The Internet is still down, and it won’t be another two or so weeks until it is working properly. I can access some American sites, but others are just so flipping slow. So, until the seven boats full of men and woman can get the underwater wires back in order again – this will be the only way to update about our lives her in China. I know that pictures make my stories better, but I do have one story that does not need any photos. Just use a little imagination. Read on.

I have started teaching in a bigger classroom that is equipped with a computer, a screen to project on, and big speakers(even if they don’t work properly). I moved to this classroom because instead of teaching just one class of thirty, I have to teach one class of about sixty.

My former classroom was too small for all of them. Kaliah and Neil used to teach one bunch of thirty, but they left to go back to Australia right before Christmas. And now since there is only one foreign teacher remaining, it is my responsibility to teach them all. I was relieved to find out that I would only have to deal with year 2 students and not year 3 as well. That means only 14 classes, not 28. I also chose this classroom because visuals help. When my students don’t care what I am talking about, they have something at least to look at and keep them entertained.

But anyway, I digress. Let me tell you why I about went commando on my students today.

On Friday, I was teaching(if that’s what it’s called in China) for the first time in several weeks. I had been showing movies because I thought that was probably the best way to deal with sixty devils, but when the school found out – I got yelled at and had to stop. So, the day after I had been scolded, I went back to “teaching”. It only took a few classes to realize why I had decided movies would be best option for my final four weeks. As usual, no one cared what I was saying, no one brought paper or pencil, and they were rowdy as ever. I thought that I could deal with this just for two more weeks, but when a little piece of some strange Chinese food bounced off my jacket and landed on the desk – my sanity broke. Somehow, I convinced myself that the kids were just throwing it at each other and that I somehow ended up in the cross fire and went on about telling them about modern heroes.

After today, I’m pretty confident that it was intentional and that I was always the intended target. I was continuing with my heroes lesson(well, it was really Phil’s and he gave it to me, but who really cares) when at one point I turned my back on the class to hit the next button on my computer(the lesson was a power point presentation). That is when I felt the small object hit my head and bounce onto the desk. I snapped. I turned around and said,”That’s it. Class is over.” The kids had no idea what I had just said because the majority of them are retarded and don’t give a damn about learning English or who teaches it to them. I sat down and started writing a note to the head of the English department, while the students sat there and went on conversing with themselves as if nothing had happened. I tried to figure out who had done it, but no one would confess.

I don’t care if my job is a joke to my school. This is just unacceptable. I should not have to deal with things like this. The sad part is that even though I wrote a note and demanded something be done – nothing will happen. The kids may or may not get a talking to, but they’ll just laugh and go about the rest of their lives being little shits. (Sorry about the foul language in this post – but I am pretty ticked off.)

And that is another wonderful day in the world of Gabe in China. Makes you want to come here doesn’t it?

-G

As much as China can stress me out sometimes, it also makes me laugh really hard. I have two prime examples. One is a little funny and the other just plain freaky.

After a long day of teaching, I went to Phil’s school to wait until English Corner began. English Corner is a time when the serious students can come and talk to us and practice their English. It is a great concept and all, but it just doesn’t work too well. There are a hundred good reasons why it doesn’t, but I’ll get into that another day. After EC was over, Phil and I went outside to talk to Holy about the trip we are going to try to take with him during the Spring festival. Because we won’t be staying in Fuyang for our second semester(long story and I promise I will post about it soon)it is now becoming more difficult to organize our trip. It’s frustrating, but because we promised him, we are going to do everything we can to make it happen. As we were talking this is what happened that made me laugh so hard. Let me preface this by saying that Holy is 17 years old and speaks English very well. The fact that we can talk, understand, and joke with one another in the same language even though he is Chinese and we American shows how good he actually is.

Looking out over the wonderful and very polluted Fuchun River I asked Holy,”Is there anything on the other side of the bridge?” It is the one place we keep saying we are going to go but never make it.

“What do you mean? Something interesting? Something to see?”

“Yeah.”

