Quick update

I have no idea how to do this as well as Laura does it.
Anyway, there were some interesting transformations. Over the weekend two people went from friends to family members. In five minutes we saw the weather go from a hot summer night (march here feels like summer to my northern conditioning) to monsoon in about five minutes as students ran screaming for cover and some guy in the apartment across from me (at least that's where he sounded like he was) screamed loudest of all; and finally, I went from healthy to really sick.
And then there are little moments of watching my own transformation in several different ways, like how I grow increasingly confident to go out and do things like shopping by myself, when it's scary to do in America, and how I am getting better at saying what I feel in order to deal with people. I want to hope I'm also becoming a better teacher. At least I am more and more aware of the ways I can improve.

Good Shepherd or Cougar? Which was I?

Once again, I was very concerned with the way things look. On yet another level, I was very concerned with my own motivations. What did various Chinese people--including my students--think when they saw me crossing the street with my two biggest trouble-making students from my uncontrollable class? We were heading for where one of them lived, apparently the all-male dorm located outside the school. The extra level of intensity came from the confusion over everything my students said, or rather my difficulty understanding what they said. First thought we were going to go back to one's apartment and the other one was going to cook for us. I didn't know how to tactfully talk my way out of that, or how I would absolutely avoid being alone with either of them (or how I could avoid otherwise looking like a molester or just a really unethical teacher.)

I think my students were also confused about what to do, probably from the dynamic of not being able to refuse a teacher, but also having to follow the other rules of propriety I was breaking. But I was doing the right thing, as far as I know. I had a burden to change the way I think about my students, and to care about their well-being and their stories.

So we ended up eating in the cafeteria of the all-male dorms. The most interesting part was trying to explain to them what I do before I eat. The conversation didn't get very far or very deep because I realized in the midst of it that I am inept at conversation even with my team mates. The goals in the back of my head included showing that I care about them and wanting to know why they are the way they are—so I asked some possibly over-invasive questions about their families. Then I asked about how they became friends. One of them apparently has very bad health, which has left him very thin. Early in the school year he had to call the other, who is the class monitor, to ask for leave once when he was sick. Not only did he give him leave, but he also sent him a message telling him to take better care of himself. That was the start of their unbelievable closeness—so close that during a harsh winter they shared a pair of gloves and one lent the other a coat, and their dream is to start a business together. It reminded me of at least two things about Chinese relationships: 1) Men are really close and express their love for each other in ways like sharing clothes or hugging and being so close that they are practically spooning in public, which in my country would be labeled something like “flaming.” (And these boys are not, in spite of the fact that one of them wears a dangly rhinestone earing and a girl's coat and has kissed another boy in class—it was a joke at my expense—or the fact the other one carries a pink purse in which he keeps his diary. In China the clothes don't make the man.)

2) Scolding and criticism is a love language, a really meaningful one. It's one of the hardest things for me to keep in mind that I shouldn't be so unsulted when my students say, "You should take care yourself, teacher," whenever a student sees my very old but still visible burns from cooking, or , "be careful! Take care yourself!" when I bash my head on the low hanging TV monitor in my classroom. My thought tends to be that the intense pain and the unsightly scars made it pretty clear that making contact with that object was a bad idea and I certainly intend to make efforts to avoid it in the future. Stating something so obvious just makes me feel like someone's calling me an idiot. But their view seems to be that scolding each other (makes me feel like a slow child) they seem to be showing that they care.

My point was that I wanted to be a good shepherd, seeking out the ones that would be easy to let slip through the cracks because they are so bad. I hope I can send that message with all of my students, though these two seem extra special

Touched by a Tailor: what happens when you buy a suit in China.

