A Few Pictures

One of the things I wasn't expecting when I came to China was Wushui, the Chinese version of the siesta. People just kinda stop what they're doing and konk out after lunch if that's what they feel like doing. My school even gave me keys to conference room and told me pull together four chairs for a makeshift bed. Most people just doze out wherever their work station is.

These next pictures are of the morning calisthenics the kids do every morning at 9:45. The high school kids run out to the game field, universally known as a playground here, while middle and high school all stand in front of their classrooms. It's kind of a choreographed dance move with aerobic tendencies set to a delightfully creepy McDisney song holding it together. It was all in tight formation when I first started, then the kids got sloppy. There were two weeks of intensive re-education where the teachers would have the class practice during the 10-minute breaks until they got it right. It's starting to get a little sloppy again...








There really is no sense of "wait, that's mine" with kids. They love walking off with or hiding my bag, peering into my tea thermos, wearing my sweater, or looking through my schedule book. I habitually find some student grabbing at my arm hair because they've never seen it before. I even had a third grade class whose latest inside joke was to poke their fingers at each others butts in "no no" spots. I was the special guest for the encore of yesterdays show. A new shiny phone was just to awesome a thing to not pass around. Thus, they photographed your humble narrator. Four hours later almost all the hair got whacked off. Again.

Arrgghhh

Shenzhen is the "bastard child" of my company. I was told that when I first got here. The branch has been open for years, but it seems like it just opened yesterday. I like all my supervisors, but I think it's something about the collective whole that's flawed.

Next week every teacher is off for National Day. A few of us were planning to hit up Guilin, the city famous for the gumdrop mountains and beautiful misty lakes. I was gung ho. I've been working 28 classes weekly [part of why my posting has slowed - I'm tired], which is 13 more than the average Chinese teacher does. I've been racking in the overtime covering for the girls who quit. That's, at minimum, 840 students.

On top of just discovering yesterday I'm supposed to do 32 classes this week, I just found out I need to go to Hong Kong on Tuesday. My visa expires on the third and they've waited - as always - until the very last minute to do anything. I wasn't even working my first two weeks in Shenzhen. I pestered them constantly about doing it then so they wouldn't wait to do during National Day week. There's no one person to blame, of curse, it was a collective failure.

This isn't some barometer of my overall feelings of teaching here, but this particular incident really, really makes me angry. I don't mind putting in the hours, I do mind of being deprived my travel plans because of incompetence.



I leave you with a photo from the side of a preschool in the alleyways around my neighborhood. I think it says something about my mindset teaching those little devils tomorrow and now Saturday too.