My friend Tyler responded to a listserve teacher question yesterday with the following funny response and I thought I'd share. The question was 'how do I correctly document my year in China on a resume?' The results from Tyler follow and are sure to humor:
1. The honest entry:
English Speaking Clown
Shenzhen Education Bureau
09/05-06/06
> Duties often entailed daily public humiliation and embarrassment, as well classroom and occasional birthday party entertainment.
2. The Slightly exaggerated and overly sophisticated entry:
Expert Facilitator of Spoken English Acquisition
Shenzhen Education Bureau
09/05-06/06
> Duties included: extensive and arduous lesson planning, daily lecturing, and school administration responsibilities.
3. The outright, but still feasible and defendable lie:
US Department of Education Foreign Spy
Shenzhen Education Bureau (cover)
09/05-06/06
> Duties included: foreign teacher impersonation, regular maintenance of hand to hand combat and numb-chuck skills, as well as the occasional "elimination" of students deemed as potential threats.
Note: Anyone who actually uses any of the above entries on their resumes can thank me when the said entry lands that dream job as CEO, Corporate Lawyer, Stripper, etc... Thank Yous will be most appreciated in the form of generous financial contributions to the Make A Wish And Make Tyler Rich Foundation (MAWAMTRF).
Sunday, February 26, 2006
Friday, February 24, 2006
Hakunamata the desert snowboarder
Friday afternoon.....another week hath been survived. However I must admit that however lame and 85-year old womanish it may be, in order to survive today I had to go to bed at 6:30 last night. I taught 6 full classes yesterday and this week I basically lectured on the Olympics and while the students really liked my dopey demonstrations of jumping in and out of the bobsleigh and doing shooting for the biathlon, lecturing over the voices of 65 children in each class was sometimes a strain on the voice. Then yesterday as I was walking out of the school gates to go home for lunch, I was corned by an admin lady asking me to take part in English Corners (english speaking club) after school that day and that my topic was school rules. Ha, what if I had told her no? Of course I wouldn't turn it down; I get paid extra for it, and it was with my favorite little junior 1 kiddos. But...this meant staying at school well past 6, talking and handing out prizes (provided by the school in the form of pens, erasers and little sweets) to 12 year olds for answering questions such as: "Tell me three school rules," "Tell me two rules you would make if you were a teacher" etc. The most popular prize was the eraser (Bill Yi (aka Bill Gates)) told me it was because in the shops that eraser costs 3kuai and the pens and candy were less than 1kuai.
I came home, contemplated venturing out for dinner...b/c yes I am still living on my couch and will be until oh Tuesday...but instead I grabbed and apple and yogurt and crashed before the evening news came on. I normally teach at 7:45am on Fridays (and all other days now) but today Jack, the English teacher for Junior1Class2 (the 7:45 Friday class) asked if we could swap times b/c he was giving his students a test and some wanted to start early before school. So, of course i said fine and I was able to sleep until 8 and then teach at 8:40. Do no worry, I didn't actually sleep 14 hours last night....i woke up about 3 for a bit which coincidentally coincided with the live coverage of the ladies' figure skating finals. I watched a bunch of women fall, and one beautiful Japanese girl not fall and then popped back to sleep.
My last two classes of the week were attended by 4 or 5 Junior 3 English teachers who had heard from my friend Qingling that I have interesting classes. Alas, I got to make an idiot out of myself in front of my 15 year olds and their teachers today. However the activity I ended class with made teaching each class this week worth it. I asked each student to write a short story about being an Olympic athlete. I made an example: I stuck my face on the body of Ice hockey star Mike Modano and made a story about my name being Hildy Sveldma from Sweden and how I was 39 years old and competing the Turin Olympics. I got some wonderful responses but my favorite was from a student named Abner: "Hello, my name is Hakunamata. I come from South Africa and I am playing snowboarding for my country in the Olympics in Italy this year. I have never seen snow, but I am going to Italy to play snowboarding. My father and I practice the snowboarding on the desert for 15 hours every day. We go home at night and my mother cooks potatoes. I think snow will look like mashed potatoes. Go South Africa" See...sometimes teaching the kiddos is rather rewarding.
