Hi everyone! I’ve been in my village for a week now and am loving the experience. We heard from our program director that our village is the only one with showers. In today’s 95 degree heat + humidity I’m really grateful for that. A little about the village: I’m actually living in a village called shanghu, but teaching in quanfeng (about a 12 minute walk). The village sits in a valley of green farmland surrounded by a ring of mountainous bamboo forests. Each day trucks sputter by carrying bamboo trunks twice the length of the truckbeds they ride on. The buildings of the village are mostly concrete with terra cotta roofs. Many have large wooden doors and red door hangings at the entrance despite their meager interior furniture and decorations. I’m supposed to be teaching 6th grade , but my class is the oldest one offered in the area so I basically have any middle and high schoolers who want to learn english this summer. This means I have 41 kids on my class roster (usually 35 a day show up) and they range from 6th to 10th grade. My kids have been learning english for a number of years and know a lot of vocab already. However their ability to make and understand sentences is verrry weak. They are very used to mere regurgitation of vocab. So were working on full sentences, creativity, and pronounciation through games and songs. A couple semi-sad ‘only in China’ stories: 1. The day we practiced how to order in a restaurant (one of the most practical lessons we could teach) a few girls came up after class and asked daniel and I to teach them how to take english tests and offered to pay us if we did. We obviously said no. 2. We learned a number of foods then asked the kids to place an order with one of the assigned classroom waiters. One group of 5 girls all ordered the same thing. When I asked why they did that and if they really all wanted the same thing, they said in china we all want the same thing. While american middle school girls might also find safety in numbers, I was shocked at this display of selfawareness about Chinas homogeneity. I’m growing to understand my host family’s accent little by little, but when they speak in dialect it is still incomprehensible. We went through a patch of eating the same food for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for 16 straight meals but were getting some variety now. Thank goodness! I miss you all and really appreciate your emails.
Xoxo,
Mica
Hi! We arrived in the village yesterday after about 6.5 hours on a bus that was hotter inside than out (Which is saying a lot). We were immediately invited to have watermelon with the nanjing university students who will be our teaching partners. I’m going to teach 26 6th graders 3 classes a day with a nanjing student named Daniel. (I don’t remember his chinese name.) He knows tons about America from kanye west and christina aguilera to the fact that the rockets are thinking about trading tracy mcgrady for amari stotlemeyer. He is eager to use his laptop to show our students American music and videos, and seems to be excited about creative teaching methods. Overall the nanjing students english is just a bit better than my chinese so we operate in this weird chinglish limbo language. The village is one huge contradiction (much like modern China in general). We go to the bathroom in an outhouse with a hole and 2 wooden boards to stand on (my neighbors’ bathroom also houses the family’s 2 pigs). Chickens and dogs roam around the village freely and we wake when the roosters start crowing. However my host mother has a large tv with a dvd player and karaoke machine in her bedroom. Food is so-so. Last night we had roasted bamboo, whole fish, tomatoes, and some sort of green veggie (along with a bowl of rice to mix everything in). The school is about ten minutes away, and we walk past the village coal mine and its soot covered workers to get there. I live with a husband, wife (who we call the chinese word for auntie: ayi), and grandma, and share a bed w my nanjing university living partner whose english name is kiwi. Ayi has 2 grown daughters who live in shanghai. Other relatives live down the road and brought their 4 and 9 year old kids over for karaoke last night. It is ridiculously hot. Last night ayi was making fun of my sweat. In general the local dialect and even their accented mandarin is incomprehensible but I’m trying to converse with them. The nanjing students understand most of what the family says so they often relay my chinese with more familiar/native pronunciation. To me, it sounds like they are saying exactly what I am but my family seems to understand it better from the nanjing students lips than mine. Sorry this is super long. Ill try and send weekly updates.’
Xoxo,
Me
