I really had no idea what to expect when I accompanied my family to Hunan – but a couple of weeks later I’m a little frustrated because I’ve been here a year and a half, and I just felt as though I was seeing this country raw for the first time…that said – it was great.

I was in a one-intersection town. Five minutes walk in any direction led to fields. Every day I took a walk for a couple of hours. I’m not sure what makes me feel so happy to be around farmland – I guess when I think about it, there’s been a pattern: growing up in the Midwest, school in Terre Haute, all the drives to referee basketball matches at remote Indiana high-schools (I really miss that), my peanut farm in The Gambia (miss that too). I have discovered I really value the slower pace of life – or maybe that’s just me parroting Steinbeck/Kinsella inspired themes.

Teacher’s office in the local Middle School

The tiered farmland was great to walk around in as opposed to just admiring from the cross country trains I’ve travelled on. I enjoyed watching people tread carefully on the sod paths that rise up to partition rice fields. Various but consistently dull shades of brown and pale green covered a rolling landscape that was pockmarked with houses cut from the three acceptable models in the area. All the roads were concrete – just wide enough for two cars to pass each other – not a single one went in a straight direction. It was wonderful.

In easily the closest experience I’ve had to my time in the Peace Corps – a random wife called her husband out to check out the ‘old foreigner’ walking around in the hills - I considered walking on – then pulled a 180 to talk. Three hours and a meal later – my hosts back in the village called to see where I was – they didn’t believe that I was eating in some random house until I passed the phone off. This had nice additional benefit adding another piece of evidence to the continuing case where I’m trying to convince my homestay family that I’m not inept without their constant supervision. A couple of days later on the morning of the new year, I returned to pass out the traditional red-packet money to my new friends’ children.

九龙山

I visited the local middle school and it hit me almost immediately that if I teach next year – it should be at a place like this – where I could soak up everything that would happen. The kids, like the ones in Africa have agriculture classes and a vegetable field that they use for classes - I couldn’t help but imagine how much I would like to work in such an environment. Of course these feelings are immediately followed by strong feelings of home, responsibility, duty – but this was closer than anything I’ve seen to the type of environment I really wanted to get to.

I definitely became re-acquainted with people gawking at me, followed by them poking whoever was within reach, as hushed information persistently rippled outward that there was a foreigner in the midst. Although I am sceptical, I was told many times nobody could remember when the last foreigner had been in town.

some badminton on New Year’s Day

One experience in China that is decidedly different than in The Gambia – when I am spotted, parents here often pressure their kids to say something to the me in English. English is of course a subject on the life determining 高考 exam that waits for students at the end of Grade 12. Sometimes in these situations the pressure builds from the adults for almost a minute – and I admit I enjoy encouraging the child in Chinese have a go – the result is most often a very quiet and apprehensive “hello” from the child, which when I respond it thus consummates a conversation in English. In some cases over the week - I was told I was the first foreigner that their child had spoken to – and the climax of my response – more often than not set the kid off in squeals of delight which are really hard not to enjoy. Maybe some other time, as a sophisticated, experienced, acclimated habitant of various foreign countries, I would have been hesitant to cop to enjoying these exchanges, but they make me feel human in a way that I’ve come to appreciate.

It was really good to see firsthand that not all of this country is like Beijing and Shenzhen…

The Chinese New Year seems as good of a time as I can think of to start writing in this journal as any. I’m currently watching a dubbed James Bond with my host family’s son and two cousins in Hunan province. I’m the middle of the month long break schools get in China for the Spring Festival marking the start of the Chinese New Year. To my Western tastes – nothing about the last six days has reminded me of Spring. This is a bit of a shame since I literally haven’t felt this cold in years and am quite fond of the sensations normally associated with the end of winter. That said: I have just had most wonderful experience I’ve had in this country yet. For the first time I finally escaped urban China for more than a day.

The school I work at this year in the province of Beijing – so I technically can say I live in Beijing – but the reality is I live in one of the outlying districts. If I have a hour and things go well, I can get to Tiananmen Square. That coupled with the fact that all the people in my school take the first chance they get to get as far away as they can as soon as the weekend hits – and it makes the notion of a campus community a joke. As a result I spend the weekends with a Chinese family that I made a connection with back when I took a summer Chinese course at Beijing Language and Culture University. They live right across the street from a Beijing Subway station and in exchange for speaking English with their son, I live with them whenever school is not in.

They had subsequently invited me to accompany them back to Hunan for the New Year – only to have that trip be canceled due to the abnormally large snowfall that happened two weeks ago. It even made the front page of the NY Times web page For good reason, too – it caused massive disruptions and power outages and just about the worst possible time.