Holy paused for just a second, and then said. “Maybe in 20 years.”

Now after typing this I can see how you may not be laughing very hard, but at the time, and even after hearing it, I still find it funny. It was probably one of the first jokes that I have heard a Chinese person say that I both understood and found funny at the same time. It totally made my day. I needed a good laugh after dealing with little devils all day.

Now for the freaky creepy moment of the day.

I won’t talk too much about this. I’m a little tired tonight and talking about it still freaks me out. On the way home from Chinese Class, Phil and I ran into a guy that I think lives in the apartment building adjacent to us. Every time he sees me or Phil, he yells ni hao(hello in Chinese) and runs over to us. In the past he has asked me to eat with him and wanted to know who I was waiting on. He’s always come off as a nice young guy, but doesn’t speak any English. I’m sure that I misinterpret a lot of what he says and that is the only reason I haven’t told the head of the school about him yet. Keep reading and you’ll understand why. Phil and I think that he was he either A) asking to pay 100 yuan to sleep with me, 100 yuan to sleep with Phil, or 100 yuan to sleep with us both. We concluded this because he showed us his wallet, did the sleeping motion with his hands, pointed to me, pointed to Phil, and even tapped Phil on the bottom. We were all really confused. We also picked up on something about tomorrow which we could only think meant that the 100 yuan would pay for services rendered until tomorrow. I’ll be avoiding that guy for some time now – at least until I can have some figure out what in the world he was saying and asking us to do.

Ah, you gotta love China. Gotta love the beast.

If I could read this sign, I’d have no problem at all getting around Fuyang on a beggar’s income. It only costs 1 yuan to ride the bus here. That is about 12 cents if you are trying to do the math. Since I don’t understand a lick of written Chinese, I have to jump on a bus and hope that the woman who takes my money can understand enough of my broken Chinese to let me know when I’ve reached my stop. If she doesn’t understand me and no one else happens to be getting on or off when I need to, the bus will just keep on going. I then have to get on another bus to take me back the way I’d come. And that is the very reason I’ve become comfortable riding only 3 of the 9 bus routes in Fuyang. (Huge city, I know . . . hehe.) Every morning I take the number one bus to the other side of town and then get on the number 8 bus that drops me off right in front of school. The bus isn’t very clean and it can be cramped, but it beats paying 7-10 Yuan for a taxi twice a day.

Here is a picture of me trying to teach my students the beautiful sport of baseball. It didn’t go over too well like most of what I teach them. The only thing I think they understood was bat, ball, and run and even those three words vanished from their memory banks once they walked out of my room.  Everything else went in one ear and out the other. So, it made it really difficult to play baseball with them the following week. The one thing they did like was me singing “Take Me Out To The Ball Game.” I never thought I’d sing in front of more than just my shower curtain, but I think it may be the only real way to reach them. Guess I better start voice lessons. Doe a dear . . .

Every fall, the schools in Fuyang have a Sport’s Meeting. That means that the students get a few days off to compete in something that resembles the Olympics on a much smaller scale. Some of the students take it quiet seriously. And some of them are pretty darn good. Ask Phil and he’ll tell you all about it. Heh. But anyways, if you enlarge the picture to the left you’ll find some interesting errors. The first being that Atlanta is the capital of George and that it’s also known as “The City of Tress.” They tried to describe Izzy, the Olympic mascot, but messed up in that department as well. Take a look and you might laugh as hard as I did. Sometimes I worry about the students and who in the world is teaching them English. Their Chinese teacher’s only know so much and some of what they do know is wrong. And so the cycle keeps repeating itself. Foreign teachers are the only real cure. And look who they sent – me. God help them. God help them all.

My school had an English Competition on my birthday and they asked me to be one of the judges. There were about 25 students in it from grades 2 and 3. If they were in middle school back home they would probably be in 7th and 8th grade. A few days before the competition, I had some students read their speeches out to me. They wanted help and advice and I gave them what I could without rewriting their entire speech. There were more errors than there are thorns on a rose bush. And I’m not kidding. The sad part is that a lot of the errors were advice that the their Chinese English teachers gave them. That is the evil cycle I am talking about.

