As I was getting ready to a take a shower, I heard a great big bang in my apartment. Fearing I was about to be overcome by the second coming of Ghengis Khan, I went to investigate. Fortunately, it was only my imagination. I noticed right away that my bedroom door had somehow slammed shut. Thinking it was a strong breeze through my windows I went to open the offending portal. Much to my surprise, the door was quite heavy, heavier than it should have been. When I opened it enough to get into my room, I was greeted by the sight of a radiator, its cover being the culprit in the Great Slamming Sound Mystery of Shijiazhuang Foreign Language School. Even more surprising was the number of empty beer bottles hidden behind the radiator cover. I can only suspect one of two things: the first, that the workers who repainted my apartment walls this summer drank heavily on the job, which would explain the errant paint on all of the window sills and door frames; or, the second, that my apartment used to be a home to all sorts of vagabonds while school was not in session.
When I'm in my room it doesn't quite seem true that I am in China, halfway across the world from my home. Of course, as soon as I step foot out my door and walk by just about anyone, it is readily apparent that I am a laowai (foreigner). If I were in Hong Kong, or someplace else where the international scene was bigger it would not be so striking. But, when I walk down the street and turn more heads than I think a Victoria's Secret model in full fashion show exposure would, I am speedily reminded that I am indeed far from home. Luckily, most everyone has been extremely patient with my lack of language skills. I am grateful to the fried chicken salesperson for writing out how much I owed her on a piece of paper (though in my defense I didn't realize that she was selling by weight and not a flat rate per piece). I am even more grateful to the three senior high girls who were kind enough to help me order some noodles at the restaurant down the street from the school; I was embarrassed enough for all of us, ladies, feel free to make all the jokes you want at my expense in the future.
An update on my floors, as I'm sure you were all dying to know. They manage to keep themselves dirty from dust and crumbs and sock lint; I really need to wash my socks a couple more times to get rid of that. As far as I can tell the floor cleaner is satisfactory, at least it hasn't ruined my bathroom tile. The wood floors have yet to be subjected to the Pledge treatment because I might buy a new mop before I tackle those, the one left in my bathroom is a sorry excuse for a cleaning tool. For now a once-over with the mop and some clean water, which was quickly dirtied, and frequent sweepings have maintained my sanity. It is surprising how much I felt the urge to clean when faced with my own apartment. It's almost as if I have grown up, almost.
I observed three classes this morning. It so happened that it was the same lesson given by different teachers in different classes, much to my dismay. One can only handle so much review of English letters and pronunciation. One interesting element of the lesson was the strict teaching of how to form English letters: each letter must be formed by a certain amount of pen strokes in a particular order. The end result is beautiful handwriting, but the native speaker in me wanted to say that it didn't matter. When it comes down to it, it only needs to be legible, and how the students form the letters should not make a difference, only whether they convey the correct information. I kept my mouth shut, though when one of the teachers asked me I gave her a quick explanation of how when I learned there may have been a prescribed method of writing each letter, but what was really graded was the end result, not the process. She laughed a little and said that they want the students to do it the right way. I cannot argue with their results, the students write beautifully.
Another point of interest was the way in which they teach pronunciation. They use notation similar to that of a dictionary when showing how to pronounce a certain word. From what I could tell it was due to the textbook series doing it that way, so teaching students the method means that it will be easy for them to look up words in their books' vocabulary section. For this portion of the lessons, I was again tempted to speak out. This time because of certain ways the teachers used to explain different sounds. In one class, the students clearly could not make a good "th" sound. She stopped them and told them to put their tongue between their teeth in order to make the sound. She gave a couple examples and told them to work on it, something I doubt they will be doing in their spare time.
Part of the reason she did not spend more time on it, I'm sure, was the fact that she had 56 students in her class. It was intimidating. From what I'm told that is standard for this 6th grade class, at 1500+ students in the grade it's a necessity. They have 30 separate classes of students (numbers 1 and 2 are for the highest achieving students and have maybe 40 students while the rest have normally varying ability levels). In the larger classes, the teachers use microphones in order to be hear, but I question whether that is truly effective for the students at the back. When I begin teaching on the 10th, I will be responsible for 27/30 classes, meaning I will only see each group once a week, which is certainly disappointing. Granted, I am really only there to model speech and give the kids a weekly speaking/listening intensive lesson (a component that would greatly benefit any foreign language study when coupled with the typical grammar and book based curricula), but it will be nearly impossible to really make much of a difference I think. I will ask the head of the English department if I could do something after school or during lunch in case there are kids who want extra help or exposure, hopefully that won't cross any lines.
Well that's all for now. I have yet to recount my time in Beijing, or my train escapades, so please stay tuned, dear readers! According to the site I'm doing this through, I have had 28 unique viewers, which seems unbelievably high, but I will only assume I have achieved internet celebrity, rather than think its counting program is faulty. Thank you for reading. It's time to go sweep my floors again.
Below: the vagabond's stash.