周杰playing go with his nephew

The simplest way to describe what happens in China for the New Year is to say: everybody goes home. A number of things in China acerbate the adverse effect this has on the transportation network. First the government decided what days workers are to be off – and this is adhered to by almost everybody - so this essentially means everybody travels at the same time. Travelling by air too expensive for many, trains get the most traffic. So when massive amounts of snowfall hit areas in the south that completely lack the infrastructure to deal with it – cancelling trains that run on electricity, closing roads that local governments had no equipment to clear, all at the start of when the vast majority of the Chinese population is attempting to go home – it became the story in the country. I saw just a part of the disruption – and it was quite a scene.

Right before the start of the busiest time, I flew back to Shenzhen to visit some of my students and my teachers from last year before their school let out – the worst of the storm hit as I was in Shenzhen. When it came time to fly back, I had to pass by the Shenzhen rail station on my way to the airport. It was hard to walk anywhere, because people were laying on top their bags, anywhere they could get to find real estate. I thought it was crazy until I saw pictures the next day from the Guanzhou rail station that I hate to say, reminded me images from a refugee camp, headlines begged only ticketed passengers for that day to come to the rail station. As for my flight - I was lucky to be flying to Beijing, which has lots of cold weather experience. Every passenger heading to Shanghai was occupying seemingly every seat at every gate, because a days worth of Shanghai flights were being indefinitely delayed.

recent enough photo…

So when I made it back to Beijing, it was no surprise that my host family’s father (周杰 Zhou Jie) told me they would not be going back to Hunan for the New Year – opting instead to stay in their Beijing home. Disappointed, I resolved to make some progress with my Chinese grammar and prepared a strict regiment for the following week. I really dislike the common phrase amongst foreigners in China - “This is China” when referring to how things seem to happen suddenly and plans often change at the last minute - it’s paints too broad a stroke for my taste. But like most clichés, they didn’t get to be clichés for nothing. I’ve had almost too many instances to recall where everything I had been expecting to happen changed at the last moment. So I feel like I did a pretty good job of rolling with it when I came back from my morning run to find Zhou Xiaolian (my host family’s son) bouncing about telling me his father had decided we were going to Hunan after all. Having already thought through how I was going to make the best of week of having nothing on my plate, I did think seriously about declining to go along – but then thought about how that would be rather pathetic – and sure enough, three hours after I had been told we were going to Hunan, I was in the back seat of the family car, listening to Xiaolian use his mobile phone to play Brittany Spears’ ‘Hit Me Baby One More Time’, wishing I had the power to explode electronics with my stare because I was sure I couldn’t take 13 hours of that abuse.

Pretty 桃花园 two days into the new year.

So the Chinese speaking Sean Connery just has bested Dr. No in Hunan Province, I can see my breath between me and the screen of my laptop in the late afternoon, but I’m happy none the less. My Chinese New Year experience has been wonderful and I’m happy…hope to write more about it later.

Moving to Beijing for my second time in a couple of hours. Going to Beijing Language and Culutre University for a summer course. I’ll be living with a Chinese couple and their son - after that - not without prospects, but not sure…

I’ll Probably spend a decent chunk of the 24 hours on the trip playing text messaging tag with a few of the 1000 strong students I just gave my number to…

I am not coming back to Songgang Middle School next year.

This will definitely be chalked up to a learning experience – and in all honesty almost right before I found out, I was seriously considering moving on – but right now there is just hurt.

I can feel good about the professional commitment I put into the job – I look back on the quality of my work and the quality of the experience and have almost no regrets with how I spent my time. I made the assumption that the quality of my work would carry the day and that because I married my efforts with the utmost desire to improve the students’ education the choice would be clear – but that is not the case – Songgang Middle School has requested that my contract not be renewed next year. They have preferenced two female teachers for next year…

I’ll miss the cafeteria food - seriously…

We, Ani and I, told the school back in January that we would like to come back and we felt that it wouldn’t be much of a problem. I was of course spoiled a bit by St. Therese’s Upper Basic School which openly begged me to stay for the last six months of my service – but I didn’t see this coming until the last couple of weeks – and I still didn’t expect it to go down like it did. And, while cultural differences played a huge part in some of the gap between anticipation and result – there is a fundamental understanding that I have come to, while it may sound a bit conceited I feel is true: Songgang Middle School, doesn’t truly care about the quality of the education in its Oral English program. And, because the rhetoric from the leaders of this school touted a commitment to improvement – I bought into it making it my goal. This is the sole cause of my shock and disappointment.