If the hairstylists can't meet my need for appropriate physical touch, I just need to get a bunch of suits made. So, yeah. My reasoning is that since I'm going back to America for a while, I'm going to need some professional looking clothes to wear every day. My current wardrobe is well into the business casual zone and doesn't do much to prevent me from being mistaken for a student. There's also the strong ulterior motive of really wanting a nice purple shirt, since they are severely in vogue right now. I've been holding off in having a suit made because hope springs eternal of continuing to lose weight. But, well, today I gave up. I went with my friend to have a suit made, hoping I would have enough money. Never having clothes custom made by someone else (I've made my own clothes long ago) I didn't know how much it would cost. Not too much, it turned out. 180 kuai, which, if the dollor holds out, less than 30 bucks.

But who cares? Wouldn't you rather hear about the awkward invasion of space part? Well, let me tell you that these professional people-touchers like hairdressers and tailors manage to minimize the awkwardness. The most interesting thing about Chinese tailors is that they use inches, not centimeters. I don't know why, but it means that I got to find out the circumference of my waist, hips, thigh, ribcage and chest. He read some of the numbers in astonishment. I rely more on predicting how people react to figure out what they are saying. I think his measuring efforts were somehow thwarted by my muffin-top. (Or as I like to call it, mantou top, since the color and consistency of my skin bears and amazing resemblance to Chinese steamed buns) So yeah, he had to touch my mantou skin. When the dude was measuring my waist, my train of thought was something like “Eh, hands up my shirt, eh? Not surprised. That was really quick.” Like I said, professional, like a clammy little machine.

The best thing about this place was it's location, actually. It's in the vegetable market near the hospital, so after the frisking, I went and bought some vegetables. Then walked home. What can I say? I love China. One of my love languages is physical touch. Do vegetables and walking count as love languages? I like those, too. Overall, a great day.

The Win as Much as You Can Game and my Frustrating Students

I have to admit that teaching, even though it is my favorite job, is very frustrating at times. Sometimes it's frustrating all the time. And the reason it is frustrating is because I tend to believe based on what my students say and do, that they are becoming more and more used to the assumption that the purpose of my class is for their entertainment rather than for their education. It occurs to me that I really don't like being laughed at, but I also don't like being serious, especially when it's this nice outside and the spring energy seeps into everyone and makes them (and especially me) want to be silly.

This combination of being sensitive to feeling ridiculed and being incredibly funny looking in a country where foreigners aren't quite considered human but instead are seen as amusing decoration—doesn't go well with my love of instructing through simulations. For some reason I really love simulators. Last week I ran my students through the lifeboat simulator. Next week I intend to run them through the Win-as-much-as-you-can simulator. The hardest part, by far, it getting the little hooligans to speak English. I'll have to put a lot of rules in place to enforce.

So my biggest fear after some six months of probably being a horribly unprofessional but really comically gifted teacher (I don't even have to try to be funny; they see me and they laugh.) is that they won't learn, that they haven't learned a thing because they think it's all a sideshow. That they won't appreciate the meanings of the simulators because they will be intent on having fun and not learning.

As I expected

I had a feeling something significant was going to happen today, and I had a foreboding feeling about the call I was supposed to get from my program supervisor.
So I had a feeling it was going to be about my intent to transfer and come back to China next year. Then of course I had the feeling that something was going to be wrong. So as the conversation happened, I wasn't surprised.
My tendency when I get something I don't expect or want is to announce it with all of the face-saving remarks I can. And by saving face I mean ensuring other people that I understand everything and it's not necessary for anyone to try to say anything about it. Because if anyone feels they have to explain anything to me, or if there's any important justifying detail that hasn't occurred to me, then I have failed.
So my descriptions of what I now know are going to be something like, "I'm not recommended to transfer...I wasn't surprised by any of it. I don't dispute any of it. I was expecting this to happen...I was worried about this happening...I figured this would happen...there are advantages to this happening...I'm not upset..." or whatever it takes to clarify that advice, consolation and explanation isn't necessary, but only listening and acknowledgment.