Here's my debunking of common thought for the moment: I've heard from many people, as well as on many movies that if you exude confidence and look someone in the eye, then they're not going to look down and see what you are wearing. Well I chose to extend this little saying into including personal footwear. But, in China, for me, it's oh so wrong. I smile brightly at just about everyone I see...it order to melt those leers into smiles on passerby. They usually smile right back but I can't keep their gaze; it goes down to my feet. I think this is becuase people here are not used to seeing women my height and they figure that I must be wearing heels. But, much to their dismay I am wearing flat shoes and not just flat shoes, flip flops. In case you didn't know, flip flops are 'poor mans' shoes here and so in their head, my passing by had caused quite a conundrum....why is she tall, why is she a foreigner wearing the poor shoes? So much for blending in and being smiley....it doesn't prevent the double, triple and quadruple take.
Speaking of takes, my friend Tim and I are going to be in mattress ads here in Shenzhen! Hahaha. One of my student's fathers own a mattress factory in the SEZ and the student asked my good friend Xiaoxia (his English teacher) if she would ask me if me and a 'tall, handsome' friend would be in the adverts. Xiaoxia has assured me that it is legit, we'll be sitting on mattresses, fully-clothed etc. hahaa. Xiaoxia is 45 and is my Chinese mama, so she's looking out for us and will be our translator (i dont know much mattress lingo in Chinese). This all transpires next week. The money is great....for 3 hours tim and I get 3/4 the amount we're paid for teaching each month. Super!
I came home, contemplated venturing out for dinner...b/c yes I am still living on my couch and will be until oh Tuesday...but instead I grabbed and apple and yogurt and crashed before the evening news came on. I normally teach at 7:45am on Fridays (and all other days now) but today Jack, the English teacher for Junior1Class2 (the 7:45 Friday class) asked if we could swap times b/c he was giving his students a test and some wanted to start early before school. So, of course i said fine and I was able to sleep until 8 and then teach at 8:40. Do no worry, I didn't actually sleep 14 hours last night....i woke up about 3 for a bit which coincidentally coincided with the live coverage of the ladies' figure skating finals. I watched a bunch of women fall, and one beautiful Japanese girl not fall and then popped back to sleep.
My last two classes of the week were attended by 4 or 5 Junior 3 English teachers who had heard from my friend Qingling that I have interesting classes. Alas, I got to make an idiot out of myself in front of my 15 year olds and their teachers today. However the activity I ended class with made teaching each class this week worth it. I asked each student to write a short story about being an Olympic athlete. I made an example: I stuck my face on the body of Ice hockey star Mike Modano and made a story about my name being Hildy Sveldma from Sweden and how I was 39 years old and competing the Turin Olympics. I got some wonderful responses but my favorite was from a student named Abner: "Hello, my name is Hakunamata. I come from South Africa and I am playing snowboarding for my country in the Olympics in Italy this year. I have never seen snow, but I am going to Italy to play snowboarding. My father and I practice the snowboarding on the desert for 15 hours every day. We go home at night and my mother cooks potatoes. I think snow will look like mashed potatoes. Go South Africa" See...sometimes teaching the kiddos is rather rewarding.
Here's my debunking of common thought for the moment: I've heard from many people, as well as on many movies that if you exude confidence and look someone in the eye, then they're not going to look down and see what you are wearing. Well I chose to extend this little saying into including personal footwear. But, in China, for me, it's oh so wrong. I smile brightly at just about everyone I see...it order to melt those leers into smiles on passerby. They usually smile right back but I can't keep their gaze; it goes down to my feet. I think this is becuase people here are not used to seeing women my height and they figure that I must be wearing heels. But, much to their dismay I am wearing flat shoes and not just flat shoes, flip flops. In case you didn't know, flip flops are 'poor mans' shoes here and so in their head, my passing by had caused quite a conundrum....why is she tall, why is she a foreigner wearing the poor shoes? So much for blending in and being smiley....it doesn't prevent the double, triple and quadruple take.
