The run down

Who?  

 My students are 19 to 20 year old Chinese college students in their first year at a technical school for hotel management, hence the name Qingdao Hotel Management College.  All of my students are hotel management majors but the school also offers cuisine, tourism, customs reporting, business English, and exhibition majors. 

90% of my students are from the Shandong province and the rest are from as far away as Inner Mongolia, Yunnan, and Hunan. Of the Shandong students, 25% of them are from Qingdao and the others are from other cities of varying sizes including Heze, Jinan, Weifang, and Zibo, but there are also many students from smaller towns and villages. 

This is a public university and the tuition is about 6000RMB per semester (so I hear).  This isn't expensive, but it isn't cheap.  I am more often than not, the first foreign teacher they have ever had and one of the first for them to speak English with. 

What?  

I teach oral English which pretty much means that I have free reign to do anything.  I do have a book that I loosely follow, but for the most part it is up to me to fill an hour and a half with "The Alison Show."  Here's a rough format of my classes:

- Attendance (10-15 minutes): I may or may not ask them a question to answer when I call their name.  This week I did "If you had 300RMB what would you do?"
- Read the dialogue (20 minutes)
- Create your own dialogue (20 minutes): They do this with their partners
- Performances
- Sing a song/ Game:  This week I played a number writing team relay game where I called out a large number or price and they had to write it correctly on the board to earn their team a point.  Girls vs. boys was a riot!
- Movies: I showed them "Twilight" last semester and am going to show them "The Notebook" next month.  I will probably show another movie towards the end, but I try not to use movies too often unless as a reward for doing something huge like a midterm.

When? 

I have nine classes a week consisting of 50-60 students per class.  My earliest classes are at 8:00 - 9:40 am (with 10 minute break) and my last period is from 3:20 - 4:50 pm (no break, poor kids).  I also take my own Chinese classes downtown three times a week for two hours at a time.  Besides going to classes and teaching classes, I also go to the gym nearby frequently to pretend I'm not in China. 

On the weekends I also have two side-jobs.  I teach a 14-year old daughter of one of my bosses's friends that I basically do whatever random English assignments I want to do with.  Her English is nearly fluent and she is from a very wealthy family.  My other side job should be starting soon and I am helping a coworker with his own private students and assisting with middle school students.  I'll let you know how that goes...

Where?

Qingdao Hotel Management College in Qingdao, Shandong province.

Why?

I'm still trying to figure this out too... Ok, kidding.  I studied abroad my junior year of college in China and have wanted to come back ever since!  I enjoy China, meeting Chinese people, and learning the language, so it seemed only natural to return after graduation. 

How?

I don't know how I manage to teach this many students.  It's frustrating and rewarding at the same time and involves speaking very, very s-l-o-w-l-y, repeating myself, and creativity to figure out how to keep them entertained week after week. 

So that's my life as I know it right now.  I'm pretty settled back in to my life here, having just finished my third full week back in China, and am looking forward to a full semester of teaching.  I can't wait until it gets warm and I can finally enjoy the beaches and outdoor activities that I came to Qingdao for! 

CANADIA FTW

Conversation between me (A) and an elderly foreign teacher from Canada (C)

C: Hi, my name is *********.
A: Nice to meet you, I'm Alison.
C: Your English is really good.
A: Thanks...
C: 为什么? (Why? *also tone-less)
A: 我是美国人。 ( I am an American.)
C: Oh have you lived abroad?
A: I grew up in America.
(Canadian looks really puzzled and then leaves)

TIC = This is China

Today when I was walking back from the gym I saw a man on the street just strolling along with two dead turtles hanging on a string.  Their necks were all stretched out and swinging as he casually walked down the road.  I felt slightly better when I realized that the Chinese people were also staring at him and another man even jumped out of the way and said something like "Oh crap!"

My big China moment for the week though has to do with the fact that I thought I had some sort of respiratory infection.  I started coughing up some nasty stuff on Thursday and had a pretty terrible throat-ache and uncomfortable feeling in my nasal passages.  I woke up on Friday feeling no better and complained about it to my coworkers and even my Chinese teacher, who all said they were experiencing the same thing and we all blamed it on the change in weather, since this week it has gone from below freezing to about 50 during the day. 

Then today I woke up and I thought I was in Beijing. 

The sky was pretty much orange and I could barely see the road that is about 200 yards in front of my building.  I went outside and it was super windy and at points I had to walk backward against the wind because there was too much dust in my face to actually see where I was going.  I should have worn my face mask.

So there you go, my second sand storm in China and my first in Shandong.  Today there was a sand storm in Beijing and apparently it has also reached down here in Qingdao and even as far as Shanghai.  Apparently this is the first sandstorm in Shandong in a long time and possibly ever. 

And if you're not grossed out enough by China, apparently one tenth of all cooking oil in China is actually drainage oil.  Why am I here again? 