Many schools in Shenzhen have foreign teachers, and the turnover is way above 90% from year to year so schools are used to getting somebody new every year. Schools don’t really have a choice as to who they get – but they can preference some small things. The common perception here is that women are better language teachers and that men are more likely to cause trouble. I don’t want to get into that debate – you want to discriminate like that? – That’s your choice. In fact, if all things are truly equal, and you are getting a random set of teachers from the pool – why not select based on something you believe in?

For instance, in The Gambia, I understood what volunteers were annoyed with when they were asked to pay extra for things that Gambians did not. It bothered me too. It clearly was based race and ethnicity, something as Americans were are indoctrinated to react strongly to. But some of my fellow volunteers would ask pointedly why they would be asked to pay more, but the scruffy native sitting next to them wasn’t bothered. Of course the recipient of the question had no such moral hang-up; in reality it was simple; how many white males rolling around The Gambia are not relatively rich? Selection by race was a particularly efficient way for a hustler to locate marks that would produce the highest benefit. In this particular instance, race has a statistically significant relationship to wealth. So without lacking any beneficial additional information – this is a logical way to efficiently pick targets.

So if the school wants to buy into the idea that women are better teachers than men or whatever – I don’t mind them discriminating based on sex. I disagree with the premise, but if one is inclined to believe it – so be it. But of course this is only makes sense when they have no other information to go on. It has undertones of the elusive state when an employer determines that ‘all other things are equal’ between different applicants when attempting to comply with affirmative action laws; but the difference here is these schools almost never have any other information. But, in this instance, Songgang Middle School should have a wealth of information about what it could have for foreign teachers in 2007/08 – namely a whole year of observing what Ani and I have done. So unless there is a reason why Songgang Middle is displeased with our work:

It either thinks that random women with no experience teaching in China (let alone at Songgang Middle) and in most cases zero prior teaching experience at all, will do better job teaching Oral English than us. Or, there’s something else to what they want out of their foreign teachers – namely they really don’t care about the quality of the education.

Ani and I have never used the contract we are bound by as the guide for our effort at this school – without going into it in any real depth –

-We’ve given up every single Saturday afternoon to hold a 2-3 hour English Corner session to help students with their spoken ability.
-We’ve spent significant time in the office making ourselves available in the evenings to any student who wanted to ask questions or talk. I’ve not shown a single English movie to any of my weekly classes despite the widespread use of this ‘teaching’ method – every week I’ve prepared a lesson targeting skill sets.
-We spent two weeks of evenings during our winter vacation helping the Senior Three students with in one-on-one pronunciation sessions.
-Every week I consult with the English teachers to ask them what problems their students are having so I can concentrate on those problems and work them into dialog sessions.
-I even went to a Parent’s Day and talked to every class of parents in Chinese in an effort to give some ideas.

These are all things that are not part of the contract that we are bound to. In fact all the school really seems to care about – is that we show up and that we do our foreigner thing. The fact that there is no curriculum, or text, or even a plan – doesn’t seem to stand out as a problem. No one from the school or English department has ever sat in nor asked us what we do in class. We also might not have cared so much – but given all the proclamations from the leadership that Oral English is very important to the school and that the school needs to make improvements - it seemed natural to not measure ourselves by a contract more designed to protect against cancers rather than ineffective teaching.

We feel that by most measures – including the response from our immediate colleagues that we are two quality foreign teachers. So, we have a had a tough time racking our brain to discover why the school wants somebody different. Especially when compared to the other option; we are light years ahead of the next foreign teachers in terms of cultural fluency – definitely at Songang Middle and likely in Chinese culture as well. This being the second time I’ve had to bridge the cultural gap in a completely foreign environment – I can attest that cultural fluency is not a skill to be underestimated. My second year at St. Therese’s was infinitely more productive than my first – I’ll be left to imagine that my second year at Songgang would have been as productive…

So, it’s a real shame that a school that I have had an excellent time with does not want me back – but it has been a real eye-opening cultural experience…

I have a something I need to admit: I am openly rooting for David Beckham.

A couple of years back I would have never admitted such a thing, but I am finding myself admiring the way he has handled himself…

This is a big change from how I used to feel. Beckham himself has no one to blame but himself for the outrageous press coverage he gets – he’s always invited it. And back in the day when people talked about him being amongst the best of the best footballers – I couldn’t have been more annoyed by it all. After all, Beckham has never been able to take a match “by the scruff of the neck” in the same way that the most world’s greatest always have. So when I first started really paying attention to football – the coverage and accolades he received seemed ridiculous. He has never been particularly fast – he’s never been able to take defenders on – he rarely scores from open play – and has never really intimidated anyone. Plus he was playing for Manchester United – and I have never really cared much for that bunch…

Eventually, as he has aged – people have begun to question his footballing ability vis a vis the hype that he receives – and it became fashionable to dump on Beckham the footballer: a one trick sideshow. When he moved to Madrid – there was a considerable faction of people who claimed that is was solely for Real’s marketing department – Beckham: pedestrian on the pitch, but great for shirt sales in Asia!