I took a picture of this girl as she preformed her speech. I don’t know who she is. She may be one of my students, but I can’t keep track of them. If you had 700 students, you wouldn’t be able to either! I think I can pick out maybe 4 or 5 students that I know are mine if I see them walking around. The cool thing is that every single one of the students memorized their speech. They didn’t have a single card with them. And some of their speeches were pretty long. A couple had some problems, but for the most part they all did pretty well. One of my students, Grey, got first place, but so did about 5 others. Guess they tied or something. I marked all the students a lot lower than the Chinese teachers did, but that’s because I actually knew what the mistakes were. Alright, gotta go. Have to see what kind of trouble I can get myself into. Fuyang and all of it’s glory awaits!

Sorry for the delay. I know that I suck as a Blogger, but I’ve been sorta busy and tired. Teaching does that to you. I technically work less than four hours a day, but I sit in my office staring at my Dell computer screen when I’m not standing in front of 30 devils and screaming at them. I only have 4 classes a day, but I still have to be at school from about 8 to 5 because of the way my schedule is set up. Next term I am going to ask for later classes so that I don’t have to wait around all day for my next class to start. The following pictures are of things my students have done over the last few weeks. Some are cute, others strange, one is just mean, and well, the last one is just plain nasty. Enjoy.

The first picture is of a gift from one of my best students. Her English name is Tiffany, and I wish that all of my students could be just like her. I was teaching about Halloween and threw in the fact that November 2nd was my birthday. As soon as she heard those words come out of my mouth, she ripped out a piece of paper from her notebook and started to make me a card in class. This of course kept her from writing down any of the new vocabulary words that I was teaching, but that’s okay. I can forgive a Teacher’s Pet any day of the week. Hehe. : ) I think if she had known about my birthday earlier she would have bought me one, but I think I like this one better. It’s much more creative than one she could have purchased in a store. The little stickers are so cute. I might just have to have it framed. It is one of the nicest things a student has done for me.

When I was rearranging my desks for what seemed like the 1,000th time(the student’s love to wreck my room and they don’t ever fix it), I saw this phrase on one of them. The first thing that I thought of was Conan the Barbarian and then pictured him playing really great tennis, but then I knew that couldn’t possibly be the case. Turns out, my student was just insanely bored and was doodling about two cartoon character’s named Detective Conan and another who happens to be the Prince of Tennis. I found this out only after Phil had over 3 of his students for dinner. That’s another story all together.

I don’t play many games with my student’s, mainly because I don’t think they deserve them and also because they can never stay quiet enough, but occasionally I will try to make them happy and play a game of Hangman. This is how I try to teach them new words. Well, I had been playing Hangman for a few weeks and then stopped because I figured it was just not working the way I wanted. Boys just want to hang the man and the girls can never guess the word before the boys have hung the man. So when I stopped, there was one class that made it very obvious that they still wanted to play. They gave me the piece of paper during class one day. It says:  Y O U with the hanged man to the right of it and then AGAIN. It means You Play Hangman Again. I humored them on that day, but not since. I’m such a rotten teacher. Hehe.

This one actually made me mad – for two reasons . . . 1) they think I’m boring(only because I don’t play games and music all day) and 2) they can’t even spell their insults right.

What my students don’t know is that when I get angry it only makes their lives more of a living hell. They should really learn to keep their evil thoughts to themselves.

Soon my students will understand the definition of god by the word Gabe. Mu ah ha ha!!

This is the kicker, the icing on the cake, if you will. For those of you who don’t believe me when I say that my room is a freaking pigsty, I now provide you with the proof! I think that I am really in charge of 700 rotten little pigs. I don’t know where this trash comes from. I never see them eating, but without fail there is litter all over the classroom floor at the end of each day. It doesn’t matter if I sweep it, the trash just reappears. Oh, and this is just one corner of my room. There is another pile just like it on the other side.

