27/09/03

Well I’ve now been in the good old PRC (People’s Republic of China) for a month. In some ways it feels like it’s been a lot longer than that, in others a lot shorter, however what does that really matter, according to my calendar it’s been a month.

The last few days haven’t held too many dramas, I’m slowly settling into a routine. Having so much free time takes some getting used to. I don’t mind it at all, but I find myself constantly thinking about what I should be doing. Thursday class went well. We have a week break starting next Wednesday, and with the books having just arrived, we plan to start teaching to a curriculum as of next week. The last couple of weeks have been basically to get the students used to our style of teaching, which is significantly different to the way they would have been taught in middle school (high school).

It would not have been uncommon for these students to have been in classes of more than 50 in what they call middle school. The majority of the time the classrooms are small, and don’t have fans let alone air conditioning, and the style of teaching is much less interactive. In English classes, the students have little to no speaking practice, and are basically lectured to. This trend may very slowly change, there are the rare situations in which a foreigner actually teaches at a middle school, however judging by the fact that many of my students had never spoken to a foreigner before meeting me, calling the situation rare may be a gross understatement.

Maggie (our office assistant) had told me on Wednesday that as a result of the upcoming holiday we would be required to teach Saturday and Sunday to make up for classes missed. This obviously took me by surprise, if you tried to pull this off in the West you would likely get shot down in flames, however this is very common in China. This is where Les once again saved my backside. We had of course stated in the appendix to our contract that we would only work Monday to Friday, and teach a maximum number of hours in one week. We would have been willing to teach if it had meant throwing our jobs in jeopardy, but I think before anything got too serious Frieda figured out what was going on, and talked to a few people before we had to say all that much. So as a result we are the only teachers at the university not working this weekend! Well not exactly, I am teaching a class Sunday which was rescheduled, but I’ll take 2 hours over a possible 12.

Thursday nights class went smoothly. Trying to design classes without following a curriculum gets frustrating and feels kind of aimless, and I think the students are picking up on that. Will be nice when things change next week. Figuring out exactly what topics we are going to teach aside from those structured within the book will take some sorting out too. The idea is that by the end of four years the students are competent speakers with a solid understanding of medical terminology, however we don’t want to cover all the physiological aspects in the first year. Talking to a person who could explain the inner workings of the large intestine, yet with no understanding of what a television is, isn’t a whole lot of fun!

Friday night’s class was actually the class that had been moved to Sunday, so in effect I have had two days off, which was rather nice! They have been rather lazy, a bit of reading, watched a few DVD’s, bit of TV. Chris was throwing a party for his students last night and asked for a hand, which I gave him. We have a rooftop which is actually quite useable, so Chris ran extension chords from everywhere up to the roof, and turned it into quite a good venue. Things got underway at about 8.30, before which Adam, Erin and I hit up my favourite little establishment at the east gate for dinner (have recently learned it’s referred to as the ‘banyan tree’).

When foreigners are invited to parties in China, especially those related to some educational institution, they are less parties, more ‘English corners’. An English corner is where people learning English show up to talk to foreigners. So for the foreigners it is actually a bit of work. I don’t mind doing it every now and again, especially if the person organizing is a good friend, but they do get fairly tiring. This gathering went on till about 11pm, before the students started clearing out, and Chris, Ian, Adam and I were left. We sat around for about an hour and sorted out the problems of the world, then called it a night.

I’ve spent most of today sleeping, marking, preparing, and watching TV. The AFL Grand Final was on back in Melbourne, and it was on Star Sports, which we get scrambled here. I managed to get the idea of what was happening, Collingwood getting pumped by Brisbane for the 2nd year running, giving the Lions their 3rd straight premiership, shame no one in Brisbane actually understands the game.

It’s now about 10pm and I’m watching a bit of football. We get a lot of the English Premier League games on TV. That’s about all that’s been happening. Till next time!

- Sam