The apex of the backlash happened after another disappointing England performance, with Beckham as captain, in the World Cup – The new manager in an effort to make a break from the past and show that he’s the new boss in town – dropped Beckham from the England team. And the Real Madrid manager, with his team well off the league title pace, similarly dropped Beckham from the Madrid squad – completely. By the time Beckham decided to sign for a US MLS team – everyone had made up their mind – Beckham, having won nothing during his time in Madrid, was heading off to semi-retirement in a crap league – but his wife would love LA and he could promote the “Brand Beckham”.

The Madrid manager said that Beckham would never play for Madrid again – and it looked like Beckham would wait out his contract (ending in August) and then head to the US with his tail between his legs. Many speculated that Beckham would seek an early exit from Madrid – it certainly didn’t look good. The British hacks claimed the end of Beckham the footballer – they did reviews of his career – said their goodbyes…

Anyway – without getting too much into the details – Beckham would have been faulted by no one for biding his time out at Madrid – but what has changed my opinion of Beckham has been what he did: He busted his ass in training, showed up for all the games, repeatedly stated his commitment to Madrid, and expressed his desire to play. Fabio Capello, the Madrid manager, impressed by the dedication, realized that Beckham – while not a world beater – is still one of the best dead-ball specialists ever, he hustles all over the pitch, and still can deliver pitch perfect crosses if given a little space. Yes, at times he is overmatched, and you can not win matches with everything centering on Beckham. But, he’s still a top winger, and can still help win matches. Madrid’s rise in the standings followed with the inclusion of Beckham and people were noticing the quality of his play. Not coincidently – the rock-headed England manager, with his team have a poor run of results, also gave Beckham a recall.

Real Madrid have thusly had an inspiring run of results – and unbelievably with 2 matches to play are dead even with Barcelona for the La Liga title. If Madrid wins out, they will win the title, and Beckham heads to the US with a trophy – something that almost nobody would have believed at the beginning of this year. He doesn’t need the trophy – he’s already accomplished more by putting his head down and working hard and saying the right things when he could have easily lashed out, criticized, and walked away in a huff.

Now things have changed. Real Madrid are explaining why Beckham has been allowed to go after the season. The supporters are singing his name, and at the first international match for the England team at the new Wembley Stadium, Beckham received a sustained ovation for his dedication and play from the England faithful. Those that wrote eulogies are quiet or recanting…

So I have come to reject the Beckham as prima-donna line of thought – no one would have blamed him for packing it in and heading out to LA without troubling himself. But he’s done quite the opposite and proved that while he does do a lot of stuff off the pitch – he still has the commitment to excel on it – which is more than I had thought. And although I could only dream of being able to strike a ball like he does – I can definitely identify with guy isn’t the quickest or fastest or flashiest, who runs his butt off and gives it his all.

So, while many things David Beckham have always been insufferably inane (the hair, the clothes, the image, the marketing, Victoria) – I am appreciating David Beckham, the footballer – and tonight, at 2:30AM, as Real Madrid head to Real Zaragoza for the most important match of their season – despite my disdain for Real Madrid, and the knowledge that Saidou Gbla will never let me hear the end of it if they triumph, I will be cheering on David Beckham.

Songgang Middle School is in the throes of gao1 kao3 (高考) – It could loosely be translated at the ‘high exam’ but that sounds lame.

No mere Scholastic Aptitude Test, the 高考 is the national exam for high-school students covering all the core subjects. It is the end-all be-all exam for all students in China – because in China – there are no grades – only exam scores. And in reality, there are not exam scores – only the exam score: the 高考.

This is the exam taken at the end of all your years of high school and you can (no joke) screw-up every single opportunity from when you were born - then pull a magical score out of nowhere - and jump to the top of the heap in China. Of course the opposite is just as true - which is how it goes when all the chips are on the table…

I had dinner with a Maths teacher last night and asked him about any type of graduation ceremony. He said that there would be no such thing – there might be parties – but in the end the students are so stressed out at having all their years of education be boiled down to 12 hours of examinations over 3 days – that there is entirely too many crazy emotions swirling around to have a celebration or give the students a chance to get a hold of alcohol. Not really all that shocking when you have a massively competitive system for University entrance and the only metric that is used is this test.

