hello fellow wei guo rens!
thought I'd write a quick blog before bed.
Time is moving quickly now. The weeks seem to pass faster than the beginning of the year. I can't believe i've been here 8 months already. All the day to day things aren't as exciting and new anymore as i'm just so used to being here. This is part of the reason why my blog has been lacking lately, I just don't see that many things anymore that really shock me. Besides the concert I went to on the weekend the most exciting thing to happen around here has been the Starbucks and Walmart opening up the street. Finally civilization around my area! (as much as I HATE those two companies.) Other than that I've mostly gotten used to the crazyness of China and most things come with a "well that's not surprising."
Some things still really bug me often though. I was up most of the night the other night thinking of ways to help some of my students situations. I'm sick of coming to class with another one of my top students with black eyes, fat lips or bruises on their faces. Back home a teacher has the power of calling child services or even talking to the parent directly. Unfortunately for me here I have neither and I really feel helpless sometimes. What really bothers me is it's usually my top students, the ones that get almost 100% on everything, actively participate in class and come up to talk to me all the time. I don't understand how their parents are so hard on them? One would wonder though, if their grades are so high because they are terrified to bring home anything sub par. Fear may be raising their grades, but at what cost? I remember teaching a class about fears awhile ago and a majority of them feared their fathers above everything. Are these the goals of a "family oriented" culture such as the Chinese? Who knows. But that's just the thing. That's the culture here and as many things as I could think of doing, I really can't change the situation. What I can try to do is give the kids a teacher or parent-like figure who teaches them with compassion and friendship. When they make mistakes on tests or in class I personally sit beside them and talk nicely to them and offer any help I can. I try to make my classes fun. Something that's a nice relief from the long 8 hours of school they have a day. This is something a teacher can always control. But I still sometimes wish I could help them out more. If anyone has any ideas feel free to suggest them.
On a happier note on the weekend I went with a bunch of other teachers to Shanghai to see Bob Dylan. I really had a great weekend. The concert itself was pretty historic. It was Bob Dylans first time playing in China in his entire career. What was really hilarious was watching chinese peoples reaction to this crazy, slurring man on stage. They probably heard some big western artist was coming to town and bought tickets. If anyone has been to a Bob Dylan concert in the last 10 years you know what i'm talking about. It really isn't 1960's Bob, that most people know. Alot of the songs you won't realize are actually ones you know until a few minutes in. He doesn't "sing" anymore in any sense of the word. More of a growl or just talking most of the time. Chinese people thought he was out of his mind. I thought it was fantastic. It was really a treat to see Bob Dylan, probably the most influential songwriter in history, right in front of you. And I can say I saw him in China.
The students have had exams all week so it's been kind of laid back for me. I find myself with a lot of free time here. A few weeks ago I spent most of that time doing nothing. I've now watched just about every movie i've ever wanted to see. But now I've decided to use all this free time wisely to improve on some things as well as get in better shape. I started making my bed and keeping my apartment more clean, I started running for the first time in my life, I quit smoking, I'm doing an hour of chinese every second night now and slowly, very slowly getting back into my songwriting. I also cut all my hair off, this city is going to get VERY hot soon and the shag wasn't going to cut it. My students barely recognized me when I walked in the classroom on Monday. They called me Corey 2.0.
All in all, things are going well over here, despite me having to miss both an election AND playoffs this year. I'm not in the mood for a Stephen Harper rant right now and I won't even mention the Leafs. And no matter how much I'm still enjoying it here I still miss home and everyone there everyday. I'm really excited to come home in a few months. But soon i must make the big decision as to wether I will come back and do a second year here.
But that is for another blog.
miss you all,
Corey
For those of you who don't know yet, I will be spending the next year in Wuhan City, China. I will be teaching English to children in a public school and living in Wuchang (a district of Wuhan.) Because China has so kindly blocked facebook, youtube, myspace, wikipedia entries, google, twitter and many other sites, This will be one of the only ways I will be able to keep in touch and update all my family and friends of my adventures. Enjoy!
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Alive!
