Sunday, September 21, 2014

In Which I Doubt the Sanity of Nursery Rhyme Devisers Everywhere


As the one month mark approaches, I've decided it may be time for an elaboration on day to day teaching at Xiaolan Ming De International School. 

This morning started out with a none too graceful tumble down the stairs in our apartment. Instead of just a minor slip, I somehow managed to land on the top of my left foot, which has been crying in protest all day. Hoping it's not a sprain. I'm not sure how to tell if it is a sprain, as I've remained improbably uninjured throughout my entire life. 

This morning marked my first day running the drama class. There are seven rotations, and the last three weeks I've done gym class, which is universally agreed upon to be the worst rotation. It tends to be difficult simultaneously keeping the kids' attention, regulating a physical activity, and wresting some English from their stubborn little voice boxes. Needless to say, I'm relieved to be done with that station for a while. 

The colorful schedule of our teaching day.
Inspired by the realization of my ignorance concerning the names of animals in Chinese, I decided to broaden the kids' animal vocabulary through the perturbing classic, "There Once was a Lady Who Swallowed a Fly". Last night was spent making feeble attempts at drawing cartoon animals and creating one of the creepiest paper old ladies in the history of paper old ladies. Results can be seen below. 

Just try to ignore my poor feline's legs.
The guy was my favorite. I call him, "Le Penseur Chevale".
My apologies to Grandmothers everywhere. 

During the first rotation and just after Mrs. Carnivore swallowed the cat (imagine that- to swallow a cat!), my attention was drawn to a huge Daddy Longlegs on the wall by two students yelling, "Teachah! Spidah!". The thing was freaky. After the rotation ended, I enlisted Jessica's help in capturing the critter and entrapping him in a clear Tupperware. Throughout the rest of the day, I held the kids spellbound by bringing out the spider and asking "Do you like to eat spiders?", to which they thankfully responded, "No Teachah! No like spidahs!" Hey, if the thing decided to haunt children's classrooms, the least I could do was subject him to the violent enthrallment of kindergarteners. 

The wonderful addition to our object lesson. He's a little dazed and difficult to see in the picture. 

After a day of being able to sit down at a table, and thus increasing my kids' participation and attention span, I have come to the conclusion that the next three months will be much more enjoyable than the last three weeks. 

A preview of some Chinese child adorableness; more pictures to come. 

This is Jimmy. He's normally a bit more animated. I have some doubts as to his affection for me. 

Chloe (front) and Lucia (dopey looking girl in the back).
The first day Chloe duped me into thinking she was shy. Not so.

The infamous strike chart. The kids get a strike for not listening/obeying, not  keeping their limbs to themselves, or for landing themselves in the Chinese chair thrice in a rotation. ILP has a strict immersion language policy.
This single strike actually marked a good day. Michael is kind of socially inept, exhibited by his constantly flailing arms hurting his classmates. 


Sunday, September 14, 2014

Opium of the Masses: Practicing Religion in a Communist State

Happy Sunday, everybody!!!

Today we had the opportunity to attend the first semblance of a church meeting for the first time since arriving. The last two Sundays we have done a mini devotional with those in our group who wanted to participate.

The closest LDS branch (mini-ward/congregation) is about 3-4 hours away from Xiaolan, in Shenzhen. We dutiful Sisters in Zion decided to make the trek there this weekend for Shenzhen's district conference (a large meeting with multiple congregations).

Yesterday we rode a one hour bus to Shiqi, where there a few other groups of ILP teachers. After a series of attempts to navigate the newly altered bus routes, we made it back to the ILP apartment at 9 p.m. for a big girl sleepover. It was wonderful to interact with ILP volunteers outside my group and swap stories.

In order to arrive at the 10:30 meeting, we caught a 7 a.m. bus and finally arrived at the International Conference Center, which is smack dab in the middle of Millionaire neighborhood. Needless to say, the Conference Center and surrounding area were way more gorgeous, well kept, and clean than anywhere else we'd been in China. Even the other ILP apartments were hotels compared to our ghetto residence.

You'll have to pardon my triteness, but missing sacrament meeting the last few weeks and being thrown into a completely new environment mostly devoid of religion really made me appreciate the familiarity of church. Never have I been so happy to sing hymns at a funeral dirge temp, accompanied by an electronic keyboard and wailing babies. Even the terrible self-deprecating jokes cracked by middle aged, balding, pot bellied church leaders brought on a welcome feeling of home.

One thing that differed: instead of the traditional bag of Cheerios, there were a few hungry toddlers who were appeased by a delicious pack of dried seaweed. Mmmmmm.