Accordingly – when the entire education system boils down to one test – the environment gets a little tense:

The road in front of the school is closed during the exam because a few parents complained about possible noise a couple of years ago.

The entire rest of the school basically shuts down – all the kids are sent home or away to military training – and the senior grades are banished across campus to other classrooms.

The classroom sealed off 2 days before the test with pictures of the students pasted on the door.

Desks are piled up in the halls blocking all access to the classrooms except for one route – which is guarded by both the vice-headmaster and the police.

It’s basically nuts – but it makes sense if you understand that the senior 3 students – are disallowed from doing any extra-curriculars, take classes day and night all week except for Saturday afternoon, are in the second semester excused from morning exercises (25min) and the Monday morning flag raising (15min) so they can cram that little extra.

The night before the exam, Ani and I walked by the classrooms of the Senior 3 students – all of them at 9:45PM were in their classrooms copying notes and cramming. Ani and I couldn’t help but wonder what a different world it is – all we could think of was something along the lines of “It’s OVER, GO HOME!”

Xinjiang students in traditional garb - quite a ways from home…

Of course, by the end of tomorrow that is exactly what they will do - no ceremony - nothing official - just parting ways with the place that has owned their life for the past 3-6 years. Some students from Xinjiang haven’t been home in 4 years - but by Monday they’ll be on the train. Boggles my Western educated mind…different culture I guess…

Some of my favorite moments from my time in The Gambia were instances where no one had expectations of me near half as much did myself. This happens every so often when when you quite obviously stand out in an otherwise solidly homogenous environment. Were it not for these chances to demonstrate to others that despite a lack of cultural or linguistic fluency - you are observant, diligent, and intelligent, the really annoying tendency of everyone to treat you with kid gloves would have long driven me crazy. In my time learning Wolof and now as I learn Chinese, I can’t even begin to count the times I’ve said the equivalent of: iknowiknowiknowiknow iknowiknowiknowiknowiknowiknow to people who are well intentioned, but guilty of underestimating my language ability as they slowly enunciate a sentence that would bore a two year old. This is one area where one of my flaws can surface.

When I learn something new – I itch for a situational opportunity to demonstrate the proper application. Some second language teaching literature I am casually familiar with will often cite the goal of teaching at the “i + 1” level; where “i” represents the student’s current language ability. I am sometimes guilty of contempt for practice at the “i” level – let alone something that I perceive is even lower…

Back in 2004, giving a speech in Wolof…

So it is not a surprise I have an appetite for taking on tasks that I am not sure I can succeed at – rather than revise past lessons. Thusly, I can get frustrated when people, well intentioned, insist on helping me with an aspect I feel I have already mastered. I’ve made considerable progress in not losing my cool – but by no means am I always on top of things…

Anyway – when I can, I’ve found I enjoy throwing myself in an i + 2, or i + 3 situation and seeing how I adapt – these are the situations where I am most motivated and feel I’ve done my best work.. It’s something I try to encourage in my students; when I can control the environment, I love hitting them with something beyond their level. Whether they meet success or failure: I follow with praise and encouragement as long as they give it their best shot. It’s easy to recognize why my favorite moments as a teacher come when a student goes out on a limb - and succeeds – it’s how I tick…

Today was Songgang Middle School’s second semester parent’s day.

The foreign teachers, partly out of common sense are not invited to participate in a half-day session where the head, and subject teachers for each class give quick presentations on the state of things, take some questions, but most importantly hand back the mid-term exam results. As a one-period a week teacher, who presumably can’t speak Chinese, and more importantly, arguably has little to say that the Chinese English Teachers can not effectively communicate – nobody thought to ask if I would come. But, when I heard this was going on, I asked the Junior One headmaster if I could show up – before I had fleshed out the stuttering Chinese – he insisted that I was more than welcome and that he was excited that I would come. The best part was, from what I can tell – he was genuinely excited.

