My Daily Life

Can you imagine any more boring content for a blog post? I've heard from a few people who are a little curious what my day is like here in China. They must either love me a lot and really be interested, or they are very disturbed and be really interested. And so, by popular demand (the same 'popular' that 'demanded' the Spice Girls and Hansen when I was in 5th grade, but not the same 'popular' that 'demanded' spray cheese, carne asada burritos and the massage Lay-Z Boy), here is what I'm doing:

Some days we go into English classes to talk to students. Usually it's a room that's too small and very echo-ey, so conversation is fairly difficult. I don't know if our teachers just don't like us very much, or they are trying to teach us a lesson, or they are simply not aware of what's going on, but we end up speaking in each 2-hour block about not much at all. It almost seems like the teachers want time off from teaching, so they send us American students in to babysit for 2 hours. I describe our classroom visits in a generally negative way because every time we go in, it's to a class mostly girls, and all they do is giggle the whole time. Really I shouldn't be so adamant about it because the first few times we went to a class, it was pretty interesting and I really learned a lot. It's just getting old, is all.

When we're not being substitute teachers all morning, we sleep in a little bit, have breakfast at 8:00, then sit in lectures about different aspects on China given by faculty on campus. Those have been pretty interesting. My favorite was the one on education, surprisingly. Those classes are not, however, the anthropology or integrated world studies classes that I'm getting 6 credits for. Those classes are pretty much non-existant. Rick, before we left the states, made up a schedule of all the things we would be doing for all the days. Amoung those activities were blocks of time to meet as a group and discuss what we've been seeing and also for the teachers to...teach us. Those times, apparently, were simply to appease the district to let us come here and still get credit for it. Because what I'm learning through those 2 classes for which I'm supposedly getting credit is so nominal, I'm trying to make the most of the English classes by practicing Chinese and asking the students to teach me more Chinese. Today, Rick asked me to stop speaking Chinese in these classes. So that's two strikes. Furthermore, I was asked to submit a list of things that I'd like to do while here, among which were Economics and Sociology classes presented in Chinese. That has also been non-existant so far. But I haven't given up on it, and I'm hoping to get into a few of those classes in the next two weeks that we'll be here. So that's morning.

The afternoons I usually read the books that I've brought, take a nap, and then go play basketball with the boys at about 4:30 or 5:00 until 6:30 or 7:00. That's been very, very fun to do, playing basketball. We usually play 3-3 or 4-4, play to 4 points by ones, and then switch. They call fouls really easily, so it's sometimes a pretty slow game. But they don't check the ball on the in-bound or after a point, and ball goes to the winner after making a basket. I'm learning a lot about the Chinese people through basketball. It's not only one type of person that goes out and plays ball. It's not only the really smart, motivated students that play, but also the students who are just chillin' in their life and don't have any huge plans. That's very helpful to meet lots of different kinds of people. The biggest thing is that they don't hold a grudge! We're all pretty physical and aggressive, but it's all in good fun.

Then dinner is at 6:30. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner are pretty important. In America, we eat when we're hungry. But here, they eat when the schedule says so. So when not everybody shows up to meals, the cafeteria staff gets a little upset. After dinner, I usually try to meet up with some students afterward. I've learned more during b-ball and night time with the students and they learn more during that time about me and America than we do during any classroom time, I'm sure of it. If it weren't for those out-of-the-classroom activities, I would be a lot more grumpy. Thank goodness for sports and recreation.