Speaking of takes, my friend Tim and I are going to be in mattress ads here in Shenzhen! Hahaha. One of my student's fathers own a mattress factory in the SEZ and the student asked my good friend Xiaoxia (his English teacher) if she would ask me if me and a 'tall, handsome' friend would be in the adverts. Xiaoxia has assured me that it is legit, we'll be sitting on mattresses, fully-clothed etc. hahaa. Xiaoxia is 45 and is my Chinese mama, so she's looking out for us and will be our translator (i dont know much mattress lingo in Chinese). This all transpires next week. The money is great....for 3 hours tim and I get 3/4 the amount we're paid for teaching each month. Super!
Wednesday, February 22, 2006
Love for Handsome Lake
I cannot count the number of times my colleagues who teach oral English at other schools tell me how much they hate teaching junior 1 students (about 12-14 years old). *Quick aside: The reason for the large age span in any given grade of students has to do with their professed ages being based on the lunar calendar. See, when a Chinese baby is born he/she is already one year old and then will turn two on the lunar new year. Sooooooo, if child was born a day before the lunar new year, then he'll be two when he is merely two days old. Conversely, if the child is born a month after the lunar new year, he will not turn two until he is 11 months old in our was of customary counting.* Well I love my Junior 1 students. This term I am teaching 8 classes of them: 4 small classes where Barbara and I divide big classes in half, and then 4 large classes. The large classes are Junior 1 Classes 5, 6, 7,8. Classes here are ranked, Class 1 is the best, and Class 10 is the worst. So by logic you'd think that these would be the bad classes. Admittedly, their English is not quite the same as Classes 1-4, but what they lack in skill, they more than make up in eagerness....except for Snoopy, who spent 30 minutes standing outside of class because he thought "fuck you" to be terribly funny to shout over and over. Today I found my favorite student of all time and his name is Handsome Lake. Yes that is correct, Handsome Lake. He's adorable and funny and loves to speak English and he is a member of Class 8, my new favorite class. They were full of energy and eager to learn; a teacher's dream quite frankly.
News on the less meritable front:
I was supposed to have been moved out of my apt. last weekend, but due to 50,000 things that are wrong with the place, I am still sleeping on the couch of my old empty place, bringing clothes back and forth from my new school apt. via backpack each day. Yesterday, after they still had done nothing to fix anything, I went through the place and found the following things wrong:
1) No phone line (has phone and lots of holes in the wall that could maybe in the future house phone wires)
2) No place for internet (in my contract)
3) Refridgerator doesn't chill (kinda key factor for said contraption)
4) No water or power to washing machine
5) No hot water (that was fixed this morning)
7) One (1) electrical socket that works (that means lots of extension cords and a monster power strip will be needed to plug in tv, two lamps, water cooler, fridge, washer, and internet.....haha does it sound like they need to do something)
8) Toilet doesn't work
Addressing the last part: I went in yesterday between classes to use the toilet only to find upon test flush (i do these kind of things now b/c i've been in china long enough to know there is about an 1/7 chance it's not going to work) I find that no water fills the toilet bowl. So, I go down to admin, tell my boss the problem and say that I cannot move into this place until the toilet at least works...i mean the rest can be dealt with after if NECESSARY. Well he says no problem, no moving until the apt. is all ready (wonderful that he says this after it was demanded that I move all my effects out of my old place last weekend). This morning I go up to the room at school to get a roll of TP (for a clever game for my Junior 1s) and am overwhelmed by a smell I can only liken to vomit coming from the bathroom. I open the door and where the non-functioning toilet was yesterday, today there is just a hole in the ground. And later I find out that all of the dorm toilets were backing up into said hole in the ground in my bathroom today....hence the horrid smell. When I told them the about the toilet problem, I would have thought that a new U-tube or a couple cranks of a pipe would have put it back in order, not take the whole darn thing out.
The only thing to do on a day like this is to remember that my students are awesome, the weather was perfect to run by the resevoir, and TIC (this is China) and I've come to expect the illogical and idiotic to happen on a daily basis.
