It's been ridiculously long since my last blog post. I'll just summarize what's been going on.
First of all, teaching has been extra challenging this semester. Last semester was certainly difficult, but I felt like I was simply getting used to things and getting comfortable with the idea that I am teaching. this semester I alsways want things to go pretty well and it's a little more upsetting when they don't. That being said I've had some of my better students give me complements recently on my class, and we've been told that us foreign teachers get a much higher level of attention and interest than their professors.
Here's the rundown of how it's going.
First of all, I've been lazy about the sophomore class. Father Jim Teaches the other 6 sections of the Bible class and I've been following his lead on what we do in class. While he commands a great deal of respect as an older, well-educated, chinese speaking foreign teacher. I really can't get away with his lecture heavy teaching style as a young foreigner. The students are totally uninterested in reading the text of the Bible (though they're remarkably good at understanding it). So I'm going to shift the class toward more oral English and include certain bible stories as for reading and discussion
I'll give a bit more context before I get to my junior lit. class, I may have discussed much of this already but it bears repeating. A Chinese University (outside of top universities) is a bit more like High School in the U.S. Students do not choose their classes--many do not choose their major. They have around 10 courses per semester. There are lots of mandatory meetings and even mandatory study halls. In terms of their lives as well it's their first taste of freedom. Up until college, the students would go to school until 6 p.m. or later.
Also students pass college. It's very difficult in China not to. If you fail, you retake the exam. If a student gets into college, they generally get out with a degree. (Though one of my students managed to leave, after not attending class for 3 semesters.) As a side note, last semester my grades were taken and made into ten 90s, ten 70s and about one hundred and sixty 80s.
In my Junior class the story has been interesting. Having ceased to take attendance all of the time, I've kind of let some of the completely uninterested and ready to nap ones stay home more often. Of the ones who do still come, it feels like a much better proportion of the class is interested and it has a positive effect on the energy of the class. There are still a good number of students who do homework in the back but I tend to let them and teach the interested ones. I don't know that this is the correct course of action but I don't want to fight college students. The classes seem to go pretty well that way, and the students who stay with me seem to be more into it.
Anyway that's what's been going on now. I've been thinking mostly about my Job, as well as about the end of the year which is coming surprisingly fast!
Sunday, May 4, 2008
Sunday, February 17, 2008
A few hours in Burma
(Most of this was written in the evening after I arrived back from Burma, but I didn't get a chance to finish and post until now)
I headed over to Burma for a few hours today to look around and re-enter thailand for a new visa. I had read that travellers to burma tend to have a bit more of an intense experience of "Old Asia" (whatever that is) though obviously that ambience is not present for entirely good reasons.
The boat ride involved two immigration offices, both thai and burmese, that were out over the water. It was pretty cool to pull up to immigration on a longtail boat--though it was pretty scary to hand my passport to one of the small children who help on the longtails and watch him skitter across the crowd of boats with it and into the office for my stamp. Arriving in Burma my bags were immediately checked (for drugs I think, there was a big sign about narcotics nearby) and we were stamped both in and out, but permitted to hang around for a few hours.
We were followed by three boys who wanted to guide us and identified themselves as "tsunami boys" but they left us after they realized we were following none of their directions as to what to go. We attempted to get food, but it seemed that all that was available early in the day were various cakes to go with tea. I tried a couple funky semi-dry fruit cakes, and Joel (a guy I met) found some chicken filled bao zi (steamed bread). Communication was exceedingly difficult as we pretty much had nothing but pointing to go on.
After we had gotten out food in the little restaurant a man who identified himself as a physicist and former translator came over and talked to us. The man went on and on about the relative prosperity of North America which could well have been an instance of the subtle hinting at discontent that I've heard of from other tourists who have visited the country.
Given that it was a few hours I don't really have any overall themes to go on, just a few quick impressions. Obviously, Burma was much poorer than Thailand. There was a great deal of trash everywhere including a market that was basically a boardwalk over a small nasty dump. I saw a guy sorting his lettuce on the garbage which was kind of appalling, I insisted he sort my salad on the walkway (no, I didn't actually buy lettuce there). Most of what was being sold/handled in the area was food which was rendered entirely unnappealing by the setting.