I will post pictures of our trip to the Zoo soon. And I still have many other pictures I need to post as well. I’ll try to be a better blogger. Promise.

I did a search for a Halloween cat in Yahoo and this is one of the pictures that turned up. I thought it was pretty cute. It’s great when people manipulate animals and make them do outrageous things like this.(Horray Photoshop) For some reason, it totally brightens my day.

Well, if you didn’t know, Halloween doesn’t exist here in China. Sad face. I am slowly trying to bring it over though. This week I am teaching my little devils about Halloween and the whole art of Trick or Treating. Like normal, some think that it is cool, and the rest of the 700 brats think it is boring, stupid and as uninteresting as me. I actually had a student tell me to my face that he didn’t think I was interesting. How wonderful is it to hear that?

For the good students, I bought some Milk Candy. It’s pretty cheap and good if I must say so myself. I find myself sticking my hand in the bag to nick a piece a bit to often. It’s all going to my hips. I can feel it.

The fun part about teaching Halloween is that I get to scare the living heebie jeebies out of my students and feel justified doing it. When I tell them about haunted houses, I tell them that they are scary and then pick a random bored student who looks like he or she is sleeping and then scream SCARY in the ear while slamming my hands on their desk. Even the boys look like they are about to faint sometimes. The girls look like they might cry. And that really, really, makes my day a good day. I’m evil. I know. But you’d be evil too if you had to put up with their crap.

I do have a few good students, but not enough. I actually had a few of them call me Miss Cook last week and today one called me by my Chinese name – Zi Wei. I rarely hear Gabe. Mostly it is just Teacher! Teacher! I should start screaming Student! Student! and see how they like it.

But anyway, Happy Halloween. Hope some of you got my share of candy because I will be waiting patiently to get it when I finally come home in about 8 or so months – if China will let me leave that is . . .

Oh, and will someone eat a piece of Pumpkin Pie for me. I have been thinking about it all week. Nangua is Chinese for pumpkin, by-the-way. Some of Phil students gave him one. He needs to carve it soon before it starts to rot and we have to throw it out. Anyone have a funny suggestion on what to carve into it?

Post you ideas in the comment section, and if Phil likes your suggestion – I will post a picture of it after he is done.

I had hoped that a week long vacation would have some how cured my little devils of their rotten behavior. After my first class this morning, I realized that a 10 month vacation couldn’t have helped these children. No matter how much things change, some things always remain the same I guess. My kids are and will always be …

LITTLE DEVILS

To give you a taste of their devil behavior, I will tell you a little story. I met with two teachers today that had previously taught at Yong Xing Middle School. I am still trying to figure out why they came back for a visit. Apparently, they had a good experience which baffles me more than the fact that they came back to say hi to the staff. But anyway, what one of the teachers told me was this – One day while teaching, he thought he smelled some smoke. At first, he didn’t think anything of it, but soon it was more than obvious that the smoke was indeed coming from his classroom. A student had found some random matches in the room and thought it would be fun to light a fire, so he did. The guy said the trouble maker had the biggest smile on his face when he approached him. He picked the kid up and moved him away from the fire and then beat the fire out. I think these kids need a taste of Battle Royal. That should cure them. Or make them worse. I don’t know which.

The kids were so bad today for a fellow teacher of mine that she just walked out when she couldn’t get them to behave, listen, or remain quiet. I am pretty sure that those students are going to get chewed out for their behavior. And because she walked out, I am sure that the Chinese teachers are now starting to see the wretchedness of their students. I had Bella, the teacher in charge of helping us out, asking me which classes were the worst and I had a hard time picking just a few. The truth is that they are all about the same. Each class usually has one or two students that care and maybe one student that is way smarter than his classmates, but the others are just horrible, rotten, little devils. Maybe by the time I leave they will all be wearing halos and white robes. One can only hope. Heh.

My lovely classroom.