News on the less meritable front:
I was supposed to have been moved out of my apt. last weekend, but due to 50,000 things that are wrong with the place, I am still sleeping on the couch of my old empty place, bringing clothes back and forth from my new school apt. via backpack each day. Yesterday, after they still had done nothing to fix anything, I went through the place and found the following things wrong:
1) No phone line (has phone and lots of holes in the wall that could maybe in the future house phone wires)
2) No place for internet (in my contract)
3) Refridgerator doesn't chill (kinda key factor for said contraption)
4) No water or power to washing machine
5) No hot water (that was fixed this morning)
7) One (1) electrical socket that works (that means lots of extension cords and a monster power strip will be needed to plug in tv, two lamps, water cooler, fridge, washer, and internet.....haha does it sound like they need to do something)
8) Toilet doesn't work
Addressing the last part: I went in yesterday between classes to use the toilet only to find upon test flush (i do these kind of things now b/c i've been in china long enough to know there is about an 1/7 chance it's not going to work) I find that no water fills the toilet bowl. So, I go down to admin, tell my boss the problem and say that I cannot move into this place until the toilet at least works...i mean the rest can be dealt with after if NECESSARY. Well he says no problem, no moving until the apt. is all ready (wonderful that he says this after it was demanded that I move all my effects out of my old place last weekend). This morning I go up to the room at school to get a roll of TP (for a clever game for my Junior 1s) and am overwhelmed by a smell I can only liken to vomit coming from the bathroom. I open the door and where the non-functioning toilet was yesterday, today there is just a hole in the ground. And later I find out that all of the dorm toilets were backing up into said hole in the ground in my bathroom today....hence the horrid smell. When I told them the about the toilet problem, I would have thought that a new U-tube or a couple cranks of a pipe would have put it back in order, not take the whole darn thing out.
The only thing to do on a day like this is to remember that my students are awesome, the weather was perfect to run by the resevoir, and TIC (this is China) and I've come to expect the illogical and idiotic to happen on a daily basis.
Saturday, February 18, 2006
Never Underestimate the power of.......
......a Safety Pin.
Yesterday morning at 6am I made a trip to the bathroom in my all-packed, chilly apt, only to find, that in addition to the bathroom light being burned out, the kitchen light being on the blink, that yes indeed, there was no running water in my apt. I hammered time after time with my hands on the flusher button and to no avail; there wasn't any water to be had. And in addition to aforementioned said drama, I broke the chain on the toilet....again. So at 6am, in the dark of my bathroom, i had to stick my hand down the slimey, mildewy, tank to reconnect the chain with....a safety pin. What a totally, utterly comepletely useful contraption.
4 hours later the water came back on. Yah! Two more days of hot water showers (the hot water in my new room doesn't work).
However, the day was made wonderful with Mexican food and good friends. There is always a silver lining to any rocky start.
P.S. I get to feel like a princess for 4 months in my new place. The bed is topped with a canopy and mosquito netting draped down to the floor. (Granted, the whole thing is made out of aluminum piping and is tied with raffea to the headboard).
Yesterday morning at 6am I made a trip to the bathroom in my all-packed, chilly apt, only to find, that in addition to the bathroom light being burned out, the kitchen light being on the blink, that yes indeed, there was no running water in my apt. I hammered time after time with my hands on the flusher button and to no avail; there wasn't any water to be had. And in addition to aforementioned said drama, I broke the chain on the toilet....again. So at 6am, in the dark of my bathroom, i had to stick my hand down the slimey, mildewy, tank to reconnect the chain with....a safety pin. What a totally, utterly comepletely useful contraption.
4 hours later the water came back on. Yah! Two more days of hot water showers (the hot water in my new room doesn't work).
However, the day was made wonderful with Mexican food and good friends. There is always a silver lining to any rocky start.
P.S. I get to feel like a princess for 4 months in my new place. The bed is topped with a canopy and mosquito netting draped down to the floor. (Granted, the whole thing is made out of aluminum piping and is tied with raffea to the headboard).
Friday, February 17, 2006
500 People doing "The Lawnmower"....I know you're jealous
And so….after 6 weeks of jam-packed traveling and visiting, I return to Shenzhen for 2nd term (albeit a shorter term than last – MidJune will be upon us before we know it. There are stories to be told about every moment of my travels, from the beauteous Shanghai that Adam I and encountered, to the crazy travels of three ladies in Sichuan that landed us on top of a mountain where no tourist had tread for probably months, if not years where we huddled into a makeshift king-size bed (two twins pushed together for purposes of body head) and savored the incremental wafts of warm air from the heater on the wall, and finally to mum and I taking on some of the world’s finest real estate, New Zealand. Those stories and many more will be added in due time, but for now, I return to the present.