On the plus side, this allows expats to start our own FML site: http://www.fmychinalife.com/

I should be used to this by now

 (clam farms in Qingdao, I think)

Words/ phrases I hope to never hear again after leaving China:

- That is lovely
- "just so-so"
- It is so interesting
- delicious foods
- "and so on..."
- What a pity!
- Nice to meet you.
- play with my friends

This list will probably grow longer as my second term progresses, but I am kind of sick of correcting the same mistakes over and over again.  Plus, I can't correct flat out awkward or old-fashioned English.

Otherwise, my weekend was fun because I met another English teacher and we went to "hike" around the 石老人 ("stone old man") area of Qingdao but ended up climbing a random rock.  It was a really windy day but was a nice change from winter -- it was great to be outside again!  We did wander across a strange "Bear Performance Park" where we took photos like this:

 I think this park is some sort of zoo meets Banjo Kazooie ride -- pretty scary, huh?  I also treated myself to a latte from Starbucks on Saturday before coming back to my apartment.  America!

I start Chinese lessons again this week and it's finally warming up just a little.  There was a giant storm on Sunday, complete with thunder, lightning, and flash flooding.  Considering that I am on a coastal town in the north, I didn't know this was possible.  It's nice to get back into a routine of things here, but I am eagerly awaiting my first long weekend vacation!

I think the sky just broke

I hear fireworks almost every day and sometimes even at night (for some reason a lot of them are set off during the day).  Chinese people light fireworks for the New Year, for birthdays, and especially for weddings.  I'm convinced they also just like setting off very large fireworks, too.

I can't blame them.  Fireworks are pretty awesome.  But these aren't the fireworks we buy for the 4th of July over here.  These are the huge boxes that you buy semi-legally to set off in large fields behind a house crossing your fingers that the cops won't show up and write you a ticket.

One of my first nights here, the chefs that work in the school cafeteria set off one of these fireworks boxes right outside my building, scared the shit out of me and a bunch of girls outside, and set off a car alarm.

Yesterday I was riding the bus back to campus and there were several fireworks boxes lined up in a parking lot outside of a restaurant, about 10 feet from a main road with many people standing in the parking lot just watching.  I should also mention that I was the only one craning my neck out the bus to watch these fireworks and the rest of the Chinese people on the bus just continued with their own things, despite the explosions overhead.

No wonder things like the CCTV Tower burned down because of illegal fireworks.  Granted, they also set off fireworks inside a building that didn't have sprinklers.  TIC, man.

On another note, I have a student named Fantasy.  A male student named Fantasy.  He kind of looks like Edward Scissorhands and even wore a silver metallic blazer to class. 

It's just too perfect.

Ahhhh!!!

(taken from PostSecret)

Get a proxy like the rest of us, dumbass.

And I'm baaaaaaack!

Today it snowed in Qingdao.  This is unacceptable seeing that it is March and it has been below freezing for four months now.  Otherwise, I'm pretty much settled in and have started teaching again.

I have a whopping nine classes this semester, seven of which are the same as last term.  This means I have about 500 students total.  There are pros and cons to having the same students.

Pros
- I don't have to learn 500 new names.
- I don't have to re-train the students to do what I want.
- They are used to my voice and rhythm of speech.
- They know I mean business because they saw the grades I gave last term.

Cons
- I can't reuse lesson plans from last term.
- Those that I failed or gave bad grades to may be harboring ill will towards me.
- I have to think of new tricks, games, and methods of keeping them in line.
- More work for me, basically.

International Women's Day 

 Obesity competition to Celebrate Women's Day in China

Nevertheless, this week started out pretty nicely with Monday being International Women's Day.  I received a nice card and a flower from one of my classes and then was bussed over to a ladies' luncheon hosted by my university for all the female employees.  It was a huge lunch complete with karaoke and raffle prizes!

After the lunch the women were given half of the day off and there were buses going downtown and to various shopping areas but I totally missed the memo on this (I was told about the lunch about 5 minutes before I had to get on the bus) so had no money and came back to campus.  Some people get the whole day off!  America should really take note and celebrate the holiday.  I also got a chance to see my boss drunk at lunch, so that was a bonus treat. 

And the weirdness starts...

Chinese students are trained from the time they are young to stand up and greet the teacher in unison but I have been spared this form of mass forced screaming until this week.  Basically, when the bell rings, the class monitor shouts (in English):

"STAND UP!"

After which all the students say,

"GOOD MORNING MISS ALISON!"

Then the monitor says,

"SIT DOWN!"

And they sit down as I laugh at them and then they nervously laugh at me, because they know that I think this is all very funny.

I also had some students that decided to rename themselves over break, including:
- Naruto
- bluice (I convinced him to go by Blue, complete with a capital letter and not a fake compound word)
- Lone Los (previously Andy Zhang who tried to name himself Amvipe last semester, a pretty brilliant attempt at phonetically spelling out 'MVP')
- Danny Nowitski (previously just Nowitski but I think he realized that it was a little ridiculous so he added a first name to his sirname)

It is tuesday and I am already over half done with my teaching hours this week. I guess that is what happens when you have two classes on Monday and FOUR on Tuesday.  Meaning, I am teaching from 8am to 5pm with only a break for lunch.

Otherwise, I'd really appreciate a slice of chocolate cake, a curry puff, and a hot fudge sundae right about  now.