The screams eminating from Robert's School are usually caused by excruciating grammar rules. But this weekend kids have been cowering in corridors, falling down flights of stairs, weeping, wailing, whining and wincing... ...can't imagine why!!
Our school goes crazy for Halloween with scary decorations throughout the school, teachers and students getting dressing up, and grammar replaced by games! The Halloween theme this time is "Zombies versus Plants", a wildly popular internet game here in China, apparently. Halloween isn't really my cup of tea, but having missed it last year (in the UK) I'm doing my best to get into the swing of it. I've made a new "sword through the chest" outfit, as few folk will have seen it before. It caused plenty of screams in 2007 and 2008 and the addition this time of a severed hand clutching the sword can only add to the shock factor! Ava and I were hungry guests of our good friends, Peter and Judy, last night. Judy was a teacher at Robert's School for some time and they return to China perdiodically. After a yummy home-made meal (spag bog and jammy custardy sponge) we embarked on an epic game of "Risk". It was eventually won by Peter - not surprisingly as he is a former naval officer (...and vicar ...and beekeeper... long story!). Today is Mid-Autumn Festival in China. Shops close, people gaze at the moon (were it not so cloudy) while eating dry "mooncakes", and (in Kunming at least) private cars are banned from the roads for a day! I got a few little presents from students for Teacher's Day, a couple of weeks ago, but was surprised when one of my students gave me a "Mid-Autumn Festival present" the other day, especially as it was a magazine about ballroom dancing - not a subject I follow too closely! But, as Bess patiently explained, she actually features in the magazine, as her main hobby is dancing [see photo]. It was even more surprising to me, as she's one of my most petite students (not much more than a metre tall?) But she looks great on the photos, and it was a timely reminder to me that the 100 or so students I teach each week have wider lives outside their weekly English lesson. My school started using a new entrance a few months ago (rather than share one with the barbecue restaurant on the ground floor), which was made possible by buying out the next-door honey shop and knocking down the back wall! It has looked a bit "functional" since then, until this weekend saw it decorated with six large, eye-catching posters showing past school activities. The two prize-winning students, top-left in the photo, are from one of my classes, while the top-right picture shows an intake of Lattitude students (a training course which I run every 6 months). And finally I'm the one in blue jeans sitting on the right of the left-centre picture! So, fame at last ....almost! It seems like people can't stay away from Kunming for too long. My friends and fellow RSL teachers Peter and Judy arrived back from the UK yesterday for a few months back in "Mingers", and my old Kunming friend Emily arrives back today after a couple of years in England [left in photo, enjoying a last game of Mahjong with my UK friend Vix]. Then, my parents are planning a second trip here in February next year and others have promised (threatened?) to make 2011 the year they make it out here too. It's really great to have so many visitors and "returners", so why not take the plunge and come visit me (us!) in China next year! A new term starts today. We had the regular "whole school meeting" yesterday followed by a big meal. The school appears to be developing fast - based at 5 sites now (compared to two when I joined 3 years ago) and offering 3 languages (only one when I started). One of those languages will be Mandarin (for Western students) which I hope to take advantage of. My Chinese is pretty rubbish after 8 years here! The" start of term" meeting seems to get bigger every time. I probably know the names of about half of the 80+ staff, but a fast turnover makes it hard to keep up. Robert and Rachel (owners of the school where I work) are always very willing to share the spoils of a visit to the UK with us eager foreign teachers! My usual request for a pork pie wouldn't have worked this time as I was on holiday when they returned and it would have gone off. But they were kind enough to compensate with a large pot of Marmite, some unexpected, but welcome, custard sauces and a dozen very useful large dice. Quite a haul. Thanks guys! The term has finally come to an end. Much as I love the job here, the final month of every term is pretty awful, as the usual 18 hours of teaching a week gets doubled to "compensate" for the students daring to miss a few weeks of lessons in August. Students, teachers and administration staff gradually get more tired, stressed, or even ill. Many parents get annoyed at having to bring their kids to school during the weekdays or when their child is one of those who can't attend the make-up class and therefore falls behind. Class numbers oscillate wildly, making lesson preparation, homework checking and end-of-term tests a logistical nightmare. Still, I'm