Terrific Tuesday!

I am exhausted but know if I don’t write this now I will forget everything that happened today.

I hit the snooze today. I am not a snooze girl. I am out of bed when the alarm goes off, but not today. I woke up tired (never a good thing) and couldn’t think of any place I would rather be than my nice warm bed. Even though my room was warm I could just tell it was cold out. And it was.

Helena and I were out the door around 8:30 and we were greeted with about a foot of snow! Now I don’t think I wrote about this before..but last time..CHINA MADE IT SNOW! What kind of crazy country am I in that makes it snow? They injected stuff into the clouds I guess to help with the drought. Oh China.

So it was cold, snowy, but mostly, wet. Gross! And on top of that the entrance we use to the subway has been closed (always on the coldest days). There is another entrance not too far away but we have to cross about 10 lanes of traffic (that becomes a death defying stunt every time).

We arrived at the school to find the courtyard covered in snow! Some of the teachers and students were shoveling. So we waited in the teachers’ room until Chilli told me I was coming to 8th grade! I was excited..I like 8th grade. Mostly because I am greeted by “Hello beautiful” (he did not disappoint me today!) but also because I have a lot of fun with them. They are a small class which I like a lot. They know enough English that we can play fun games. Although it can be frustrating because as much as I love Chilli she will not translate anything! She wanted me to teach them new words and read the list and spell it (boring!) I read over the list and we did spelling as a class and then..game time baby! Two teams and one member from each team goes to the board. I say a word and they need to spell it. It is a race, but they can get help from their team. I have to say I now LOVE this game because I laugh SO hard! They are hilarious. Since these were new words most of them didn’t know how to spell it..so I would hear their team yelling out letters (which is still great…team learning) as the student at the board got confused with g and j or b and p or t and f. They really were soo funny. It was also interesting to see what they got confused..blender and butter were often confused. So it was going well (I thought). They were all engaged and they had a lot of fun. Class was over, but Chilli said the students asked if I could teach next class. I asked if that was ok (because they weren’t supposed to have English) but I guess they just skipped their next class for more English! I had never been asked to do an encore but I was pumped! Chilli told me there wouldn’t be a teacher in the class and as she was leaving she kept saying “repeat”. The students had asked her what to say if they don’t understand me. So we started the game again but then the boys were called out to shovel (I thought this was interesting). So now I had a SMALL group of girls, until the 7th grade girls came in. The 8th grade girls (being 8th grade girls..) decided they would be one team and 7th grade would be another. Luckily they could explain to the 7th grade girls how the game worked etc. But obviously the 8th grade girls were MUCH better. I needed to change this. I had them count off (1,2,3,4) and then (now this was tricky) wanted all the 1’s together, 2’s together, etc. This took a LOT of patience on EVERYONE’s part but after about 5 minutes I had my four groups! We continued on and it was fair because every team had two 8th graders and two 7th graders.

During the game these two 7th grade girls came up to me and I had NO idea..NO clue what they were saying. The hard part about Mandarin is it sounds like NOTHING (unlike the romance languages that sometimes are similar). I felt AWFUL because they obviously needed something and I didn’t know what to do. I looked at the 8th graders for help who started speaking to me again, and we all ended up laughing because I had no clue. FINALLY, one of the girls was saying “W.C.” and I understood they wanted to go the bathroom! I felt AWFUL about keeping them there! We all had a good laugh though because when I finally understand I was like “Ahhhh GOOOO!” The students always have to ask permission to enter (and apparently leave) a classroom.

I had a lot of fun and we were off for lunch. Chilli was saying something about how someone was getting me something for lunch. Although I didn’t understand because I had my bowl so I went and got lunch for myself. But then Michael said they were ordering a chicken meal so not to eat too much!

As Helena and I were waiting in line for lunch she said, “I have to tell you about the computer” and I thought oh great! I had emailed Melissa (my coordinator) before school to ask if she could accompany me to buy a laptop for the school. But during lunch (and I am still a bit confused) Helena said that Michael told her I should not buy a laptop for the school. Apparently they had just gotten computers (which I saw..they are AMAZING..it is like a computer lab) and he said if I were to give the school a laptop the “headmaster” would take it. Now I do not know if it is the headmaster I know (who always speaks Chinese to me..) or her boss, but it almost sounded like the teachers felt like this person would use it for his/her own good and not for the teachers or students.

I was a bit upset to hear this, but also relieved. This whole laptop situation made me uncomfortable from the beginning and I was glad I found this out before I had purchased anything.

So I was at lunch COMPLETELY confused at the situation. Michael had said something about how I said I wanted to buy a gift for the school…which is true! I had wanted to give the students something since they are the “School for Poor Children”. Although, not that I am one to judge, they aren’t as poor as I expected. Granted they are not the wealthiest of Beijing, they all have school supplies and clothing and food. But anyway, I wanted to get the students something to help improve their English. I also wanted to give a gift to the teachers for two reasons. One, to help them teach but also because they are the kindest people I have ever met. They ALWAYS make sure I have a seat, am close to the heater, am fed first, am comfortable, etc. and they helped me so much with my phone charger and phone card.