This is where I teach all my precious little devils how to speak and understand English. The room in the picutre is neat only because I had just straighted it back up. I try very hard to keep the desk in pairs. I like to walk around the classroom and it helps keep them from talking more than they already do. Besides the chalk board that is behind me – there is nothing in the room but the student’s desks and chairs. It is a rather dirty, dull room. At least I have a “view” being on the 5th floor.

This is the view from my classroom window. That massive building you see on the other side of the track is the Primary School. It is about 7 floors and they have an elevator. Lucky bastards.

I like to watch all the little kids running around outside. They look like little ants and have so much energy. I don’t know how I would handle teaching them. Although my kids are devils, I think I have the easiest platform. Note the blue sky. Blue skies here are rare.

This is the courtyard or the center of the school. The picture only shows half of it, but the other side is identical. One day I saw a kid get pushed into the bushes. The bushes swallowed him and I laughed. The kids here are either A) very affectionate or B) ultra-violent. There is no in-between.

I got bored going home one day and decided to take a picture of myself in the stairwell. I thought I was the only one there, but as I went to go snap the picture – the kid took off running down the hall. It is a weird picture, but I thought it was sorta cool.

Ah. Look at them. Preparing for battle . . . Heh, that would be funny if they were, but no such luck. Every morning the kids have to participate in excerises. It is a pretty long routine, but they remember every little movement they have to do. They don’t like it at all and it is all done half-heartidly. The sad part is that my camera could only capture half of the student body. The population of the school could easily beat that of any school back in the States. It is amazing how many people there are here.

Fu yang Yong Xing School(Foo Young Yong Shing) – A private school filled to the brim with pesky little devils. That is what it should translate into, but no school would admit to such a thing. And if anyone ever asks me what Yong Xing means – that is exactly what I am going to tell them because the world deserves to know the truth.

The day before I taught, I imagined eager, but shy students to stand up and say “Good Morning Good Teacher” along with all the other niceties one would come to expect from such a so-called strict nation. I pictured a quiet class, one that would listen to me and raise their hands to answer questions. I thought that they might know some basic English, if not a little more. I imagined a lot of things. I wanted to believe that Chinese students were what every American teacher dreamed of teaching.

I could not have been more wrong.

I expected a lot a things to happen here in China, but I did not expect to find insane, rude, pesky, loud, annoying, fighting, little devil students in my classroom. More or less, everything I have ever been told or read went out the window the very first day I taught. I had a very serious O.M.G moment. But I kept my cool and tried to teach the helpless buggers anyway.

During my first week, I taught each of my 20 classes(I only teach each student one time a week) about me. I wrote the word introduction up on the board and then proceeded to tell them all the things about yours truly. I told them where I was from and all that jazz. I talked about things I liked to do – where I took a small moment to scare the crap out of them by acting out what kind of books Stephen King wrote. I would sneak quietly up to their desks and say, “Stephen King writes SCARY(insert slapping my hands down on their desk very, very loudly) books!” I almost made them all faint. The girls took it the worse, but I saw some boys trying to catch their breath as well. It is little pleasures like this that will help me get through the next 9 months. I know, I know, I’m evil – but you have to have some kind of fun into the classroom. I did a similar thing with the word crazy. When they couldn’t tell me what it meant – I would promptly throw my hands in the air and start screaming, “CRAZY, CRAZY, I’M CRAZY!!” That made them all want to faint again. At least I kept them on the edge of their seat that one day.

Anyways, I told them about my family and how many brothers and sisters I have. They couldn’t believe I had 5 siblings. Here in China, they practice the one child policy. I understand why they are doing it, but it is still a little sad. In the end, I had them get up and introduce themselves to me. All they had to do was read what I wrote on the board and fill in the blanks. The read very well, although all the answers were very similar. Copy cats.