Going Skating with Students

Haven't you found that everyday life endangering activities--such as skating, eating hot pot or crossing the street--are rendered exponentially more intense when done with a camera in your hands?
That's what I thought when I went skating with some other teachers and some students today. I myself didn't have a camera, but I saw Shannon with her camera, capturing some truly priceless moments when various people fell down. I was empathetic in concern for her safety. When carrying technology such as Carlo (my computer,) Jaylen (my camera) or--when near water--even Carol (my phone) I find I am much more careful and nervous, because then I actually have something on board whose safely and well-being I actually want to protect.

Here's today's devotional insight. I was skating with a very scared student who had never skated before. The thing about bringing Nationals along is that about half of them have never skated or skated mostly as children. So it's really hard to teach them. However, I was really happy for all the times I skated while holding a frightened student.
So there were two insights I gained from Kate, actually
1) you can't skate the same way you walk. I think she had a lot of difficulty because she was trying to walk with wheels on, which didn't work. It occurred to me that I have to see that mentality in a lot of things, like speaking and living. You can't try to speak a knew language using the same sounds of your native language. You can't live in a new country like this one they way you live in your home country. I knew that already, but now I had a new analogy. Even though skating looks like walking, the friction that drives it is different, the angles of motion are different and even posture is different.
2) I learned how to skate backwards only while helping Kate to skate forwards. For a few weeks I have resented my failure to learn how to skate backwards. I have practiced out on the streets and always failed to keep it up, but today I figured it out. I want to attribute the sudden change to its necessity to helping someone else. I wanted to be face to face with my student, so I had to move backwards and eventually I got the hang of it. This goes along with a lot of things I believe about serving others. In many circumstances I have found that I get really stuck when other people focus intensely on me and my problems. But when I am giving an opportunity to serve someone else's needs, my own problems rapidly develop solutions. So there you have it, another advantage of helping others.

Why I love teaching

Here's something that I hope will be encouraging. For the first time in my life, I do a job that I'm told I do well, and that I look forward to doing. Probably anyone I've talked to in the past few months knows that I invariably end up steering conversations on the direction of talking about either how much I love my students or what I want to teach them in next week's lesson, or today's class went.

Like all jobs, there are moments I don't look forward to teaching my students, especially when I deal with the bad ones, but once I get to class, there are such shining moments when I'm just sickeningly happy to be doing this every day.
And what I hope for most is that it will make a difference in their lives. Today I taught them about goal setting and critical thinking. One of them asked me what my goal was in coming here. I said, well I wanted to make a difference in the world, and they are among the group of people that is going to make the biggest impact in the world in the next few decades, as the educated members of a fast growing country.

My Dancers

So whenever I go to my office to start working, I tend to hear hip-hop coming down the hall. That's because every day there are some very devoted hip-hop dancers practicing in the dance room two or three rooms away from my office.
They don't speak English, as far I can tell, but they all seem to wear purple. This one--I dub him pockets because his seem to be deliberately turned-out--is upside down almost constantly.

And then there is this guy. He's my ambassador to the dancers. He was in a performance with some of my students and he tried to teach me the sideways moonwalk. He also started teaching me "popping," as he calls it. I just learned his name today.

Shannon's IV drip

If you don't know my team mate Shannon, it's because I spent too much time talking about myself. I may have said that my team has had rampant ailments of all kinds, especially finger and toe injuries. Some of us have had chilblains, ingrown toenails, burns, cuts and one electrocution (ok, it was Shannon, but it wasn't her fault.) In addition to digital maladies(digital means fingers and toes, heh), there have been a few food poisonings and joint pains. Shannon is—at the very least—a contender for most medical issues of any teacher in our program. The latest chapter in her legacy has been a persistent cough and an overall condition that may or may not be pneumonia (That's the last I heard and I haven't followed the health news with much diligence.) but anyway, today I went with Shannon on her seventh trip to the clinic to deal with her cough. Around here, the catch-all solution to every illness seems to be IV drips. I didn't realize that it was going to be a drip. I thought it was an injection, but the pharmacy gave her an IV chord and two bottles of perfectly translucent liquid—hefty ones. So as of the writing of this, Shannon is on round one of the clear bottles. So it looks like she's getting an emergency shot of cream soda, like really flat cream soda.