I also experienced an especially lovely moment and testament of God's individual love for me today. Immediately after walking through the door, I heard the introduction to "Lead, Kindly Light" the hymn that I sang in my home ward on my last Sunday before leaving. I chose that specific hymn to sing because I felt it encapsulated what I would be experiencing in the coming months. Hearing it again was spirit strengthening, especially in this difficult period of culture shock. They say that the 2-3 weeks after arriving are the most challenging, and I'm starting to feel it.

For those of you who don't know, China's policy concerning religion prohibits all proselyting- passive or active- to it's residents. Although, mormon congregations for foreigners are permitted and congregations for locals are permitted, never the two shall mix. If asked about our religion, we supposed to deflect the question by saying that we are unable to answer in respect to the law of their land.

After the district conference, there was a Young Single Adult meeting with the district presidency during which they addressed this issue. Most of the people there were ILP volunteers, but there was one 20 something woman who was staying with a host family. After learning that she was a member of the Mormon church, her host mother looked it up on the internet and, when translated, a few of the sited referred to it as "the Polygamist Church". Understandably, the Chinese lady was confused and asked for further information  on this heathen religion her American was a part of. The district leader advised that the American lady not elaborate on the church any further than naming it, so she couldn't  give any more information to her host mother. We can't even refer them to the wonderful http://www.mormon.org, supposing they even had a VPN to sidestep the Great Firewall of China. It's a crazy situation.

Hopefully we'll be able to attend church at least once a month while we're here. I will be participating in the conference call set up every week for members across China, I just won't be able to have the sacrament.

It's been interesting figuring out the role of the LDS church in China, but for now, I'm looking forward to visiting my first Buddhist temple.

http://holysheetmusic.com/music/lead-kindly-light/


Wednesday, September 10, 2014

First Week of School

Well, the first week of teaching at Xiaolan Ming de International School has come and gone. The kids are adorable rascals and will consistently greet me with a “Hallo, teacha!”, no matter how frustrated I got with them the day before or how poorly the lesson went.

A normal morning of English teaching consists of a 15 minute opening, five twenty-five minute rotations of different play stations, and a closing during which they count the tickets they earned that day and can buy prizes with their tickets. 

My play station is gym these first three weeks, so each day I try to put on a physical activity that incorporates the target language for that day. I know these first few weeks are difficult no matter what, but it’s incredibly frustrating trying to figure out how to explain an activity, corral the kids into participating, and extract a simple repetition of the English language from their five year old Chinese brains. 

The first day of school was mostly taken up by an interminable opening ceremony replete with students shouting their rehearsed speeches into microphones, adorable song and dance numbers, and an oh so patriotic raising of the Chinese flag. The flag raising was my first GGIIC (Good Golly, I’m in China) moment. I guess my mind envisions the spirit of Communist China as six small children solemnly marching their nation’s flag around a small schoolyard while their national anthem blares in the background and not a single student assembled pays a speck of attention. Or something like that. 


I think the most surprising part of teaching is how vividly their individual personalities shine through our language barrier. Even though I don’t know half of their names yet, and I can’t understand what they’re gibbering on about, their own personal spark is very palpable and I’m looking forward to becoming more acquainted with these tiny people in the coming months. 



ILP Teachers, Chinese Teachers, and goofy four and five year olds

ILP Teachers, Chinese Teachers, and five and six year olds

First day of school playing "Jump over the River"
Nicole, the other end of my first real conversation in Chinese.  Our  tete-a-tete involved sharing our favorite colors and family composition. It was deep.

The magnificent entrance to our classroom.

Partially uniformed children. There seem to be a lot of partial uniforms.

Tuesday, September 2, 2014

The One Where the Bobbies Came a Knocking

In the middle of a relaxing Tuesday evening, two Chinese cops showed up pounding on our door. When they saw four white American girls, they both looked at each other and started cracking up. 

After an initial surge of fright, a lot of jabbering in Cantonese, and many confused looks, I was able to communicate that I spoke a little little little Chinese. They really loved that, and led us down our 4 flights of stairs to the outside of our apartment where we had put our trash. One of our coordinators had told us to put our bags of trash underneath an alcove outside of the apartment and people would come by and pick it up. That had seemed super strange, but we thought, “Hey, it’s China!”.

Turns out, creating a mountain of trash outside the apartment was NOT the proper garbage disposal etiquette. The cops picked up the bags and led us down the street to show us the correct receptacle. They were incredibly genial the whole time; WAY nicer than two American cops would be to an apartment of littering foreigners. 

I was able to employ my basic knowledge of the Chinese words for languages, countries, time, and teaching related jargon to relay why four young white girls were in a ghetto apartment in their town. I didn’t understand about 80% of what they were saying, and there were a lot of “Ting, bu dong”s on my part. 


Now we know where to dispose of our trash and that the Chinese boys in blue are unexpectedly nice to ignorant Americanos.