Classes in China

Tuesday, December 13, 2011
4pm ish

Yesterday and today the two long class days (8:30 to 12:20). Collected various writing assignments – students vary a lot in their ability to write in English. The better students (it seems to me) are pretty good in both speaking and writing; the weaker students have a harder time paraphrasing; for all of them, talking about an academic reading is more difficult than talking about everyday things like lunch and travel and one’s parents.

I’m still confusing students’ names sometimes (especially for the quieter students – it’s easy to remember the talkative ones), but the individual personalities of these students makes me wonder how the “they all look alike” conception got started. Emma and Bonnie and Shirley look so different, even though they do, yes, all have black hair and dark eyes. While we waited for the elevator, they stole each other’s hats and poked back and giggled, maybe more like American high school freshmen than college freshmen. I’m betting that the coed socializing opportunities are quite different here.

Had lunch at the school cafeteria (canteen) after class today, with several students. Vivi and Carl are the class monitors and thus my official contacts; Keith joined us, and Bonnie and Shirley. The food was quite good and reasonably priced; I had rice and three different side dishes (one mushroom-based, one celery-I-think-based, one potato-and-tofu-based) for about a dollar. Would have been better if it were hot, but that serving line doesn’t seem to have a way to heat serving dishes. The noodle line, on the other hand, was steaming, as were the noodle bowls that some students got. (I might get noodles next time, though they do look a lot harder to eat. On the other hand, the preferred method of consuming them seems to include a lot of slurping, so I might be okay, even with chopsticks.)

I’ve noticed that no one seems to want anything to drink with meals; sometimes tea, but not always even that, and never anything cold. Also, the cafeteria (and restaurants) don’t provide napkins; individuals carry around a packet of tissues and take one out after the meal to wipe their fingers. Hmmm. I carry my water bottle to class with me, full of cold water : ) and I’ve been buying a bottle of sprite every day or so to drink at home. Every time I’ve gotten a meal somewhere, it’s been large enough that I don’t want to do it twice in one day; I have breakfast at home and one meal out, and that’s it.

Today I went back to the supermarket and tried to buy band-aids, but they didn’t have any. (I’m pretty sure we did figure that out correctly.) At the food places upstairs, I got a huge bunch of bananas for a couple of dollars (that’s going to be breakfast for the rest of my stay here) and a bag of cookies. At least I think they’re cookies. In the faculty office yesterday I took one from what looked like a package of cookies, and it was a “wheat digestive biscuit,” obviously an item of cuisine invented by an Englishman.

Washing machine fixed yesterday – the water pipe was not attached securely enough – but when I did laundry and the washer drained, the floor drain was so slow that water backed up onto the living room floor before I caught it. Had to use a dustpan to bail water into the adjacent toilet/shower room, where the two floor drains could handle it better. * sigh * So, today waiting for a third visit from a plumber; I asked about “drano,” but Vivi didn’t seem to know if there was that kind of product in China. (Should have tried asking in the supermarket, but I’m not sure how I would mime that!)

In class, I’m trying to include some more active/more fun/more interactive stuff every day, as well as reading, talking about the reading, writing, going over aspects of “how do we write in college in America.” Today we did the phone activity (and then they wrote to a friend about the plans they’d made) and a preposition activity. Each student got a card reading “please stand ON the pink paper” or “NEAR the windows” or “AT the blackboard” or “IN the box” and so on, and we talked about how “near” is not quite the same as “by” or “at.” Both pretty fun; I like it when we can do marginally silly things in class.

Things that it would not have occurred to me I’d need to tell students, but which we assume in the US: name and date go on everything you turn in; use paper that is 8 ½ by 11; turn in the whole page, even if you don’t use the whole page. If I were planning this trip now, I would bring pads of “normal” size paper and just give out paper for them to use. Also, I’d bring UNCP folders for them and have them keep everything for our class in that. (“I left it in my dorm room” sounds the same in every language.)