There were also a lot of rickety boardwalks over the ocean (really it's an estuary area). Which were pretty cool and there was a smal fishing dock full of cool looking boats.
One of the final things we saw was both sad and little creepy. A shop had a stuffed tiger (which was not entirely preserved, it was decaying in a number of places) with its mouth stuffed with money. Some stuffed (again still decaying) monkeys sat on a shelf and all sorts of teeth bones and a skull or two were on a tarp spilling onto the front step. The woman wouldn't let us take pictures but I snapped a dim one before she came in and tried to sell us what I believe were tiger teeth as she pointed to the tiger we were gaping at before pulling out the bag of them.
That was about it for what we saw in Burma. I'll get to more updates soon.
I headed over to Burma for a few hours today to look around and re-enter thailand for a new visa. I had read that travellers to burma tend to have a bit more of an intense experience of "Old Asia" (whatever that is) though obviously that ambience is not present for entirely good reasons.
The boat ride involved two immigration offices, both thai and burmese, that were out over the water. It was pretty cool to pull up to immigration on a longtail boat--though it was pretty scary to hand my passport to one of the small children who help on the longtails and watch him skitter across the crowd of boats with it and into the office for my stamp. Arriving in Burma my bags were immediately checked (for drugs I think, there was a big sign about narcotics nearby) and we were stamped both in and out, but permitted to hang around for a few hours.
We were followed by three boys who wanted to guide us and identified themselves as "tsunami boys" but they left us after they realized we were following none of their directions as to what to go. We attempted to get food, but it seemed that all that was available early in the day were various cakes to go with tea. I tried a couple funky semi-dry fruit cakes, and Joel (a guy I met) found some chicken filled bao zi (steamed bread). Communication was exceedingly difficult as we pretty much had nothing but pointing to go on.
After we had gotten out food in the little restaurant a man who identified himself as a physicist and former translator came over and talked to us. The man went on and on about the relative prosperity of North America which could well have been an instance of the subtle hinting at discontent that I've heard of from other tourists who have visited the country.
Given that it was a few hours I don't really have any overall themes to go on, just a few quick impressions. Obviously, Burma was much poorer than Thailand. There was a great deal of trash everywhere including a market that was basically a boardwalk over a small nasty dump. I saw a guy sorting his lettuce on the garbage which was kind of appalling, I insisted he sort my salad on the walkway (no, I didn't actually buy lettuce there). Most of what was being sold/handled in the area was food which was rendered entirely unnappealing by the setting.
There were also a lot of rickety boardwalks over the ocean (really it's an estuary area). Which were pretty cool and there was a smal fishing dock full of cool looking boats.
One of the final things we saw was both sad and little creepy. A shop had a stuffed tiger (which was not entirely preserved, it was decaying in a number of places) with its mouth stuffed with money. Some stuffed (again still decaying) monkeys sat on a shelf and all sorts of teeth bones and a skull or two were on a tarp spilling onto the front step. The woman wouldn't let us take pictures but I snapped a dim one before she came in and tried to sell us what I believe were tiger teeth as she pointed to the tiger we were gaping at before pulling out the bag of them.
That was about it for what we saw in Burma. I'll get to more updates soon.
Saturday, January 26, 2008
The catch up post
It's been way too long since I've written and I've had some complaints from dissatisfied customers. Forgive the continued lack of pictures, the photo tour is pending! It's also a long one here those of you who were with me during the adventures forgive me if I left anything out (James).
So to fill in:
After returning from HKG I finished up with exams and grades before heading north the the even colder city of Harbin for their famous ice festival. It's kind of the thing to see if you're crazy enough to want to be in Northern China for the wintertime. Harbin is a city with a heck of a lot of Russian architecture and had a pretty cool feel about it. As far as the festival itself. I've made a short video about the trip, the release is pending. Also in Harbin I met up with a former Jr. Billiken (and former student of my dad's), Josh, who was a really good guy and shared a lot of interesting China info with us.