One of my class 5 students - cracks me up - out of the blue in a “discussion” about Napoleon he stated with confidence: “Russians…They drink white alcohol like water”

Almost all of the head-teachers of the 11 classes I teach in the Junior One seemed excited in inviting me to speak. So this morning for a frantic couple of hours, I shuffled from class to class being introduced to the parents as the foreign teacher for Junior One. It was quite nervous – this was something I almost never had the opportunity to do in Banjul – and it was pretty cool. Of course not that everything went smoothly – this is rough English translation of the script I was trying to follow:

“Everybody welcome. I am sorry I speak putonghua very poorly. Therefore my time will be very short. I am the Junior One Oral English foreign teacher. Every week I have one period. When class starts we practice spoken English. I want to tell you two things: First, the students write English and read English not too badly, however spoken English is the biggest problem. Every student thinks that his/her English is poor – but this is not true – and they fear speaking incorrectly. So when class starts I ask an English question they like saying answers like “Yes” “No” or “Hello”. I want you to tell them to not be afraid to try to speak more because if you do not try, you can not make progress. Second, my time is too short and my best suggestion is for the students to come to the office or when they see me, to speak English. So please it is important to tell them not be afraid to speak. Thanks.”

Not Wordsworth for sure, but quite a challenge for me at this stage. Every group of parents gave me applause – most of them even gave me applause right after I said I can’t speak putonghua. As can be expected the last couple of times I have this little speech, I was much more confident and fluid – even working the audience a bit. Of course, this was in contrast to the first time, Class 10, where I confidently stated that I was the English Teacher for Class 9. However I do get bonus points for getting laughs back at office for retelling this in Chinese like an old war story. I’ve long since been comfortable with playing the role of the clown if it affords me a chance to learn. After all, this was at least at the i + 1 level.

Of course there were a couple of instances of what I had feared would happen: parents who approached me afterwards sans child to ask me questions about said child. This is an issue when I teach 600+ students and know about 10 names by heart. I was pleased and frightened when one parent started by speaking so fast could only catch the following:

I am Blah Blah Blah’s parent blah blah blah blah English blah blah blah exam score blah blah blah blah you know blah blah help blah blah blah blah can you do this?

However after a second attempt I better understood what she was talking about and - miracle of miracles I figured out WHO her son was. There were even three or four protracted discussions with parents where I was able to understand most of what was being said and respond accordingly. Pretty cool. But what gave me the most satisfaction was that this was the first time that I felt I was communicating in a foreign language as a professional. I couldn’t just crack jokes – the parent was not humoring my interest in learning how to speak Chinese – I was being asked my opinion about something that was of importance to them and I didn’t get the “oh, this guy doesn’t have a clue what I am saying” look after I responded. I even instigated a couple of conversations with parents when I saw them with students that I recognized. Sometimes I feel the kids are measured almost solely by their exam scores – so in a couple of cases where I had something to say, I engaged the parents.

Class 7, out of 11. You can get an idea if you have troble remembering names to begin with what it might be like for someone to randomly ask you about 方骏…

The parents played their part too – this is the meeting is where the midterm grade reports for the students are handed out. Some of the parents who talked to me about their students showed me their exam scores to highlight their concerns. I can’t really remember how things worked in the states with regard to parents meetings, but there wasn’t anything that seemed distinctly different than my experience. Just a lot of parents, concerned about the development of their children – a common thread for sure…

There were a couple of other unanticipated benefits: I got a more than expected credibility boost amongst my fellow teachers in the office – or it seemed as much. The head teachers were all excited to have me speak in their class. After the parents had left, I was invited to eat out and I felt like I wasn’t just being humored – I was even called a good “comrade”. That felt good…

For the second time my laptop has been stolen. So it goes.

When my laptop was taken out of the Peace Corps office in The Gambia it was secretly returned within days after the security office questioned a few guards. I doubt there will be such recourse this time around.

I’m sitting in the school office – it’s about seven in the morning as I start to write this – I woke up one hour ago to discover the crime. The details are pretty simple:

- Went to bed at 12:30 last night – bolted my front door shut because that’s the only way the door will close. Closed my balcony door, don’t think I locked it.
- Woke up at 6AM to find the front door and balcony door open – then seconds after wondering how I could have left them open – I realized that I didn’t…

Not a good sign when you roll out of bed and see that your door is wide open and laptop is AWOL…

I have known first hand how poor an ally one’s memory can be – I was beaten and mugged along with a friend when I was sixteen – the guys who did it were caught. We were asked to describe what they were wearing when we gave our report: I was damn certain that one of the assailants was wearing a Dallas Cowboys jacket – a detail that I, in my sports centered world, would not make a hash of. Some time later I learned that my friend and I had separately described our assailants fairly well – however the one of the details I was sure of – was wrong – ‘twas a Raiders jacket after all.

So, even only an hour after the fact – I can’t recall whether or not I figured it out after I noticed the laptop missing or whether I deduced that with both doors open – somebody must have had to climb the outside of our building to my third floor balcony and entered through my infinitely easier-to-open back door. Not that that fact really matters – just another reminder of the fallibility of individual memory.

