Monday, January 10, 2011

First Point of Contact

Blog post from September 16.

This is an email that I sent August 30. It is hard to believe that it is now Sept 16... my WORD time moves fast, and my language skills aren't keeping up with it... bagh.

another update to come. But stories first!
~linds


This is pretty poorly organized, but I'm brainstorming right now, so I'm writing out of the right-side of my brain.

Life is plugging along. Classes start tomorrow, and I'm just finishing up brainstorming my complete syllabus for my classes. I will be teaching six classes, three of sophomores and three of freshmen. The Sophomore class is titled, "Critical Analysis Through Film." It was originally an audio-visual film class, but I'm tweaking it with the huge amounts of creative freedom and hands-off authority we're all experiencing. The school loves us and respects us, but we are also jewels on their crown, to a large degree. They care about the classes we teach, but value our nationality and language skills more... if that makes sense. We have so much opportunity to hang out with the students, build relationships, help their english (esp the Seniors studying for their NUMEROUS national exams...) and also enlist eager students (of which there are MANY) to tutor us in Chinese. I love QHD (Qinhuangdao, pronounced 'sheen-hoo-ung-dao). I love any new place that I need to figure out, so I'm having a blast. The students are great, too. I'm already falling in love with the personalities and vivacity I see in them. So fun. The language... bagh... I'm just starting to distinguish different words in conversations, instead of having it all seem to be a garble of soft, gentle syllables that seem to be more of a proverbial pillow for my cochlea than a language i could one day speak. Heidi just gave me some Chinese tutorials in paper and video, so I'm on my way to intelligible one to two word phrases. However, thank you, hello, good bye, I'm sorry, and the numbers can get you pretty dang far...

I am at my school, called Dongbe Dashwu (??), or Dongda for short, or Northeast University of QHD. Options.

Today (Sunday) was very good. Just plain good. I can't get over how much joy hanging out with our whole group gives me. The music is excellent, the discussions are respectful (so far) and it simply fills me up. OH and guess what. Ok, I'll tell you. My friend, jared, who is with ELIC, is Kara and Peter's wall-mate at one of our other schools. How uncanny. Seeing him was great; I heard him before I saw him- it is now a very strange thing to hear american english outside of our little group, so hearing him in the hallway perked my ears RIGHT away. :) Always good to see another Knight.

I am somewhat settled in. The floor is painted black (I'm no emo kid, so this isn't a good thing) and the person before me was quite the... mmm... slob? ...to put it nicely. So, it's been a lot of work cleaning it up and finding more furniture, but now I'm on to decorating!! Brett and I met downtown (solo taxi ride, thank you very much) and we found some paintings, a mirror, and other 'homey' stuff. I'm now taking a break from brainstorming for my class and checking my email very hesitantly, and am pretty anxious to hang those paintings on the wall during my next break.

Anyway, that's what is on my mind in this particular moment. ...mmm... i love QHD. I love any new place that I need to figure out, so I'm having a blast. The students are great, too. I'm already falling in love with the personalities and vivacity I see in them. So fun. The language, you ask? bagh... I'm just starting to distinguish different words in conversations, instead of having it all seem to be a garble of soft, gentle syllables that seem to be more of a proverbial pillow for my cochlea than a language i could one day speak. Heidi just gave me some Chinese tutorials in paper and video, so I'm on my way to intelligible.

Now that I've mentioned them both, I suppose I should 'introduce' them to you. Heidi and Brett are my fellow teachers at Dongda. Heidi is from Seattle, and is returning this year for her second year to the same school. She is so helpful and patient with my sloooooow Chinese learning curve. (there is just NO reference point with any language I am even remotely familliar with!) The closest thing I can think of is my music training and my pretty decent ear... but even then... yikes.

Brett is originally from Maine, and has been living in QHD for the last year and a half. His Chinese is about intermediate, which is impressive every time he picks up the phone or talks to a cab driver, and it also gives me hope that I can one day be at least that good... but whoa....

We three are getting along pretty well. We generally really like each other, but our strong attachment to each other is compounded by the fact that we are the ONLY Americans/white people on the campus, and three of fewer than 100 westerners in this decently large city... this is no Beijing, that's for sure.

Yikes, I'm tired. Jet lag is still a struggle. I'm not waking up at 3am anymore, which is good. 5am makes me feel less nocturnal, but I would prefer to have the circadian clock catch up asap. There is no charm in waking up at 5am. sorry, dad... :)

ok, back to preparing for class.

No comments:

Post a Comment