Hello friends,
I finally got my blog working again! I thought the proxy that I have to use to bypass the firewall shut me down once and for all but I finally found another work around. Eat it Peoples Republic of China. It's been over a month now since I wrote a blog. For those people who seemed to be worried, no I didn't die in an earthquake. It seems geography of asia isn't a specialty of people back home and I got facebook messages of people wondering if I was hit by it. Wuhan is right smack in the middle of China, which is a damn big country. If anything I just felt the cheers in the street of Chinese people because they absolutely despise the Japanese in ways I can't fully understand. Oh and for those of you wondering what happened at the end of my Thailand trip, I ended up bailing on my flight back home and going to Hong Kong only to run out of money and get kicked out of my hostel. After wandering the streets for awhile I was rescued by my buddy Sai who took me in to his home in another city called Guangzhou. It was an interesting end to a great vacation. Hong Kong was one of the nicest cities I've ever been in. Chinese people there are actually.. more civil.. they wait for cars and don't spit and smoke everywhere.
Anyways now that I'm back in China things are crazy as ever. I had the opportunity of experiencing chinese new year when I got back and that was terrifying to say the least. Think of 10 million chinese people with unlimited access to explosives, couple that with a complete disregard of safety and practically no laws and you have a fare idea of what happened. We decided to go to a bar in Hankou to have a casual beverage by the water and enjoy a nice "firework" show. As soon as I departed my house I quite literally thought the world was coming to an end. In every square, backyard, park, sidewalk and alleyway, people were setting off fireworks one after another. And I don't mean the little ones we can buy back home in Quebec. These were the full sized ones they use in controlled fireworks displays, all set off metres away from human beings and flying all over the streets. When we finally arrived at the small little bar on the river the owner said he had a "special treat" for us. His buddy pulled up in a truck and proceeded to unload a 5 foot tall mortar onto the public sidewalk, as well as other boxes full of every kind of firework imaginable. Without even motioning us to stand back he began to light them. Much to the despair of the crowds of people walking by, all hell started to break loose. I stood there in amazement and caution the whole time. These were very dangerous explosives being set up in the middle of a very busy street downtown, the cops seemed to just walk by and laugh and casually tell people they should probably keep their distance. One of the boxes exploded the wrong way and shot out at the cars on the street. Utter madness I tell you. When i thought i'd had enough we went down to the water where it was equally a warzone. About a thousand people were shooting all kinds of fireworks off into the water, some just on the ground, and some at eachother. The lack of safety here really makes me happy sometimes, as theres no way that kind of thing would fly back home. It's really hard to explain the madness I was witnessing. Every corner of your eye was filled with some explosion or you'd straight out be dodging something flaming coming at your head. It was Happy new year indeed.
My students are all back in learning mode. We were learning about writing stories last month so I had all three of my grade 5 classes attempt to write stories with the fractured english they knew. This turned out to be a terrible idea, but comical nonetheless. First of all I didn't realize the amount of time it would take to read, edit, mark and return 135 full page stories. I think I spent 6 hours one day doing nothing but marking. Second, some of them were so rediculous as to almost be unreadable, I was getting sentences like "I was one time go store with play dog and look film." I seriously have alot of work to do with their grammar. I spent about 3 weeks ripping all their sentences apart and hammering in different grammatical rules, and I still feel like I didn't get that far. Yes I will admit that my grammar is terrible also, but its getting better. Now that i'm like a teacher person and all.
Anyways, the social norms also have a few kinks that need to be worked out still. Most of their stories involved killing things with AK47's or monsters eating their parents. A few had me being killed by Nemo and one of me fighting president Obama to the death. I said they had to describe their characters the best they could with the language they had and the girl had described Obama as such: "tall and thin and black like a savage." You can imagine my shock when reading that one. One girl wrote a story about a robot going back in time and killing Hitler and then after that killing all the Japanese people. Horrible I know, but I'll have to admit I laughed my ass off through most of them. If anything it let me get to know some of my students personalities more. There are quite alot of them.
Speaking of which, last week I went on my first field trip with the school. I had missed the last one because I was sick, as I often am. I got up early and watched the entire school pile onto about 40 busses, which was some sight to see. We all packed on the bus and headed off. We were going to a sad, sad place. I would soon learn.
