The First Two Years of Conquering the Tundra

I head back to China in about 10 hours.  I haven't written much about this trip since it was supposed to be a surprise visit to some of my friends, mainly Anne, in Morgantown.  It's been a great trip and going back to China is going to be incredibly difficult (partially because Continental Airlines is really lame).  I'd like to take this chance to thank the people that made this trip awesome.  Thanks to my dad and Carolyn for flying me in and letting me use their car to travel around; my mom for taking me to the dentist and not complaining when I came back at 8am after a night on the town in Parkersburg; to Bryn and Jamie for letting me stay with them and drink their coffee and for being awesome; to Baker for having a decent party for once in his life; to Nick, Ben, Stoltz, Rollins, Andy Iafrate and Lukas for coming to visit me from far away places; to Anne and Tank for coming to visit me in Delaware; to Josh for tattooing me and Bryn for making fun of me while I was in pain; to Jimmy for being nice to me after I put chapstick in his hair (super thanks if we get this proxy server thing worked out); to Will for setting up my secret visit to Morgantown; and to Caroline and Ilya for being awesome hosts in Philadelphia; and to anyone else who thinks I need to thank them.  Extra special thanks to Ryan Rollins for now using a hair straightener and still letting me mix gross drinks for him after all these years.

                                           

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An_unusually_sappy_thank_you_t.zip (8527 KB)

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Camera malfunction.

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The daily special at a shop near my dad's house.

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On the second stop of my North American tour.

                           

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Back_in_America.zip (463 KB)

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The new local bar made a considerable amount of money from my potential alcoholism this weekend.  

               

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Various_bar_photos.zip (1462 KB)

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I don't work on Friday so we celebrated Halloween during my classes today.  After talking about jack-o-lanterns, vampires, and trick or treating; and teaching them about werewolves and flaming bags of shit; I set up a mummy-off for a couple of classes.  I divided the class into groups and had them race to create a mummy.  The first group to cover their mummy with two roles of toilet paper was the winner.  This task had little to do with learning English and a hell of a lot to do with my own entertainment.

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The Magic Flute is a bar in Shenyang.  I'm not sure if they're named after the Mozart opera or the level jumping thing from Super Mario Bros 3.  Either way, they have beer.

                   

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At_the_Magic_Flute.zip (1808 KB)

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Back to work after over a month of vacation.  I only teach about 8 hours this week because the new students have some kind of orientation/military training or something for the first few weeks.  I brought in the game Apples to Apples, I wasn't sure it was going to work but when I heard one of the students say "Fuzzy Adolf Hitler!"  I knew it was the perfect game for my classes.

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My only work this summer, save two one-hour American Culture classes with some MBA students, is two weeks of kids classes.  I just finished the first week and it went pretty well.  I always get a little anxious about teaching children but it usually ends up being fun and way more entertaining than teaching college students.  In my experience, kids always way more interested in learning than my college students.  Most of them try to respond to every question I ask, regardless of if they're sure of the right answer or not.  It helps that many of them have a good handle on English, about half of them have better listening and speaking skills than the MBA students who will go to America in less than a month.  It also helps that kids love me.  I've never treated children like children.  I don't speak down to them or go apeshit when they get an answer right and clap and praise them like they're my dog who just brought me the shoe I was looking for.  I talk to them like they're people.  They also like to pet my hairy arms and beard, so I've got that going for me.

Most of our class is centered around fairy tales.  We talk about a different tale each day; we'll read the story, go over vocabulary words, play games and sometimes I'll have them act out the parts.  We've done the Princess and the Pea, Cinderella, and Goldilocks so far.  Friday, we made western food including baked beans, garlic bread, deviled eggs, pizza, and chips and salsa.  Actually, we only actually made the deviled eggs and garlic bread.  The rest of it was just store bought or delivered.

A lot more preparation goes into kids classes though.  With my college students, I can plan for a discussion or sometimes we'll go off on a tangent that will take up the entire class.  With the kids classes, I usually have to plan every minute.  This summer I lucked out because Cythina, the Chinese teacher that works with me during class and helps explain things, had the whole two weeks planned in advance with another foreign teacher.  When that dude (read: douche bag) basically quit the night before classes were to start, I was called in to pinch-teach, so most of it was set up for me.

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A few weeks ago, I ran across a Lomo store on Taobao.com that sells Fuji Instax film for about half the price of anywhere else on the interweb.  Since I have absolutely nothing for my teaching assistants to do, I gave one of them 400rmb and had her buy 10 boxes.  I'm fairly sure this is going to become a monthly expense for me.

               

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Class_in_an_Instant.zip (7921 KB)

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