The new term started Monday, and as the first school bell rang I was sitting, and perhaps half dozing in a cramped airplane seat aboard a flight from Auckland to HK. I had informed my school in December that ‘gee, I didn’t book the tickets, they were a gift and I can’t help it if I miss the first day back.’ In actual fact, I booked the tickets myself, and I wanted an extra day in NZ, haha what can I say. I must admit, flying was much more glamorous when I was more of a pint-sized person (ie 10 years old), b/c man the airlines are scrimping space right, left and center and then before you know it someone like me who is 6 feet tall, begina to lose circulation in my legs as soon as 23B right in front of me decides it’s time to recline his chair. And when I was a kid, children’s meals were leaps and bounds better than the regular stuff served; oh how I wish I still fit into that ‘under 12’ category.
Arriving back in HK mum and I were greeted with…..the worst pollution in town since September. It was so bad that it sent 200 of the 40,000, yes 40,000 runners from the Standard Charter marathon in HK the day before to the hospital and one person actually died! It made me want to jump back on a plane and head back to NZ. The ONLY thing that was undesirable about NZ is that they only let you take 20kg of weight per suitcase on the airplane (JAL and China Airlines lets you take 32kg internationally). The 20kg severally hinders purchasing power.
I’ve got a great schedule this term….no teaching on Mondays or Friday afternoons. This means I have the potential to travel, but instead I think I’m going to take a job with a tutoring firm that finds tutors for CEOs and important people in Chinese companies who need to learn English for their jobs. It might be very different teaching people who really want to learn English, vs. some of my students who are just there to take up space in the classroom.
That said, I love most of my students this term. I’ve got all my junior 3s back and they’ve been wonderful this week and I’m teaching 8 classes of junior 1s. I love them; they’re still small and innocent and want to please the teacher.
Also upon arrival back at school I was greeted with the crew for the tv show that has been filming at our school for the last 4 months. (side note: Wouldn’t you think that if your school was the grounds for a tv show, that they are probably getting paid a lot for this use? I think so. So…..why do I have to move out of my apt. and into this closet type “apartment” (think big room with tv, bed, desk, outside kitchen, etc) b/c me living outside school is just ‘too expensive’ for the school. Haha, oh well). I walked out of class yesterday and the courtyard to the left of me was dry but as I peered straight ahead, I saw a deluge of water coming down. I was perplexed, thinking that a raincloud over a mere part of the school was unlikely. It turned out that they were filming a rainy scene for the tv show and the local fire truck was out there creating rain for all these people to stand around in with umbrellas for the show. Today there was a ‘track meet’ at school for the show and kids from the local primary school down the road, were recruited to be the opposing teams for the meet. There were even cheerleaders which are totally out of groove with what really happens in China. I would bet money that 90% of kids don’t even know what cheerleaders are (the other 10% are the basketball obsessed students named LeBron, Carter, MJ, McGrady etc. that watch NBA on TV). I mean the closest thing that any of my students do to cheerleading is something called ‘morning exercises.’ This is a routine that is done in formation in synch with some dude at the front shouting numbers out to the group. While the students usually utter some dopey half baked answer about morning exercises ‘making you healthy,’ it can be assumed that the corporate masters in Beijing are the masterminds behind such formational exercise. (Incidentally, these Corporate masters probably spend the rest of their time playing with their magic Yahtze dice, rolling them to decide when public holidays occur….i swear it’s that arbitrary……”doubly sixes…..ok no May Holiday until June 21”). Now what is morning exercise you say? Just picture 500 students in perfectly straight lines doing 70s dance moves like the shopping cart or the lawnmower…without music of course. If you can envision this, then you’ve got a fairly accurate grasp of the daily scene around my school. They do lots of spins; there’s a move where they rotate their fists really fast around one another like a spinning wheel, and they take the spinning wheel fist thing up high, and from side to side to down low… im surprised there’s no between the legs or behind the head either. Personally I think they would be better off doing the ‘Hustle’ set to nationalistic Chinese propaganda.