As you can imagine a zoo in a country with seemingly no problem with animal abuse is a very cheerful place. We were ushered into the first attraction of the day; an animal circus. Out came unhappy black bears riding on bicycles. Which I didn't think was possible. They were chased with their owners holding little whips and they seemed to just be trying to ride away from them. Then came monkeys doing the tight rope walk and last a group of tigers and lions. There was two large tigers and three lions; two females and one very sickly looking male. They were showboated around with whips, some jumped through hoops and one walked on a ball. I was pretty upset about the whole situation and was glad to learn a lot of my students were too. But unfortunately, there is really nothing I can do about it. After the show came the endless snacks my students brought. They tried to get me to try every little thing they pulled out of their bag, Which would sound good except that this wasn't the good old chips and dunkaroos we got back home. This was China. They were munching on raw sea-weed and little packets of squid. Then came the chicken feet and finally a healthy afternoon snack of chicken fetus. That one really grosses me out. They let the chicken incubate a little more than usual until it starts to grow a little inside and then they sell and eat it at that stage. It's really messed up. And I thought our dinners we get here were bad. We left the zoo after seeing a few more sad monkeys and bears and a sea lion show with the dirtiest pool i've ever seen in my life. It was a great place. Let's say the zoo disappointed me a bit.
Back here at the residence everything's still going great. I'm still sleeping on the floor and showering in the dark. My shower hose exploded last week but I managed to patch it up with super glue. They have pretty much stopped caring about serving decent food to us downstairs. Its pig feet, cabbage and rice at least twice a week now and they seemed to have stopped giving us fruit as well. All in all, pretty good time. Mostly because this weekend i'm getting away from here and heading to Shanghai to see a Bob Dylan concert. It's his first time playing in Asia in his entire career. I'm pretty pumped. Why do we use that word anyways? Pumped? As an english teacher I think about this crap all the time now. Like the sentence I taught yesterday "I ride the ride." Confuses the hell out of them. Or how many words we have for "very good." the Chinese have one: "hen hao" or maybe "fei chang hao." We have: awesome, amazing, incredible, unbelievable, stupendous, brilliant, sweet, sick, great, fantastic, wonderful, sensational, fabulous, super, well, nice, mad shibby, tight and da bomb. English has an absurd amount of words and slang words describe the exact same thing.
I will try to keep my blog updated now that I have it working again. Hope people start to read it again. I'm sure there will be lots more adventures in my last few months here.
I finally got my blog working again! I thought the proxy that I have to use to bypass the firewall shut me down once and for all but I finally found another work around. Eat it Peoples Republic of China. It's been over a month now since I wrote a blog. For those people who seemed to be worried, no I didn't die in an earthquake. It seems geography of asia isn't a specialty of people back home and I got facebook messages of people wondering if I was hit by it. Wuhan is right smack in the middle of China, which is a damn big country. If anything I just felt the cheers in the street of Chinese people because they absolutely despise the Japanese in ways I can't fully understand. Oh and for those of you wondering what happened at the end of my Thailand trip, I ended up bailing on my flight back home and going to Hong Kong only to run out of money and get kicked out of my hostel. After wandering the streets for awhile I was rescued by my buddy Sai who took me in to his home in another city called Guangzhou. It was an interesting end to a great vacation. Hong Kong was one of the nicest cities I've ever been in. Chinese people there are actually.. more civil.. they wait for cars and don't spit and smoke everywhere.
Anyways now that I'm back in China things are crazy as ever. I had the opportunity of experiencing chinese new year when I got back and that was terrifying to say the least. Think of 10 million chinese people with unlimited access to explosives, couple that with a complete disregard of safety and practically no laws and you have a fare idea of what happened. We decided to go to a bar in Hankou to have a casual beverage by the water and enjoy a nice "firework" show. As soon as I departed my house I quite literally thought the world was coming to an end. In every square, backyard, park, sidewalk and alleyway, people were setting off fireworks one after another. And I don't mean the little ones we can buy back home in Quebec. These were the full sized ones they use in controlled fireworks displays, all set off metres away from human beings and flying all over the streets. When we finally arrived at the small little bar on the river the owner said he had a "special treat" for us. His buddy pulled up in a truck and proceeded to unload a 5 foot tall mortar onto the public sidewalk, as well as other boxes full of every kind of firework imaginable. Without even motioning us to stand back he began to light them. Much to the despair of the crowds of people walking by, all hell started to break loose. I stood there in amazement and caution the whole time. These were very dangerous explosives being set up in the middle of a very busy street downtown, the cops seemed to just walk by and laugh and casually tell people they should probably keep their distance. One of the boxes exploded the wrong way and shot out at the cars on the street. Utter madness I tell you. When i thought i'd had enough we went down to the water where it was equally a warzone. About a thousand people were shooting all kinds of fireworks off into the water, some just on the ground, and some at eachother. The lack of safety here really makes me happy sometimes, as theres no way that kind of thing would fly back home. It's really hard to explain the madness I was witnessing. Every corner of your eye was filled with some explosion or you'd straight out be dodging something flaming coming at your head. It was Happy new year indeed.
