Fall Carefully

I haven’t posted much from Beijing but I am having a blast and my internet is a nightmare. I am paying for unlimited access BUT I have had the internet guy out here twice already and it works well for like the day that he comes and then it starts to get spotty and unreliable again.

So, class is going well. I am learning how to be a first grade teacher and as it turns out it is kind of tough and really exhausting. I tell everyone that I teach a swarm of first graders because I think that is the best way to describe them. They are like a swarm of bees, cute, in constant motion and ALWAYS making noise. It is especially interesting because the kids don’t understand me. To them I sound like Charlie Brown’s teacher and so they find it very easy to tune me out so that is exactly what they do. They have been given English names to emphasize the “English environment”; problem being I only know their English names and most, if not all, of them can’t recognize their name. So I can say their name a bazillion times and they will never turn around and stop hitting the kid behind them. I have however learned some great techniques let a teacher or a speaker know that you’re bored. One of my favorite includes acting like you died all of a sudden and you just slink out of your chair and fall motionless to the ground and remain there until the pace of the lesson changes to something more exciting. The other one that I think works well is getting out of your chair and going to the back of the room and acting like a frog leaping across the room. This one will usually draw the attention of all the other people in the room that are bored and cause them to join you.

Every day at 10:00 am all the students have to go to one of the courtyards and they do “exercises.” There are a bunch of dances that the PE teachers have taught the kids. They blast music through the loud speakers and the kids are all supposed to do the dance in unison. These are my first graders. They don’t do it as well as the 7th graders but they are getting it.

I teach about 50 of the teachers at the school every Wednesday night and that class is REALLY easy in comparison and actually a lot of fun.


A guy from the branch who speaks really good Mandarin taught me his method for learning new vocabulary and correct sentence structures. It consists of carrying a small notebook and a pen with you wherever you go and writing down new words and the way that people use them. A teacher from my school invited me to go with her to a huge botanical garden in Southern Beijing. It is March and still freezing so this garden was all housed within these huge greenhouses. Having never been much of a flower person, I went more to get more Chinese vocab for my notebook than for the flowers but I was amazed with how beautiful the gardens were. We were there all day and I had a blast with my friend Belinda, her parents, her grandparents, her friend and her friend’s daughter. These were my favorite ones. In Chinese they are called beautiful Butterflies.

This last one is just because well, as China becomes more and more foreigner friendly they are trying to translate a lot of their signs into English. Some times the most entertaining part of a tourist attraction are the translations. This one is one that I liked from the gardens. It says "fall carefully" and is placed over a pool of sludge. What, may I ask, does it mean to "fall carefully?"

Miss Desk

So I made it to Beijing despite the crazy bus driver’s best efforts to kill us all. I did get to see how the people of rural China deal with a car crash from my seat in the bus I could see the big crane lifting the car and aided by about sixty onlookers. No police tape, no concerns about safety and really no supervision. What will become of China when people learn how to sue?

So I got to Beijing and was promptly taken to my apartment. I live alone in a “nice” two-bedroom apartment south of Beijing in a little suburb called Yi Hai. The school that I work at is like a five-minute walk from my apartment and I get all my meals for free there. They are actually pretty good meals. The school is a HUGE private school with about 2,500 students. Many of the students live at the school and they all wear these great brown uniforms. I was hired to participate in a new program that gives the first grade students three classes with a foreign teacher each week. I have nine classes with about 30 students in each class. The students are, for the most part, well-behaved. They have a ton of energy, which, comes as no surprise because they are first graders. The other thing that makes teaching a bit difficult is something the Chinese call the “little emperor syndrome” which affects many of the little kids in China. Since China’s one child policy is still in place (although not as strictly enforced) it means that all the children in China are only children and not only are they only children, for this generation they are also only grandchildren which means they are used to being doted upon and cherished and well, spoiled so they get a little cranky when they have to share the attention of a teacher between 30 students. So far it is not too bad but every teacher that I have met in China says that this situation is a particularly difficult challenge, especially among the wealthier families. I teach 29 classes a week including two classes to the teachers.

On the first day of class they asked me to do a review of some of the vocabulary they learned last week. So I had the kids running around touching all their vocab words. Like the door, something blue something red, the blackboard etc. When I told them to touch a desk a bunch of them ran up and started touching me. I was really confused at first but it turns out that Jessica sounds very much like “desk” to a first grade Chinese student with a limited vocabulary. So now the students call me Miss Desk and I am sure they are very confused as to why my parents would name me desk. Mom, Dad and explanation? I will try to take some pictures this week but I don’t’ feel very touristy in Beijing.

In the meantime...here is a picture of one of Cui Guo Hua's nephews. I took it to show you all the famous Chinese split pants. This is the East's answer to diapers. Basically little kids wear pants that are split in the middle until they are potty trained. When they are little they just pee on the floor or on the sidewalk or wherever. They are potty trained a lot earlier here (I have been told) because they never learn to pee in their pants. The result, all the little kids saunter around with their bare bums sticking out and it makes me a little uncomfortable to hold the babies.