After Harbin we returned to Jilin to pack and check out with our bosses. I found out that next semester I'm teaching five sections of American lit and one of Biblical lit/Greek Mythology.
I then began the epic journey southward through China with James, his mother, and Jenny.
The first stop on the journey was Beijing. I have to say even though I was cold Beijing was sweet even the third time around. I repeated the Forbidden City, wandered many of the alleyways and saw a new section of the Great Wall. We met up with Tom , (a St. John's friend who was a fellow study-abroader) for dinner and beers. (If you know Tom, you know we had a great time.)
As a sidebar, James' friend Letizia arrived in to join us in Beijing just after James' mother had left for the states again. Letizia succeeded at not getting lost in Beijing but rather being right across the street from us without either party finding the other before she gave up and headed back to the guesthouse where James found her while Tom, Jenny and I nearly had some belligerents fall into us in Beijing's bars and drank the worst beer any of us have found in this country (so incredibly bad it was almost an interesting experience, I managed three sips, the most of anyone).
After Beijing we continued south to Shanghai which was not in the initial plan but it was the closest we could get to Hangzhou as Hangzhou itself was sold out. Shanghai was nice, at least for seeing for a couple of days. We had a great time walking around seeing old town and the needle tower thingy. ("Thingy" is actually a quite fitting word for it.)
Hangzhou wasn't too great due to the cold. The main attraction of Hangzhou is the lake with the surrounding gardens and sights. We basically were just chilly and imagined how nice the place could maybe be in the summertime.
Speaking of cold the whole country was freezing. The next leg of our trip, to Huang Shan (China's "most beautiful" mountain) was cancelled due to snow, no busses were heading into Anhui province from Hangzhou. It was a good thing too, those who had made it to the mountain pror to that ended up stranded at the top for a number of hours. We might have been there with them would have been with them were it not for the unplanned days in Shanghai.
Our detour took us to Yangshuo via an "18 hour" bus ride that turned into 33 hours. At that point I dropped the idea that I'd visit Hong Kong again before Thailand and we all relaxed for a few days in Yangshuo.
I had been to Yangshuo on study abroad but I'm pretty sure visiting will never get old. James fittingly noted its similarity to something you might see in a Dr. Suess boook. The town is a little backpacker haven completely surrounded by the stone hills commonly seen in picturesque photos from China. It's the perfect place to relax (at least in the tourist off-season) enjoy some western-style treats and bike around among the hills and villages. The highlight of the time there was getting a bit lost on biking around with James and finding a little bit of a seemingly less-travelled area that was quite beautiful.
From Guilin (the go-point to and from Yangshuo) we caught an overnight bus to Guangzhou. The overnight was completely unpeaceful with beds that didn't fit me we had to engage in highly strategic collusion to get the driver to give us a bathroom break.
In town we met James' Aunt and Uncle from Hong Kong who own a place in a nice Guangzhou suburb. We kicked around the suburb chatting for a few hours stopping to eat some fascinating medicinal foods.
That very afternoon I bussed over to Shenzhen airport (it took about 3 hours total) To catch a flight out to Bangkok. After a long wait in the airport I climbed on board the plane completely exhausted where i passed out and got a solid but utterly insufficient 2 hours of sleep.
So I arrived in Bangkok completely unprepared, unrested, and unbraced for the chaos. I found a bed to crash in for 10 bucks along Khao San road (it's total carnival there from lunch through 5 a.m.) and got another few hours of sleep before waking up to random noises.
To be honest I hated my first day in Bangkok. There is no relaxation to be had there for the budget traveller and I was completely exhausted after the few hours of sleep I'd collected over the past couple of days. Anyway, Bangkok grew on me--I didn't flee immediately like I first wanted. Travelling the canal thereis pretty nice, and Chinatown Bangkok is quite the sensory experience.