a small cog in a big machine and this is a very entrenched routine, passively accepted by the Chinese teachers (if not the foreign teachers!). Suffice to say, I'm looking forward to my trip to Thailand with Ava for the first two weeks of August. Some might call it a "holiday" but I see it more as "rescheduled work"! When the organisers of the, "Construction of Thoroughfares for Cultural and Media Cooperation Meeting" decided they needed some foreign faces amongst the thousand delegates for the TV cameras to pick out, they contacted Robert's School (and other places). Unfortunately Mark (a fellow teacher) and I drew the short straw and so found ourselves catching a coach to a hotel on the outskirts of Kunming at 7 o'clock this morning. The "meeting" turned out to be six hours of mind-numbingly boring speeches on, "the use of Renminbi currency as a common fiscal settlement instrument for Pan-Asian trade partners". Now I've been tricked into these thing before, so this time I came armed with a newspaper, an MP3 player and a Rubik's cube! However, after I'd finished all the news and the batteries had run out there was still 4 hours to go and there's only so much time you can spend trying to solve the Rubik's cube. So I drew a picture of a cowboy riding a horse... And if you want an idea of just how stupefyingly dull today was, just read the first sentence of the invitation letter (and yes, it's just ONE sentence!). Yesterday evening was the last adult class of the term (though we have a Graduation Party next week). I was on other "training" duties last year, but requested an adults class again this term, having missed the more "grown-up" atmosphere and regular trips into an unusually quiet school (adults classes take place three evenings a week). I've had the pleasure of a fun and very commmitted "Level One" group this time, too with all seven students attending most, or indeed all, of the forty 2-hour lessons. They are all promising to continue with me up to "Level Two" next term too, which will make for an excellent core group on which to hopefully build higher numbers. The children's lessons continue for six more weeks more though, with the crazy "double lessons system" through July (to compensate for the students daring to have a holiday in August!). But this weekend is Dragon Boat Festival - no classes - so Ava and I are driving the 6 hours down to Simao tonight to visit the LEAF family (and watch England's first World Cup match! Come on lads - do us proud!!).
It's exam time in China as literally millions of students sit the national College Entrance Exams, which sort out who can progress to University and who must settle for less prestigious further education or join the job pool. Pressure is intense - a recent study showed 62% of American High School students felt high levels of exam stress, while in Japan it was 69%. Korea was 75% but China topped the table with 86%! So it comes as little surprise that suicides and cheating are widespread. State school teachers often turn a blind eye to students cheating, knowing that their own pay will get docked if their students do badly in exams. I sometimes catch my own students trying to cheat in dictations or exams. They may get away with it in a class of 50+ students, but it's easy enough to spot in a class of 8-12! There was a programme yesterday here on Chinese TV showing some of the high tech methods some students use to cheat - earpieces, internet phones, glasses with mini-cameras, even small digital screens built into erasers. Less high tech, but possibly more insidious, are the incressing number of public school teachers who offer their students paid-for "extra lessons" with the promise that this is where the real exam secrets will be explained. If they do have inside information that is only being passed on to the richer students, that's pretty shocking. If they don't have any special secrets to share, then they are just playing on the exam nerves to make money - equally reprehensible. Tuesday is Children's Day (is there any country other than China that celebrates a Children's Day?) and my school focused on the theme of the environment (again!) to mark the occasion. Students were encouraged to place handprints on large posters of the world [see photo], and wear green ribbons on their wrists. And an hour of our normal 2-hours lessons was spent playing educational games with our students and handing out small prizes and gifts. The kids loved the "Frogs & Shark", "Skittles", "Word Battleships" and "Boom Bang Magnet" games. I was just happy to be sitting down for some parts of the lesson - my dizziness is back with a vengeance and it was a struggle to do any teaching. Everything seemed to be in a fog. Really frustrating after a month without any health problems. I'm off to see the doctor yet again on Monday morning. Today's "lesson" with my Level One adult class took place in a nearby Indian restaurant. We have a social meal out once a term. For most of them it was their first try of Indian food and the dishes generally went down well. We finished the evening off with some silly games and magic tricks (as ever). Back