So for about the next 20 minutes Michael was trying to explain what I could do for a gift for the teachers and to be honest I am too tried to go through the whole process. BUT what I finally figured out was that he thought I could take everyone out to dinner. He said they don’t really NEED anything (it sounds like they might get some Government money..) but he said they would all love to go out to dinner (and then I figured out it would be my treat!) So I said that was fine (I felt much more comfortable with that than the computer situation..) and I was excited because I knew we would go someplace authentic. However, I didn’t know when/where we were going. Chilli asked if we could stay for the afternoon and Helena and I agreed for one class. We should NOT be complaining, but we were so tired, cold and wet. I couldn’t feel my fingers or toes. And more importantly, I had to pee really badly and could not go in the school in front of my audience.

For the afternoon class I went with Amy to grade 3, my least favorite. The students are VERY hard to work with. It is a huge class (40 or more..) and they don’t understand any English. We were doing animals again so I decided to go over more movements. Since the spelling bee worked so well I tried to do that again, but Amy thought it would be too hard. They did ok. I don’t think they knew the letters well enough. They still all made me laugh because each team got VERY involved. There is always a winner (the student who spells it right the quickest) and then I made them spell it back to me. The rest of the students stay up until they spell it right (and can spell it back to me) although in 3rd grade they mostly repeated the letters rather than knowing them on their own.

I was exhausted after this class. I think teaching a class this size is difficult enough, but it is the language barrier that really makes me so tired. We went back to the teachers’ lounge and Chilli asked if we were staying for the afternoon but we said we needed to go. This is when it got a bit foggy. They all started talking and then seemed sad as we left. Helena and I were confused because we thought we were going to do something for dinner but nobody told us. We got past the gate when I told her I thought we should turn around and explain we were confused.

We went back and again I could tell you how confusing it was for the next 20 minutes but what we figured out was they wanted to do dinner tonight (by the school) so thought we should stay and go to dinner, which is why I think they were upset when we said we had to leave. But we didn’t know ANY of this was happening. It was very frustrating (nobody’s fault) but I just felt bad that it was a huge misunderstanding.

SO since I was treating everyone to dinner I knew I needed to go to the ATM. I also had to pee and I wanted to buy some more English books for the students. I decided I would go to the nearby shopping center (I think they were still confused but I told them I would be back in an hour) and Helena and I were off! We went to the ATM and bathroom in McDonald’s before going to the bookstore to buy more English workbooks (flashcard, etc.) I decided since I wasn’t getting the laptop I wanted to give them more books.

We made it back to the school in time to get on the school bus (it was scary) and off we went! We dropped off some students along the way and ended up on a street that had a few restaurants. They picked one and I was excited because..NO ENGLISH! We were given a private room (there were 10 of us) and it was great! They had pictures so Helena and I pointed at some things, but I was confused about ordering. It ended up being we all ordered and they had a lazy-susan so we all shared (I liked that) The food was actually really good (or I was just hungry) but I enjoyed the real deal. We also got duck that was delicious.

Dinner was GREAT! They took a LOT of pictures with us (my face hurts from smiling) and we laughed a lot. I felt bad though because I was SO tired from having to be “on” all day. I could never relax and it is ALWAYS hard to understand them (Michael didn’t come until the end..) and it was like an interview. They have so many questions about the U.S. and I am so happy to answer but am just so tired after a while. We had a great dinner and then they brought me a cake! Some of the girls showed up late (I was confused because we all came together) and I guess it was because they were buying me a cake. They said it was their gift to me. It was so cute because it had “Happy Birthday” (they don’t even know my birthday is next week) but I think they thought it meant Merry Christmas (because they wished us a Merry Christmas) and it also said (in Chinese) safe travels. They really are SO sweet and I loved it! The cake was delicious (very fruity) and we just had a great night.

We left the restaurant and Helena and I had been gone for 13 hours so we were excited to be heading home. We said we needed to get to the subway stop so this one teacher (who doesn’t speak English) said she would help. We got on a bus and after a few stops I realized I knew where we were. She had us get off at a stop earlier then I would have thought..but thought maybe the bus didn’t stop in front of the subway. I knew it was walk able, but then we started walking in the opposite direction. I wanted to tell her I knew where we were (it was the subway we usually take) so we could get home fine! But I knew she wouldn’t understand so we walked for a bit and then got on a bus (going in the opposite direction). Helena tried to ask her where we were going and I felt awful because next thing I knew she had Michael on the phone asking what the problem was. We just asked where we were going and he said the subway so we said ok and off we went on the bus. We finally got off and she did bring us to the subway, but we realized it was a different line and meant about 5 extra stops. We went north of our usual stop (when we wanted to be heading south). While we were so grateful she brought us to the subway, we were a little frustrated because we just wanted to be back at the hostel and we added an extra half hour! Oh well!

Overall I had SUCH a good and fun day and thought it was a great ending to my time at the school in China. But, for now I am off to bed.

Hugs and kisses from a REAL Chinese restaurant.