someone would tell them what to say or one of my students would come up and say it to get their candy and then the Senior 2 students would grin again and say "Trick-or-Treat".  It was sooo much fun!!!  I bought six 5K bags of candy and I gave away at least half of it, two-three pieces at a time.  So I had a great turn out!

Monster Mash

For the next two weeks I am teaching about Halloween to all my classes.  My liaison is afraid that my dressing up is going to scare the students and no decorations on the walls outside the office because she is afraid the inspection team will come and think it is messy.  She finally did agree to let me decorate the door to the office because it can be took down quickly.  Soooo, I have bought paper and a pumpkin and I am going to decorate the door, carve a jack-o'-lantern, and make me a witches hat and long black hair.  I still need to find some extremely cheep candy (I have 960 students) because I am inviting each class to trick-or-treat at my office Monday night, October 31.  So I will dress like a witch, light my pumpkin, and hand out candy to all who come and say the right words.  I haven't looked forward to Halloween like this in many years.

To finish off the lesson I am teaching on Halloween, I am showing a short clip on how to dance the Monster Mash.  Then I show a full length video of the entire song.  If there is time left, I restart the short clip and have all the students dance with it!  I am not sure which is funnier, this or the answers I get to the question, "If you were dressing up in a costume for Halloween, who/what would you be?  Why?"   These kids never cease to surprise me.  "I would be James Bond."  (I am thinking yea, he's cool, lots of toys...)  Why, I ask.  "Because he has lot's of beautiful girlfriends!"   Should have seen that one coming!   Or the guy who said, "I wouldn't dress up."  Why?  "I think I am scary enough already."  Hmmm.

Oh, how He works!

While I was in Changsha for the dentist yesterday, I went out to the Metro which is kind of like a Sam's club.  They also have some imported food and I wanted spaghetti noodles.  I was dying for spaghetti noodles in the land of noodles, go figure.  Anyway, needless to say, I was checking out everything on the shelves when someone spoke to me in English!  I turn and there was a young African American woman.  We began to talk: what are you doing here, how is your contract, where are you from. . . and that is when the light comes on and I actually become conscious of the fact that there are really no coincidences only arrangements by the One in charge.   This woman is not only from America; she is from North Carolina.  Not only from North Carolina though; she graduated the year after me from Winston Salem State University with me in Education and her in English.  In China, in Changsha, in the Metro at the same time as me.  For those of you who are still saying what a coincidence,  you need to Skype me so I can introduce you to my God.  Only He could arrange such a thing.

Dentist in China (well, at least Changsha)

Having checked out the hospital during my trip to China in 2006 with tonsillitis, my teeth must have felt left out; can you imagine?  I had this particular tooth worked on in America before I left, costing me over $100 for the filling and a warning from the dentist that it might abscess.  Well it did.  I went to Changsha yesterday to see the dentist.  I spent almost as much money getting to and from, adding the metro shopping side trip, in taxi and bus fare as I did at the dentist.  Seriously.

11.50 yuan ($1.82us) doctor visit,
3.00 yuan (47 cents us) xray,
205.00 yuan ($32.39us) drilling into, cleaning out nerve, pack with medicine and close up the tooth.
219.50 yuan total ($32.39)
When have any of you went to the dentist, paying for the whole charge, and only had to pay $32.49???!!!!

The dentist said the return visit will be about 600 yuan ($94.79us)

So basically I am getting a root canal for $129.47 (not counting the travel expense).  However, the travel expense yesterday was only $24.41 usd. (taxi from Luiyang to Changsha (one hour drive), taxi to and from Metro shopping, taxi to bus station, bus to Liuyang, taxi to school) which I will have to pay again for the next visit along with a hotel room for the night, but still.  Now Luiyang is 46 miles as the crow flies, not sure the exact mileage, so I think this is a pretty good cost considering.  Even with all the travel expense, I will be spending less than $200 usd on a root canal.  In China, you pay the fee before the work is done.  So I went in and paid to see the dentist, then came back and paid for the xray she wanted, then while the dentist started, my field director went back out and paid for the day's work.

The dentist was very nice.  She explained everything and I had no pain (even without numbing).

Unlike American dentist offices though, you are not in a private room but in chest high cubicles with 4 or 5 dentist working at the same time with no assistants.  The dentist held the water and mirror in one hand and drilled with the other.  No suction; she would just stop and let me spit.  In the xray room, the technician put a disposable glove over this thing he put in my mouth and used my thumb to hold it in place while he did the xray. No little bite down thingies, didn't remove any jewelry, no protective vest.

So, back to the room with cubicles, while others were waiting their turn, or waiting on family members, they were watching me while I was being worked on.  Yes, you read correctly, while the dentist was working on my tooth there were other people watching the whole process. Maybe we will take pictures next time.

However, compared to my experiences with dentists in America, I had a great experience yesterday and I am not concerned about the follow up visit in the least. Would it be this way anywhere in China? Maybe not.

There are many things here that many of you would absolutely abhor, with this being the least of probably.  I would say to you that sometimes you can rule, regulate, and nik-pik yourself into a corner from which you are left to live a very limited life.  And contrary to what you believe, the Chinese people are thriving without all of your rules and regulations and they are a hard working, inventive society, who has a high regard for education and family.  All of which America lost many, many years ago.