Needless to say the food here is amazing, though I think I'm suffering from the infamous "Bankok belly" that results from being unnaccostomed to certain ever-present ingredients in the food. But every meal is basically excellent and I do loads of noodles, though I haven't sought out enough great curries yet.
Leaving Bangkok by train, I had the spiciest thing I've ever eaten for lunch on board with the railway police. It was a salad to which I added afew noodles. It tasted like nothing but heat to me and everyone just smiled and chuckled at me sweating and tearing up.
Arriving in Ayuthaya I had to smile. Finally things are a lot slower paced, and nights are quiet. My guest house is a nice change from the semi-secure cramped cell that was a rather poor haven from the madness down the steps in Bangkok.
That pretty much brings me to today. I had a good time seeing some ruins around town. They sure were ruined, but still quite cool. Early in the day though I randomly ran into a fellow Maryknoller, Scott. We hung out for a couple of ruins, lunch, and met up again for dinner after I went to fill in on 2 of the top ruins which he had already done.
The only worry here in Ayuthaya is aggressive dogs. I've had a couple of good sprints already though I recently learned the official dog-recognized "I'm throwing a rock at you" motion which seems to work a lot better.
Anyway tomorrow I'll hit a couple of last sights before heading up to Lopburi which apparently has impressive ruins ruled over by monkeys which rival Ayuthaya's dogs (though they're probably nothing compared to HKG's "naughty little monkeys"). I'll try not to get my camera stolen by them.
Anyway it's been alot of writing so I'm going to quit and post this thing. I'll try to update more often as I'm on the internet a lot in the evening, I'm not into doing much nightlife while travelling alone.
The photos of Haerbin through the present are coming! I've actually been taking less in Thailand because I'm a bit more language-shy here (still don't know "can I take a picture" or something like that in Thai) and less familiar with the norms on photos.
So to fill in:
After returning from HKG I finished up with exams and grades before heading north the the even colder city of Harbin for their famous ice festival. It's kind of the thing to see if you're crazy enough to want to be in Northern China for the wintertime. Harbin is a city with a heck of a lot of Russian architecture and had a pretty cool feel about it. As far as the festival itself. I've made a short video about the trip, the release is pending. Also in Harbin I met up with a former Jr. Billiken (and former student of my dad's), Josh, who was a really good guy and shared a lot of interesting China info with us.
After Harbin we returned to Jilin to pack and check out with our bosses. I found out that next semester I'm teaching five sections of American lit and one of Biblical lit/Greek Mythology.
I then began the epic journey southward through China with James, his mother, and Jenny.
The first stop on the journey was Beijing. I have to say even though I was cold Beijing was sweet even the third time around. I repeated the Forbidden City, wandered many of the alleyways and saw a new section of the Great Wall. We met up with Tom , (a St. John's friend who was a fellow study-abroader) for dinner and beers. (If you know Tom, you know we had a great time.)
As a sidebar, James' friend Letizia arrived in to join us in Beijing just after James' mother had left for the states again. Letizia succeeded at not getting lost in Beijing but rather being right across the street from us without either party finding the other before she gave up and headed back to the guesthouse where James found her while Tom, Jenny and I nearly had some belligerents fall into us in Beijing's bars and drank the worst beer any of us have found in this country (so incredibly bad it was almost an interesting experience, I managed three sips, the most of anyone).
After Beijing we continued south to Shanghai which was not in the initial plan but it was the closest we could get to Hangzhou as Hangzhou itself was sold out. Shanghai was nice, at least for seeing for a couple of days. We had a great time walking around seeing old town and the needle tower thingy. ("Thingy" is actually a quite fitting word for it.)
Hangzhou wasn't too great due to the cold. The main attraction of Hangzhou is the lake with the surrounding gardens and sights. We basically were just chilly and imagined how nice the place could maybe be in the summertime.