My students are all back in learning mode. We were learning about writing stories last month so I had all three of my grade 5 classes attempt to write stories with the fractured english they knew. This turned out to be a terrible idea, but comical nonetheless. First of all I didn't realize the amount of time it would take to read, edit, mark and return 135 full page stories. I think I spent 6 hours one day doing nothing but marking. Second, some of them were so rediculous as to almost be unreadable, I was getting sentences like "I was one time go store with play dog and look film." I seriously have alot of work to do with their grammar. I spent about 3 weeks ripping all their sentences apart and hammering in different grammatical rules, and I still feel like I didn't get that far. Yes I will admit that my grammar is terrible also, but its getting better. Now that i'm like a teacher person and all.
Anyways, the social norms also have a few kinks that need to be worked out still. Most of their stories involved killing things with AK47's or monsters eating their parents. A few had me being killed by Nemo and one of me fighting president Obama to the death. I said they had to describe their characters the best they could with the language they had and the girl had described Obama as such: "tall and thin and black like a savage." You can imagine my shock when reading that one. One girl wrote a story about a robot going back in time and killing Hitler and then after that killing all the Japanese people. Horrible I know, but I'll have to admit I laughed my ass off through most of them. If anything it let me get to know some of my students personalities more. There are quite alot of them.
Speaking of which, last week I went on my first field trip with the school. I had missed the last one because I was sick, as I often am. I got up early and watched the entire school pile onto about 40 busses, which was some sight to see. We all packed on the bus and headed off. We were going to a sad, sad place. I would soon learn.
As you can imagine a zoo in a country with seemingly no problem with animal abuse is a very cheerful place. We were ushered into the first attraction of the day; an animal circus. Out came unhappy black bears riding on bicycles. Which I didn't think was possible. They were chased with their owners holding little whips and they seemed to just be trying to ride away from them. Then came monkeys doing the tight rope walk and last a group of tigers and lions. There was two large tigers and three lions; two females and one very sickly looking male. They were showboated around with whips, some jumped through hoops and one walked on a ball. I was pretty upset about the whole situation and was glad to learn a lot of my students were too. But unfortunately, there is really nothing I can do about it. After the show came the endless snacks my students brought. They tried to get me to try every little thing they pulled out of their bag, Which would sound good except that this wasn't the good old chips and dunkaroos we got back home. This was China. They were munching on raw sea-weed and little packets of squid. Then came the chicken feet and finally a healthy afternoon snack of chicken fetus. That one really grosses me out. They let the chicken incubate a little more than usual until it starts to grow a little inside and then they sell and eat it at that stage. It's really messed up. And I thought our dinners we get here were bad. We left the zoo after seeing a few more sad monkeys and bears and a sea lion show with the dirtiest pool i've ever seen in my life. It was a great place. Let's say the zoo disappointed me a bit.
Back here at the residence everything's still going great. I'm still sleeping on the floor and showering in the dark. My shower hose exploded last week but I managed to patch it up with super glue. They have pretty much stopped caring about serving decent food to us downstairs. Its pig feet, cabbage and rice at least twice a week now and they seemed to have stopped giving us fruit as well. All in all, pretty good time. Mostly because this weekend i'm getting away from here and heading to Shanghai to see a Bob Dylan concert. It's his first time playing in Asia in his entire career. I'm pretty pumped. Why do we use that word anyways? Pumped? As an english teacher I think about this crap all the time now. Like the sentence I taught yesterday "I ride the ride." Confuses the hell out of them. Or how many words we have for "very good." the Chinese have one: "hen hao" or maybe "fei chang hao." We have: awesome, amazing, incredible, unbelievable, stupendous, brilliant, sweet, sick, great, fantastic, wonderful, sensational, fabulous, super, well, nice, mad shibby, tight and da bomb. English has an absurd amount of words and slang words describe the exact same thing.
anyways. Off-topic there.
I will try to keep my blog updated now that I have it working again. Hope people start to read it again. I'm sure there will be lots more adventures in my last few months here.
love
your hero,
Corey
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