School Begins

Well the moment I had been waiting for for months has finally come, school has started. I am now an English teacher at Guilin Yangguang Elementary school. Yangguang roughly translates into English as "Sunny" but I'm going to keep calling it Yangguang because calling it the Guilin Sunny School makes it sound like I work at a daycare center (oh shit maybe that is what I'm doing). But in all seriousness I was surprised and very impressed by the campus. I had heard going into it that Yangguang had a reputation as being the nicest elementary school in Guilin but I wasn't exactly sure what that meant. The campus is completely gated with three buildings (two of which are four stories and one that is three) surrounding a large courtyard with basketball courts and a large building off to the side for "international students" (99.9% of which are Chinese). I had originally thought that I would be only teaching the second grade but on my first day I was informed that, in addition to teaching second grade, I would be teaching grades ranging from preschool (WTF!) to 6th grade. I have found all of the grades to be manageable but dealing with preschoolers has reaffirmed my feeling that I am nowhere close to a point in my life where I would be ready for a child of my own. One of the things that I have really noticed about these kids is that they have a desire to learn greater than most kids I have seen at their age. I still can't decide if it's genuine or if they have parents who have really hammered home the fact that they are paying a lot of money for them to go to school there, nevertheless it makes my job a bit easier. My two other coworkers and I combine to form the entire population of westerners in the school, so our presence has been met with great interest and curiosity. Walking in between classes is always an adventure for me. I've had kids spying on me through windows, try to touch my face and hair, and one time I had a group of about ten 2nd graders surround me and each try to hug me. Every time a student sees me in the hallways they always waive and say "Hello teacher!" Most of the kids seem very eager to practice their English with me, and with the school's accelerated English curriculum many of them are quite good. I almost wish that this was the kind of school I went to when I was younger in Taiwan. It also makes me realize that the U.S. really needs to step up their foreign language education in elementary schools.

A typical day at Yangguang starts at around 7 A.M. where students arrive and eat breakfast before the first class at 8. Before classes begin, all students sit in their classrooms and recite some type of creed or motto (my Chinese isn't good enough yet to understand fully what they're saying) followed by what I think is the national anthem. Things go along normally until 9:30 AM when, if it isn't raining, all of the students go out to the courtyard and line up by grade do their morning exercises. These exercises take the form of a choreographed dance that follows a 1-2-3-4-5-6-7 cadence demonstrated by a faculty member on a stage in front of everybody. After the exercises comes the daily English sentence...that's where I come in. The three foreign teachers are supposed to split days to do it but since I'm new I've gotten stuck with the duty more often than not. A person then hands me a microphone and I get on stage and recite a prepared sentence several times, which the

Student beds

student body then repeats back to me. After the assembly, classes resume until around noon when the students break for lunch and a nap (every single student in the school has their own bed). This break lasts for over two hours and classes resume at 2:20 PM. During this time one of my coworkers and I will usually go back to his apartment and watch a movie. Classes continue until 5:45 PM and then the day is over. All of the classes are forty minutes long with breaks in between where some activity or exercise is planned. Everything seems very regimented from the exercises to the mandatory apple eating immediately following the nap (seriously, that's real). They must have figured out some formula to help students retain the maximum amount of information in a given day. Don't worry America I'll keep investigating and taking secret notes. As I alluded to earlier everything my job requires seems very manageable to me and even fun at times, but talk to me in two weeks and see how I feel then.

"Going Native" Experience of the Week

Coming face-to-face with one of these bad boys during what I'll call a "moment of crisis":

Not Cool

I know that China isn't the only country to use these squatters as toilets, but the whole approach to toilets and bathrooms here is mind boggling to me. This is what the bathroom looks like next to my office at school:

Aside from the obvious lack of doors on the stalls and the trench that would absolutely ruin your day should you accidentally slip into it, notice how short the sides of the stalls are. I'm a short person and those things barely reach my waist. What's the point? Something to hold on to for extra stability maybe?  They certainly aren't there for privacy. Also, there is no toilet paper to be found anywhere in this and many other bathrooms. Living here you need to get in the habit of always carrying around a packet of multipurpose tissues in case of an emergency. Failure to do so can result in some pretty shitty (HA!) consequences. So that's another item that I need to carry with me at all times in addition to my local phone, iphone (for pictures), keys, and wallet. It's a lot to carry everywhere I go especially when I'm wearing a pair of khakis. Maybe I should get some cargo pants or a man purse...haha just kidding, never. Now, if I lived in a poor area that didn't have an adequate drainage system I wouldn't be drawing attention to their bathrooms like I am, but I don't. The school I teach at is a private school with a reputation for being the nicest in the entire city. The school has enough money to purchase beds for all of its students, provide everybody with three meals a day, own local real estate so its employees can live for free, and have nice glass backboards on its basketball hoops in the playground. But stall doors and toilet paper are nowhere to be found. Oh and I'm pretty sure the bathroom in that picture is unisex.


Mandarin Improvement Sign

One of the positive aspects of teaching young kids for me is that their English is not very good which forces me to try to explain lessons and activities in Chinese. I have gotten a lot of laughs from the students when I try to speak because I'm sure that I'm butchering a lot of the pronunciation; but, if I am able to get my message across and they do what I want them to do it gives me a feeling of satisfaction.

Funny Sign of the Week

Posted throughout the school are a series of motivational and instructional signs. Most of them make sense but I thought this would be a good section to share them, many of you are probably reading this as you're procrastinating at work so maybe it'll help motivate:

Of course they have a quote from Marx. Also, "numinous" is not a word

Reason Why I Like This Place
Spontaneously placed elliptical machines! What a good way to promote public health. Now they just need to conquer the rampant tobacco addiction here.

Random Tangent

I actually had a pretty lengthy, musically-themed installment here but it's late, I'm tired and I have a 13.5 hour train ride to Hong Kong tomorrow which I'm sure will provide me with some good material for my next post so it'll have to wait for another time. Instead I'll leave you with a clip of one of my favorite movie scenes of all time from one of my favorite movies of all time Pulp Fiction.

Hope everyone home is staying safe from the polar vortex, whatever that is.

**I had some good pictures and videos from my school but they're on my ipad which is currently having difficulty syncing with my computer, I'll have them next time.