Where to begin?

March 29, 2014

Where to begin?  It’s been a whirlwind of a first few days.  There are so many things to write, but for now I’ll stick with the basics of what I’m doing/going to do, some a little stranger than others.  In one sentence, my role here is resident English expert.

It seems that regardless of the content or anything else, I’m perceived as this ultra capable English teacher, by the fact that I’m a native speaker (and have some teaching experience).  It’s a little daunting but at the same time under whelming.  Daunting in that I want to perform and honestly do my best to support the learning of those that I teach; under whelming in that it seems that whatever I do, no one’s going to be let down – I’m infallible.  I’ll explain some more.

One of the teaching roles I have is in a local university.  What am I teaching??  Well, I’m teaching terms related to airplane assembly/structure…what do I know about that?  Well…nothing.  Yeah, nothing.  This is where the daunting comes in.  I don’t have the slightest idea what it is I’m supposed to teach, but my host 杨先生 does have a good idea and I believe will be helping me prepare.  On the bright side, I simply have to prepare one lesson a week and repeat that five times, for the next four weeks.  That is every morning, Monday through Friday.

In the afternoons, I report to a local high school.  This teaching role, while totally without direction, is much less intimidating, and falls very much on the under whelming side of things.  The one challenge is going to be figuring out a way to teach about 50 kids (that’s one classroom) who are well adjusted to chanting, lack pretty much any functional oral language skills and are super excited that an American guy is in their class (one class broke into cheering and applause – it was deafening).  Still, challenges or not, it seems like I could just talk about cleaning the toilet and they’d love me for it.

Finally, I have my daily role as private English language instructor.  Again, it seems like there is no expectation as to what I’ll do except for speak (and teach) English, so whatever I do is fine.  While this is always one-on-one, it isn't so intimidating, just exhausting as I try to come up with something to teach the kids I’m working with.  And they are all kids.  So far the oldest student I've had has been 12.  Today alone I've taught 6 different students, but most days it’s just two students each evening.  If I just did this all day I’d get rich real fast.

So when am I practicing Chinese, you ask?  Fortunately, there is time between all these different teaching gigs, and I do think I’m improving, even over these few first days.  Am I getting as much time as I’d like?  Maybe not, but I also don’t know how much I’d get anyways, as I’m not out on the streets talking to random people…it’s just not my way…but being in the different schools and living with my host family, I find ample opportunity to practice, whether to survive or because I’m forcing myself.

Overall, I’m doing all right.  It’s been a bit of a rough start with the feelings I've mentioned, as well as feeling isolated (yes, I miss home…Blake, our babies…a lot), a little bit exhausted on English instruction, and then having had a stomach ache the past two days.  But otherwise, I’m doing well and think this week is really going to help me adjust and start the month out strong.

_randal