My third floor balcony, the only one without metal bars over it - perhaps I should have said something about that…

Along with my laptop, the thief walked out my front door with about 400RMB out of my wallet. Had he bothered to check the fist-sized Year-of-the-Pig piggy bank inches away, he would have also scored my rainy day savings which was worth at least three times that. The thief has my Nokia brick – he can have that – never did like mobiles. Worst of all with regard to my immediate business – he has my flash memory key, which has all my lesson plans and is my main email source. So I’ll be winging it in five classes today. Of course the real loss is my writing and pictures from my time in Africa, which as it happens, I had only partially restored to the website. I have printed most of the pictures and writing – but I believe I have lost the electronic copies. The thief will quickly (or maybe never) learn that my laptop battery can not even last through 2 seconds of boot up – and that a replacement is worth as much as the entire computer at this point. I have long feared the hard drive which has been ever more talkative these days, would soon call it a career. So in a way, it now has…

I have always liked the concept of Valhalla. That the most honorable death would come in full battle – go out swinging – not of old age. I admire this notion to an extent – I don’t think people can plan when and how things happen so you might as well get on with doing what you love – if I am given artistic license to stretch the ideals reinforced by the concept of Valhalla. And if I can further push it: if one is a believer in the notion that a quality machine or piece of equipment can have a soul (of which I am not) – I rather like fanciful idea that piece of equipment achieve it’s death in the same proverbial “blaze of glory” that would grant a Norse warrior entry into Valhalla. There are two pieces of equipment that have demonstrated utmost quality in spite of their treatment in my life: my Ford Escort and my laptop. Both endured massive tests where I expected them to fail – thus dying an honorable death – only to meet their demise in a fashion unknown to me. My car was given away because I was leaving the country – it never did fail me, and now my laptop – after surviving on of the worst computer environments on the planet – I fear it will meet a neglected scrap-heap death because I have a difficult time imagining a thief could ever place as much value on a 5 year-old rusted notebook with a clunking hard-drive, malfunctioning CD drive, 0 battery-life, and a missing “b” key as I could.

Anyway, I went to the office since my mobile had all my contact info – some students noticed that I opened the office so they took the chance to rifle through the things on top of their head teacher’s desk – this is a common and accepted practice. The found their reward, the spreadsheet with all the exam scores of their fellow classmates, and soon enough were expressing their surprise at how well or poorly student A or B had done – while all this might sound bad to someone educated in the US – all that information is going to be public in a matter of hours anyway.

One of them, Wang Cai Jin, eventually came over to my cube and asked me one of the more popular daily questions for the foreign teacher: “What are you doing?” It’s kind of cute, they always comically stress the first syllable of the word: doing. It was the right question at the right time – so as best I could I explained why I was in the office early. Wang Cai Jin is one of my favorite students – and one of the only ones who’s name I actually know – she lost her playful tone when she figured out what I was saying (to her credit she could understand most of what I said). When she explained this to one of her classmates who didn’t understand, she felt the courage to speak in English: “It’s good you did not (throat cutting gesture)”. Yeah, I guess having somebody just come into your apartment while you are sleeping doesn’t make you feel too safe. I appreciated the sentiment – it is good to remember that all I lost was things and some memories…

…and who knows, maybe they’ll come back - whatever the case, things will work out.

Summer’s on the march – it might just be the fate of those working at a school abroad where you have to learn many basic skills at the start – but my goodness the second half always seems a fleet-footed shadow of the first. June 15th, that’s the day my contract ends: after today’s classes I have less than five full weeks left. Of course, I’m planning on coming back next year, but that doesn’t change the fact that I’m not too far away from the year mark.

But the time of year has no bearing on whether or not radical changes in student workload can be made. I’m unclear for the source of the change – but my school has made a major change late in the year without much of a hint of the significant opposition that would meet any such change at your local public high school.

A shot of one of the ‘theme of the month blackboards” that classes are responsible for: the current theme: Earth Day…

My school is a boarding school. The grades 7-9 stay on campus from Sunday evening to Friday evening. The grades 10-12 never leave – in the evenings all the students go to their classrooms to do their homework. Teachers here give no grades – ever. Everything is about exams and exam scores. Exams are standardized all across Shenzhen making for a rapid breakdown of how students test comparatively. So because there is no real grading of homework – teachers have in my opinion hammered on the test topics with tons of drilling every night. Many students don’t finish or they just copy the work – most complain that there is way too much. Kind of how I imagine most high-school students around the world…

However my school has now eliminated homework. No more homework..