Speaking of cold the whole country was freezing. The next leg of our trip, to Huang Shan (China's "most beautiful" mountain) was cancelled due to snow, no busses were heading into Anhui province from Hangzhou. It was a good thing too, those who had made it to the mountain pror to that ended up stranded at the top for a number of hours. We might have been there with them would have been with them were it not for the unplanned days in Shanghai.
Our detour took us to Yangshuo via an "18 hour" bus ride that turned into 33 hours. At that point I dropped the idea that I'd visit Hong Kong again before Thailand and we all relaxed for a few days in Yangshuo.
I had been to Yangshuo on study abroad but I'm pretty sure visiting will never get old. James fittingly noted its similarity to something you might see in a Dr. Suess boook. The town is a little backpacker haven completely surrounded by the stone hills commonly seen in picturesque photos from China. It's the perfect place to relax (at least in the tourist off-season) enjoy some western-style treats and bike around among the hills and villages. The highlight of the time there was getting a bit lost on biking around with James and finding a little bit of a seemingly less-travelled area that was quite beautiful.
From Guilin (the go-point to and from Yangshuo) we caught an overnight bus to Guangzhou. The overnight was completely unpeaceful with beds that didn't fit me we had to engage in highly strategic collusion to get the driver to give us a bathroom break.
In town we met James' Aunt and Uncle from Hong Kong who own a place in a nice Guangzhou suburb. We kicked around the suburb chatting for a few hours stopping to eat some fascinating medicinal foods.
That very afternoon I bussed over to Shenzhen airport (it took about 3 hours total) To catch a flight out to Bangkok. After a long wait in the airport I climbed on board the plane completely exhausted where i passed out and got a solid but utterly insufficient 2 hours of sleep.
So I arrived in Bangkok completely unprepared, unrested, and unbraced for the chaos. I found a bed to crash in for 10 bucks along Khao San road (it's total carnival there from lunch through 5 a.m.) and got another few hours of sleep before waking up to random noises.
To be honest I hated my first day in Bangkok. There is no relaxation to be had there for the budget traveller and I was completely exhausted after the few hours of sleep I'd collected over the past couple of days. Anyway, Bangkok grew on me--I didn't flee immediately like I first wanted. Travelling the canal thereis pretty nice, and Chinatown Bangkok is quite the sensory experience.
Needless to say the food here is amazing, though I think I'm suffering from the infamous "Bankok belly" that results from being unnaccostomed to certain ever-present ingredients in the food. But every meal is basically excellent and I do loads of noodles, though I haven't sought out enough great curries yet.
Leaving Bangkok by train, I had the spiciest thing I've ever eaten for lunch on board with the railway police. It was a salad to which I added afew noodles. It tasted like nothing but heat to me and everyone just smiled and chuckled at me sweating and tearing up.
Arriving in Ayuthaya I had to smile. Finally things are a lot slower paced, and nights are quiet. My guest house is a nice change from the semi-secure cramped cell that was a rather poor haven from the madness down the steps in Bangkok.
That pretty much brings me to today. I had a good time seeing some ruins around town. They sure were ruined, but still quite cool. Early in the day though I randomly ran into a fellow Maryknoller, Scott. We hung out for a couple of ruins, lunch, and met up again for dinner after I went to fill in on 2 of the top ruins which he had already done.
The only worry here in Ayuthaya is aggressive dogs. I've had a couple of good sprints already though I recently learned the official dog-recognized "I'm throwing a rock at you" motion which seems to work a lot better.
Anyway tomorrow I'll hit a couple of last sights before heading up to Lopburi which apparently has impressive ruins ruled over by monkeys which rival Ayuthaya's dogs (though they're probably nothing compared to HKG's "naughty little monkeys"). I'll try not to get my camera stolen by them.
Anyway it's been alot of writing so I'm going to quit and post this thing. I'll try to update more often as I'm on the internet a lot in the evening, I'm not into doing much nightlife while travelling alone.
The photos of Haerbin through the present are coming! I've actually been taking less in Thailand because I'm a bit more language-shy here (still don't know "can I take a picture" or something like that in Thai) and less familiar with the norms on photos.
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