Having something new to eat when cooking for yourself every day in China

Cooler weather seemed to be calling for chicken pie.  However, it is my understanding that most stoves in China, for sure mine, do not have ovens, what to do? Start with chicken stew of course!  So I bought chicken breast and flour at the store yesterday.  Put the chicken in the crock pot to stew.  Moved it into a pot for the stove today and mixed my flour and milk to thicken it.  Of course, this is China so you aren't real sure it the flour is self rising or not, lol, which begs the question, will it thicken the stew? As you can see it did! 

Add some store bought rolls and you have chicken pie!

There were also fresh green beans at the store yesterday so I bought some and strung and broke them, added some pork, and now have fresh beans to go with my chicken pie!

trip to town and shopping

buying groceries: 3 six packs of pepsi, 8 cartons of milk, at least 5 lbs of potatoes or more, 3 oranges, rolls, sweet rolls, zipper bags, 5 ears of corn, romaine lettice, green onions, two packs of soy beans, three chicken breasts, half kilo of beef, pork, 2 bottles of tomato juice, bottle of ketchup, jar of 1000 island dressing, bag of sugar, brown sugar, 10-12 tomatoes, 2 storage bowls, notebook, paperclips, jug of oil......all for $46 usd.

again.... a trip to town and shopping is ALWAYS an adventure!! You never know what is going to happen or what you will see and experience! Had another little helper at the grocery store today. She followed me upstairs and pushed my cart for me talking to me in Chinese the whole time. As long as I said yes or something once in a while, it did not seem to matter that we could not understand each other!!

Got my own taxi home too! since all the road work was changing the bus stops. One lady evidently figured out I was waiting on the bus and she explained to me that it was not coming there, I would have to go down the street because of the road work. Did not understand a word she said but got the meaning. Got a taxi.

Also added some information in the 'random information' section of the website too.

Added more pictures on my website and a couple of more video links.

Shopping in China

Went shopping at the new Bi Yi Bi today.  Shopping in China (without knowing any Chinese) is both a delight and a challenge.  I am not sure if the clerks are glad to see me because they think I am going to spend lots of money being a foreigner, or  glad to see me go so they can stop having to try to understand what I want to know from pointed-to-words in my phrase book and gestures.

While choosing food today, I picked up a little girl who was fascinated with me or seeing what I was buying, not sure which, maybe both.  She followed me all over the food section of the store, through check out, and out to the door where she watched me pack my stuff in the little rolling cart I bought in the store.  Don't have a clue where her parents were.  Got my camera out to take her picture and suddenly I have two little girls (the third one did not make it in time to get in the picture)! 

Like I said, a delight and a challenge.

THUNDER! LIGHTNING! AND FIREWORKS!

About a week ago, we were having a really bad thunder storm.  Lightning flashing, thunder booming, when I heard a boom that did not sound like thunder......  wait, that sounds like.......  Yes, really, they were still testing fireworks!  During the storm.

slideshow of school and surrounding area

I published a slide show of the school buildings and surrounding country side in the photo gallery on my web page.  Check it out!

Teaching

By this past Tuesday at 11am, I had taught ten different classes the same lesson plan.  During my 11th class, I find out that probably none of the other classes knew what I was talking about when I asked them to 'write' something down because I did not use the word 'copy' and these students did not know what the word 'assignment' meant so the other classes probably didn't know either!  I am not sure yet what the Chinese call it when they are assigned class work or homework but I will try and find out before this afternoon's class.

I teach 10 classes each week, total of 20 in a two week rotation, with 16 of them being different classes.  So, most of the classes I only see once every two weeks.  I will also be involved in the English corner when the students get it going and that is considered part of my teaching contract.  I have not set up office hours yet as I have been working on establishing a scheduled time for each student to visit with me three times during the year.  Now that I have developed, printed and posted that schedule, I need to find out from the students what other times they are free to visit and I will establish my office hours for that time.

These students really need more time to just talk in English than the few minutes available in a 40 minute class.  I am trying to come up with some sort of challenge that would make them want to participate in speaking English during their free time instead of Chinese.  If these students committed to speaking only English during their free time to each other, their English would really improve over the course of the year.  I am open to suggestions. 

11:20 am I have water!!!!

Yes!!!  I have water!   I am dancing a little jig and thanking The One who gave me what was needed to make my need known.  To Him from whom all language comes, grant me knowledge and understanding of the Chinese language.

Getting a water bottle

The last time I needed a water bottle I called my liaison and she called for the water.  When the man brought it, he took out his phone and motioned for a paper and pen so he could write down his phone number.  Okay...  I assumed that meant he wanted me to call him directly next time.  How's that going to go?  I don't really speak any Chinese and he does not speak English.

So here we are today.  I need water.  What to do?  Now I have been preaching to my students that if they don't try to speak English then they can not really learn English.  (don't you love it when something comes back to bite you on the _hum_?)
Therefore, I get out my Chinese notes and figure out how to say "I am the American teacher.  I want water."  Or at least I hope that is what I am saying!  I call him on the phone and say my part and he says, "Oh, hao hao hao."  Which in Chinese means "yes, okay."  It is 11am.  Let's see if I get the water!!  LOL!

Slide show

A slide show of some of the activities we participated in during orientation.

http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMjk4MDUwNjgw.html

Schedule?

got my schedule around 8:30 this morning. My first class was at 10:20, AND I see the same class first period tomorrow! Yikes! That means a different lesson plan for in the morning! but Wait! My supernatural source is in control! Some kind of announcements/ceremony during the 10 mins between class so the class did not start on time. I only had 15 minutes to teach! What does that mean???? No new lesson plan needed! Will finish up the first one tomorrow! Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!!!