This was the rumor before I went to the official meeting – of course all in putonghua that explained the procedures for the recently finished mid-term exams and outlined what this new “no homework” change would entail. I’ve now been to just enough of these meetings that I no longer get the “what the hell are you doing here treatment”. Thanks to accompanying powerpoint presentations I was able to catch some main and minor points – a combination of reading/listening comprehension and guessing led me to this formulation:

- this new policy does not mean “no homework” in just means (some Chinese that I didn’t comprehend)
- Evening sessions are now divided into time for review / revision that are now broken down by subject and allotted time.
- Teachers should stop surfing the web on computers in the classroom.
- And homework could be given on the evening: 50 minutes each for English, Science, History. 60 for Chinese, and 70 for Maths.

After getting the translation from the English Teachers, this was about right – “no written homework in the evenings” is the policy. All the teachers must abstain from assigning written homework except for some rare extenuating circumstances. Without getting into a debate about the effectiveness – it is amazing how this went down without much of a peep. There was a question session for teachers to raise concerns and there were a couple of questions that had an edge to them – but the majority was shifting in their seats hoping to get away for their evening meal…

Stuents crowding to look at scores..

It makes me think of the donnybrook that would surly accompany such a change stateside. The proposal would hardly be out someone’s mouth before the posturing and verbal “getting in your grill” would commence. It pains my head to think about it. Of course, student’s success in the US is much more dependant on teacher’s impressions and evaluations – so what happens in the classroom and daily routines are much more important there. For instance, Chinese parents (partly as I can see, partly as I imagine) couldn’t give a flip if the Biology teacher assigned Road Runner cartoons for homework as long the student performs on the all important exams.

None of that matters now - the teachers have can’t assign anything that makes the students put pen/pencil to paper outside of class.   To be fair, I did feel like the students were getting way too much homework as is.  Anyway, Ani and I have often joked about the efficiency of the decision making process that you sometimes see in action. Don’t blink, there went homework.

Less than 30 days now…

- “So here we are on the other side of the remittance world…”
- “What?”
- “…a couple of Americans, working in a foreign country, sending money to family back stateside.”

It hadn’t occurred to me what Ani was talking about. That that a confluence of banking regulations and miscommunications had led me to an experience what many people living in the United States have had: carrying around large amounts of cash to send back to a family member back in their native country…Of course the parallels are superficial – the money is not intended for their use nor do they need it. But it we joked that that I had to do my part to support my country…

Nothing beats carrying around massive amounts of money – it’s great. Chinese money also has cool anti-fraud deterrents – like Chairman Mao’s head on the 100 in relief – you rub it to determine if it’s a fake.

Of course one thing that one does not forget about China – is that getting money to the US is a major pain. Banks here do not have (strong) relationships with banks in the US – and wire transfers are not possible. Other newer companies like Paypal/eBay haven’t worked it out yet – so basically there’s no efficient way. However, Hong Kong – which in many ways is like a different country (extradition to the US? PRC – no, HK – yes) - does have banks that have arrangements with ones in the US but the problem with them is that all of them required that you be a Hong Kong resident – that is all of them except the bank I had sworn a blood oath against: Standard Chartered.

It turns out that with a US drivers license, I can open a US dollar bank account at a branch in Hong Kong, that has a SWIFT (or routing number) that I can use to transfer money (for a fee) and at the official exchange rate to a US bank account – and it has branches on the mainland and in the US. Perfect – except that I had such an awful experience with Standard Chartered in The Gambia that I swore that I would never, ever, bank with those (people) ever again. So much for principles…The snag is, I have to maintain a balance – that doesn’t work for me right now – so I’ll open it when I have the disposable cash. Thus, I decided to use Western Union – the jack of all money transfer agents – in this one instance.

non-linear photograph of my class 8 students…

Of course Western Union on the mainland doesn’t let you transfer money directly to a US account. I had heard that WU branches in Hong Kong did – so yesterday I took another stroll trough Chinese customs, not leaving China of course, with a pink brick of RMB hoping I could get the money into my US dollar bank account. Of course when I showed up at the Hong Kong Post Office Western Union, they didn’t transfer RMB into HK dollars. So I left to exchange the RMB to HK dollars and returned to find out that they, like the mainland Western Unions, would not let me transfer the money directly to my US account. This, of course, defeats the entire purpose of ferrying the cash to HK - and in spite of the courteous and confidence-inspiring insistence of the Western Union customer service representative in India I had talked to the day before which had assured me that I, in fact could. I gave up and decided I no longer wanted to carry around any money - sent it all along with an email to my brother who I trust is not currently on the skee-ball/pac-man binge of a lifetime.