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first day of class, anji, thirdworld fascination

today, i had my first day of class. it was supposed to be 3 classes, but ended up being only two, because they changed my schedule during the morning. i met my officemates, and they moved a new desk and chair into the office for me, and set me up with an area to work. there is also a computer in my office, so i can use the internet and do computing type things during my office periods.

my first class was 18-20 year olds majoring in tourism. i didn't do much except introductions. their chinese english teacher hadn't given them english names. so i had to spend some time assigning them names. i wanted to give them appropriate names, based on my first impression of them, because many times, chinese people keep their english names throughout their lives. so, someone named gertrude, for instance, stays gertrude her entire life. i would hate to do that to someone. so i had to correct a few girls... for some reason the chinese textbooks list "andy" as a girl's name, so i had to correct them to "andie," and also correct the spelling of some names (ie annie instead of anny).  they were very cute.

my 2nd class was the teacher training course. this is all the english teachers in the entire school, although not all of them were present today (some had other classes to teach). i teach this course twice a week, so i'll have some of the teachers twice, and some only once due to scheduling conflicts. actually, i am quite suprised at how unpracticed some of their english is. i get the feeling they don't use their english at all outside of teaching, and probably then, only 15-25% of the classroom time is spent in actual english. they look at me as an expert, so i had to conduct myself well. i will probably spend time helping their pronunciation and reading recognization skills, as well as general colloquial and conversational styles. i hope that, by the end of next year, they can all understand my very fast, very colloquial spoken english. as of now, i have to labor skillfullly and slowly to make myself understood.

my officemates invited me to lunch. one is an english teacher, another is a tourism teacher who speaks some english, and two men are PE teachers. the PE teachers are hilarious and very outgoing. they don't speak much english, so we had a lot of fun joking and playing with my poor chinese and their best attempts at english. our lunch was the best meal i've had in china, and i felt as though they were real friends. also, they are all nearer my age (20 somethings). the two PE teacher men decided their english names would be Chinese Dragon and Chinese Snake. lol.

this afternoon, i rode my bike around town (having, once again, drunk too much at lunch, trying to outdo Chinese Snake at gan bei's). i exchanged some currency at Zhong Guo Yin Hang (Bank of China) and did some photographing. i found an outdoor market.  i decided i am enamored of the third world. i love the dirt and grime and plethora of interesting smells, faces, and things. i love walking around and feeling as though i am truly part of some real scene... some original part of the world untainted by global westernization. i love feeling the stares of people unaccustomed to western faces and the raw grit of life as it really is. that may sound crazy, but i am totally drawn to it.  and i know, i know... easy for me to say as a westerner, sitting in my fancy apartment, typing from my expensive sony vaio laptop, taking photos with my minidigi kodak camera. nonetheless, the original corners of the world draw me, and i feel lucky that i can experience them before they are gone forever.

as i was riding my bike along the riverside this afternoon, some young guy yelled out "hallo! " and when i said "hi!" (i hate to respond with the obligatory HALLO) in return, he shouted "wo ai ni!" which means i love you. i shouted back, in chinese, "no you don't love me" and he shouted back "i love you" again. this made me suppose it wouldn't be difficult to find a chinese husband, if i ever really wanted to. not that i want to.

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