This all in all sounds wonderful to you and it almost sounds wonderful to me the way I wrote it, but the painful truth is that they just didn’t care. I had to beg people to answer me. No one had questions . They were loud. Sometimes they refused to stand up. I heard “I don’t know” 100 different times. I don’t know is their way of getting out of not answering and they know that. They don’t listen. If I was their Chinese teacher they would have stood and greeted me. That did not happen. The do their homework for other classes on the front row right in front of me. It is truly insane. They fight, they talk, they pass notes, throw money and about a dozen other things as though I am not there. A lot of them don’t even bring paper or pencils. I think they think that my class is a free period where they are not required to learn. The worst part about it – is that I think the school knows this and they don’t care. It is simply amazing. That is all I can really say.

This week was on Friendship and Best Friends and all that neat stuff. They were so completely uninterested. I am at a loss on how to get them to want to learn English. I have only been here two weeks, and I am about to give up on the aspect. Maybe I should stand in front of class and just say random stuff and see what happens.

They can’t even remember my Chinese name for goodness sake. Even Phil’s students know my name and they have seen me like once here and there. My students don’t remember anything either. I can make them repeat something and make them tell me what it is – but if you ask them the same question 5 minutes later – they have no idea what you are talking about.

I’ve told some of the bad students that I would eat their souls for breakfast and that I throw bad students out the window and that I even burn homework from another class that is done and my class. I think I may burn the next homework I see someone doing while I am teaching.

Sorry for such the down post – but I hadn’t had the chance to talk about it much on the blog. I have more pictures of the school, but like normal – I can only post one at a time here at school for some strange reason.

Phil and I are going to Hangzhou this weekend to get a train ticket to Shanghai during the first week of October – National Day it is called. It is a holiday for just about everyone. I will be looking forward to going. There is a lot to see in Shanghai. One of the first places I am going to will be a Subway(the restaurant) and eat be a sub sandwich. It has been so long since I have had one.

Who ever it was that told me that Chinese food is good and filling lied. I hate you. And I mean that it the most loving way possible.

No, I am not dead, although I really did feel like it.

Phil was ever so kind to take this picture of me when I zonked out last Friday night after my first week of teaching. 20 classes at 40 minutes each doesn’t sound like a whole lot, and in a perfect world it isn’t, but when you are teaching little devils, those 20 classes feel like 2 years.

And the good news is . . . I get to begin those two years all over again tomorrow. Yea, for me, I guess.

This week I am teaching the little brats about friendship and best friends. Maybe they will be so into it that they will be hanging on every word that comes out of my mouth. Maybe they will actually ask me questions and want to participate and pay attention. Maybe they will actually stop talking in Chinese the entire class and become fluent in English. Ha. I’m allowed to dream, aren’t I? I’ll faint if just the boys behave themselves.

Guess this is enough for now. I will continue to post pictures over the next few days. I have a lot of them.

Until then.

Zaijian.

There has been a change of plans. Phil and I are no longer going to the coastal city of Taizhou to teach English. And I am sorta glad because there is a pretty nasty typhoon named Saomai inching its way toward Taizhou and some other coastal cities as I write this. At last check, under our standards, it was a catergory 5. Eeek! At least now we will be a little more inland and won’t be completely drowned when and if a Typhoon comes are way. We have been relocated to Fuyang, a suburb of Hangzhou, the capital of the Zhejiang Province. Although, there is a river that runs right by Fuyang, and I imagine if it rains a whole lot – I may end up floating home. Let’s hope that doesn’t happen. Cause that would be bad. I guess the threat of Malaria is the same. Damn mosquitoes. They are every where! The school that we will be teaching at has an elementary, middle, and high school. We won’t find out what grade level we will be teaching until we get there. I am sorta hoping for the younger kids. Who knows though, they may be the worst of the bunch, but I guess one way or another, we will find out. The name of the school is Fuyang High School Zhejiang (浙江富阳中学), and if you want you can go to their website and try to figure out what all the Chinese characters mean, be my guest. You can also go to www.altavista.com and have it translated, but it doesn’t do that great of a job. I am not a 100% sure that it is right, but I think this may be our school’s website – www.fyms.net I guess I will find out for sure once we get there. Well, that is all I really know at the present. As I learn more things about where I am going – I will post the information. And once I get there – there will be pictures galore!!