Good to be back. I missed my polluted-taking-years-off-my-life-air-and-hygeine-quality city. Oh yes I did.
The new term started Monday, and as the first school bell rang I was sitting, and perhaps half dozing in a cramped airplane seat aboard a flight from Auckland to HK. I had informed my school in December that ‘gee, I didn’t book the tickets, they were a gift and I can’t help it if I miss the first day back.’ In actual fact, I booked the tickets myself, and I wanted an extra day in NZ, haha what can I say. I must admit, flying was much more glamorous when I was more of a pint-sized person (ie 10 years old), b/c man the airlines are scrimping space right, left and center and then before you know it someone like me who is 6 feet tall, begina to lose circulation in my legs as soon as 23B right in front of me decides it’s time to recline his chair. And when I was a kid, children’s meals were leaps and bounds better than the regular stuff served; oh how I wish I still fit into that ‘under 12’ category.
Arriving back in HK mum and I were greeted with…..the worst pollution in town since September. It was so bad that it sent 200 of the 40,000, yes 40,000 runners from the Standard Charter marathon in HK the day before to the hospital and one person actually died! It made me want to jump back on a plane and head back to NZ. The ONLY thing that was undesirable about NZ is that they only let you take 20kg of weight per suitcase on the airplane (JAL and China Airlines lets you take 32kg internationally). The 20kg severally hinders purchasing power.
I’ve got a great schedule this term….no teaching on Mondays or Friday afternoons. This means I have the potential to travel, but instead I think I’m going to take a job with a tutoring firm that finds tutors for CEOs and important people in Chinese companies who need to learn English for their jobs. It might be very different teaching people who really want to learn English, vs. some of my students who are just there to take up space in the classroom.
That said, I love most of my students this term. I’ve got all my junior 3s back and they’ve been wonderful this week and I’m teaching 8 classes of junior 1s. I love them; they’re still small and innocent and want to please the teacher.
Also upon arrival back at school I was greeted with the crew for the tv show that has been filming at our school for the last 4 months. (side note: Wouldn’t you think that if your school was the grounds for a tv show, that they are probably getting paid a lot for this use? I think so. So…..why do I have to move out of my apt. and into this closet type “apartment” (think big room with tv, bed, desk, outside kitchen, etc) b/c me living outside school is just ‘too expensive’ for the school. Haha, oh well). I walked out of class yesterday and the courtyard to the left of me was dry but as I peered straight ahead, I saw a deluge of water coming down. I was perplexed, thinking that a raincloud over a mere part of the school was unlikely. It turned out that they were filming a rainy scene for the tv show and the local fire truck was out there creating rain for all these people to stand around in with umbrellas for the show. Today there was a ‘track meet’ at school for the show and kids from the local primary school down the road, were recruited to be the opposing teams for the meet. There were even cheerleaders which are totally out of groove with what really happens in China. I would bet money that 90% of kids don’t even know what cheerleaders are (the other 10% are the basketball obsessed students named LeBron, Carter, MJ, McGrady etc. that watch NBA on TV). I mean the closest thing that any of my students do to cheerleading is something called ‘morning exercises.’ This is a routine that is done in formation in synch with some dude at the front shouting numbers out to the group. While the students usually utter some dopey half baked answer about morning exercises ‘making you healthy,’ it can be assumed that the corporate masters in Beijing are the masterminds behind such formational exercise. (Incidentally, these Corporate masters probably spend the rest of their time playing with their magic Yahtze dice, rolling them to decide when public holidays occur….i swear it’s that arbitrary……”doubly sixes…..ok no May Holiday until June 21”). Now what is morning exercise you say? Just picture 500 students in perfectly straight lines doing 70s dance moves like the shopping cart or the lawnmower…without music of course. If you can envision this, then you’ve got a fairly accurate grasp of the daily scene around my school. They do lots of spins; there’s a move where they rotate their fists really fast around one another like a spinning wheel, and they take the spinning wheel fist thing up high, and from side to side to down low… im surprised there’s no between the legs or behind the head either. Personally I think they would be better off doing the ‘Hustle’ set to nationalistic Chinese propaganda.
Good to be back. I missed my polluted-taking-years-off-my-life-air-and-hygeine-quality city. Oh yes I did.
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