to the textbooks next lesson! Today I was part of a team delivering water to a drought-stricken part of Yunnan. Our school had raised enough to buy 250 large bottles of water and the money to replace a broken water tank there. We set off in a convey of a truck (carrying the water) and three cars but, within 20 minutes, we had all become separated from each other and everyone was equally lost! It turned out that only the truck driver knew the way there, and he was long gone. The "2 hour" journey finally took us 5½ hours! The Primary School is in a very picturesque setting, but although the school buildings looked quite modern, the state of the children's clothing showed the very real poverty in the area. After the water bottles were unloaded by the excited students [see photo] there followed the usual inappropriate school meeting on the playground - 250 little kids forced to stand to attention in 40ºC heat while leaders shouted at them with microphones and I gave a short, and probably unintelligible, speech in simple Chinese. Then we handed out a bottle of water, a notebook, a pencil and an eraser to each student. We also brought a large poster, signed with the best wishes of hundreds of our Kunming students [see photo]. As I wandered around the school, the students were very fearful of me at first (their first foreigner up close?) but warmed up with a couple of magic tricks and a few smiley handshakes. Later we visited a local village perched on a hill but were asked not to take photographs as (a) it was so poor that the villagers were embarrassed, and (b) it isn't actually as poor as some people think and they didn't want donations (like the surrounding fields) to "dry up"! A great example of Chinese "doublethink"! However, it's no laughing matter to be dependent on crops that fail when the rains don't come. My school seems to be experiencing better-than-ever quality amongst its teaching staff these days. Certainly, the current ten foreign teachers are as professional and reliable as any I've worked with over the last few years. So it was particularly sad to say goodbye last week to a top teacher - Leo [left in photo] - off to Eastern China to seek his fortune in the cabling market!? He was one of the few Chinese teachers who regularly interacted with the foreign teachers, helped by his fluent English, but also because he's a genuinely kind and outgoing chap. We're still in touch by e-mail. Next to him in the photo is Rex (who supplied the UFO photos in the previous blog entry) and then Sherry, my Chinese teacher. Robert and Rachel are in the middle, though I'm not sure who the strange guy in front of them is...? This weekend marks the first round of my school's annual English Speaking Competition. Students are required to write and memorise a 1-2 minute speech (or for the lazier or more confident ones, make an impromptu speech on a random subject) and then recite it in front of the class and a visiting "judge" teacher. The second round is in two weeks time, when the 3-4 class winners compete against winners from other classes. The photo shows my crazy Friday evening class who tend to do particularly well in these competitions - not because of their teacher, but because the class was initially formed to "hothouse" the most gifted students from other classes. To celebrate Easter and raise money for Yunnan's drought victims, our school boiled up over 100 eggs, got all the teachers to paint them and then sold them to the students for a 10RMB (£1) donation each. Some sold better than others, and I was told my three were amongst the last to go! I can't believe a self-portrait, a snake wrapped around an egg and an alien face were that unpopular! The adult students from all the school's classes were invited to a party yesterday evening to celebrate April Fool's Day and Easter. There were plenty of snacks, drinks, silly games [charades in the photo] and prizes so, after a little reticence, the students mixed well, using only English (nearly!). Two of my students, "Sally" and "Alice", are on the far left (one behind Mark's arm) and another, "Rose", is in the centre in checks. About 20 students came, plus another ten staff and teachers. Much enjoyed by all. I returned to teaching this weekend after 6 months off. Sadly, some of my old classes have been returned to me with very few students left and, unless more join up, a couple of them may be cancelled. Student numbers often fluctuate, but I've yet to "lose" a class for lack of students. My 5D "special talent" class [see picture] gave me a warm welcome back yesterday by spraying me with crazy string on arrival! To be fair, they had also decorated the class with Welcome signs and bought me some of my favourite dumplings and a big cream cake. Plus each had a brought me a gift from a recent holiday (Laos, Beijing, Dali, Canada, etc). Nice to be appreciated! I've managed to get through my three classes so far on adrenalin and bloody-mindedness. But I've left each feeling totally wiped out, with neck pains, dizziness, chest tightness and headaches. I'll be amazed and relieved to get through next week's 7-day training course