Teacher's Day --Nina

Teacher's day is a big deal here. In America, I'm not sure if anyone really acknowledges its existence, but it's celebrated here at every school. That sounds very sweet and all, but it's actually a very strange phenomenon. Here's how it went at Yongfeng: Classes proceeded like normal until 11am, at which point all of the teachers left their classrooms unattended for an hour to go to the Teacher's Day Meeting. (I'm still not sure what was going on in those classrooms for an hour. There was definitely a lot of screaming.) In the meeting room, we encountered various local government officials, who proceeded to give lengthy speeches about the value of teachers. Then, each teacher was expected to give a brief speech. (Mine was a lot of mumbling about being new here, and about how I'm confused by this holiday since we don't really have it in America.)

The students then dismissed themselves at noon, and the teachers piled into a car (Not just a figure of speech in rural China. Cars here have the back two rows of seats removed, so that you can fit in lots of tiny wooden benches. 12 people can fit in a mini-van! How convenient! And life-threatening!) to head to the one restaurant in the next town over. It was full of teachers from all of the villages in the area. Then, for about two hours, everyone tried to outdo one another in how much they could drink without getting embarrassingly drunk. Imagine if your boss, and then his boss, and then his boss (they are all men) forcefully poured beer or baijiu (rubbing alcohol Chinese liquor) into your glass, then gave a mini toast and required you to drink all of whatever they had just given you. Luckily, as foreigners and women, Abby and I were able to avoid most of this toasting nonsense, but some others didn't fare so well. Then everyone went home and napped! (Classes were cancelled in the afternoon because our principal had the foresight to know people would need to sleep off their lunch drinking binge.) 

Unfortunately, since I only had afternoon classes that day, I didn't actually get to see my students on Teacher's Day, but after the fact, I realized that that wasn't really the point. It seemed to be a lot of teachers celebrating each other. But a few students left presents for me on my doorstep!

My presents: a bag full of somewhat mushy persimmons from a student's yard, lots of cute drawings and cards from other students, and a gift bag from the school that contained an umbrella, hand towel, a bar of soap, and a water bottle. Very practical gifts. 

Here are some pictures of my room, so that you can get a better idea of my living situation. It's very nice and bright and big! The decorating is still a work in progress.

My curtain and dresser cover are both tropical. It's special. I have a lovely Williams calendar photo montage over my bed, left from a past fellow who was also a Williams alum. (Thanks Will!) 

I'm still working on organizing the desk/dresser area...

My wall of student pictures and notes. At the moment it's a bit barren, but they've promised me that this wall will run out of space very soon. (Notice the tropical dresser cover.)

I have a gecko friend!! He always appears just in time to ward off (eat) all of the little bugs that fly in every night. (Don't worry, the bugs here are much more manageable than this summer. No cockroaches! Yay!)

Our principal insists on giving you tea if you're at all in the vicinity of his office. The other night, Abby and I stopped by for a chat, and the tea looked suspiciously like grass. I'm still convinced it is. He gave us a gigantic bag full of it, since he told us it's good for young women who want to lose weight. Hm...first they give us a bar of soap, then tea to help us lose weight...

I realized last week that I was missing a crucial tool in being a teacher in classrooms that don't have clocks...a watch! I bought the cheapest one I could find at my local supermarket. It's frog-prince themed, and the band is one of those snap bracelet things. I think my students are jealous. 

In case you're curious, here are the results of our apple-touching experiment. Lovely.  This week, we're starting a new experiment about growing mold on bread! I prefer these experiments to the 4th grade ones that involve fire. I do not trust those children to be anywhere near a flame. 

 Classes have been going well so far. My 4th graders are still a mess, but my 6th graders keep getting better and better. I introduced the idea of found-object percussion last week, and everyone got very very excited. So excited that they started banging on their desks using any object that they could find. Maybe I should have waited until I had my classroom management completely controlled before doing this activity. I continue to force different types of music upon them, despite their protests. Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong have now been labelled as goofy.

The 4th and 6th graders have their first English tests this week! I really don't know how this is going to go, but I'm hoping for the best.