in one piece! I popped in to the school today, hoping to be greeted with, "Hi PJ, welcome back". Instead, there were 5 unfamilar secretarial faces on the front desk, one of whom said, "Hello sir, can I help you?". I felt like pointing to the photo of me on the wall there and whimpering, "I used to be famous here!". But it's because there has been the usual high turnover of secretarial staff. There's lots of new fresh-faced Chinese teachers too, plus we've lost two foreign teachers and gained two new ones. I've been called "PJ" since joining the school two years ago (as when I started, there was already another foreign teacher called "Paul") but I've decided it's a good time to revert to being "Paul" once again. Other changes include a new barbecue restaurant which has opened up below our school [see photo]. Apparently the smoke and fumes it generates have rendered two of our classrooms unuseable! There's also a big new sign as you enter the school with the predictably Chinglish title, "Robert's School of Languages - establishing for 8 years". Groan. Healthwise, I've been very shakey since returning and not sleeping particularly well. Hopefully it's just temporary fallout from the stresses of travelling, lifting luggage, unpacking and jet lag. We'll see in time. It's been good to see old friends again though. I had a nice chat about next term with Rob (my boss and friend) this afternoon and I'm looking forward to a quiet evening with Jiajia ("Ava") later today. She's been having fun shopping for me over recent months and arrived yesterday with a big bag full of "fashionable clothes", including two pairs of jeans, a sweatshirt, a dressing gown, a new rucksack and some enormous hiking boots [see photo]! All in all, it's great to be back. One of the nice things about living in China is avoiding the stress and commercialism of Christmas, which is already an ever-present pressure here in the UK, in early November. But being in Britain at this time of year does mean I get to avoid the Halloween and Christmas extravaganzas in my Kunming school. Although I know the students thoroughly enjoy them, I'm a bit of a humbug and just see them as a interuption to the teaching! This year, the theme was "Harry Potter" and, as you can see in the photo, the staff went all out for wizardly effect. After two days of seemingly improving health, today was a bit of a setback, with a return to swollen glands, feverish turns and weakness. I did manage to give blood though, and hope that the test results next week will shed some light on this illness, which seems to be dragging on forever. It was my last day of teaching in the DaGuan branch today. Students were in tears as they said goodbye to me... no, not really, just the usual "see you P.J." I like to think they didn't fully comprehend the thought of a whole term without my presence! The teachers had a clearer idea, "We'll miss you P.J. - it will be nice and quiet for a while!". Hmmm... The floor below our school has been given over to a exhibition of black and white photos taken on Chinese trains. It's really good - capturing the joys, perils and bizarreness of Chinese train travel. Although I tend to fly more these days, I've done my fair share of long train journeys in China in my time, and have seen plenty of "sleeping on a luggage rack" and "entering a train through the window" sights [see photo]. We had an odd experience in class the other day. The lesson was about a haunted house. Before we started the students all told me they didn't believe in ghosts but then, as the taped story came to the final twist, the machine suddenly started going slow and garbled. I quickly stopped the tape recorder, to find that it had chewed up the tape inside! The students were suddenly a bit more spooked! I wound the tape back up, popped it back in the machine and hit play. Suddenly the tape flew out of the front of the machine and onto the floor. The students now started to look very pale and I was a bit shocked too! I never did find out why or how that happened. I had a nice surprise package of cookies in the post today, sent from Thailand! A few weeks ago (before it was blocked) I read an ex-colleague's new boss's Facebook status, "Baking cookies" and jokingly added, "Send some to China!". Well she did! Despite being individually wrapped and boxed, they got smashed into crumbs en route, but are still very tasty. Thanks Pim! I've got less than two weeks of teaching to go now before holidays (I'm off to Sri Lanka in August), training (a dozen foreign teenagers arrive early September) and then heading back to the U.K. for a few months (before returning to Kunming early next year). I've started to feel very at home at the school and it will feel strange to hand my classes over to someone else, even if only for a term. Stranger still to have a few weeks in August and September without any need to study, prepare or work. If I stay well, it should be rather nice, I think! |
AuthorPaul Hider lives and works in Kunming (SW China) and regularly updates this blog about his life there. Past blog entries
May 2024
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