Catchin' Up

I’m so friggin urban right now. Metropolitan even. Really. I’m sitting in a café, with my laptop, wearing banana republic pants, a landsend shirt, and a tie. I kid you not. In my defense, I will say that the pants were purchased at salvation army this summer in New York, so I could attend a swanky upper west side cocktail party. And the shirt is hand-me-down. And the tie has sheep on it. And I’m not wearing my scarf inside. I have it over the back of my chair, along with my svelte, minimalist, llbean fleece. It’s still ridiculous. I’m a far cry from the scruffy, carhartt wearing moxie that many of you know and tolerate, if not love. The reason? I got to school an hour and a half early, having misremembered the instructions my office gave me. I thought I might…it seemed early, but I figured better safe than sorry, and I can always go to the café. They don’t have daylight savings in China. That would be too easy. Instead, they changed the time that school starts in the afternoon last week. It’s 20 minutes earlier now, so it’s not quite dark out when we finish around 5. Makes sense, right? Hardly. Out west, in Xingjian, they have to get up at 3 or 4 in the morning to get to school. I think it’s rather silly, and pigheaded of Beijing. It’s not even like they’re backward. They USED to have daylight savings time, and then decided they didn’t need it anymore, presumably because it was bourgeois or something like that. Bourgeois like wearing banana republic pants with a pale green landsend shirt. You can tell I’m a little sensitive about this.

I realize that in the past paragraph, I’ve referred to school at least 3 times. What school you may be saying? Didn’t you work for the TV station, that pinnacle of journalism, China Central Television? Yes I did. But when I returned from my seouljourn (a combination of sojourn and soul journey—the last pun on the city, I promise) I found my schedule drastically reduced. I’d always been part time. But part time used to mean 4-6 shifts a week. As of November 11th, it meant 1-3. This was not enough. So, when I ran into folks I knew at a concert that night, I asked if they knew of any teachers who had just quit their jobs. I had a job on Monday morning, and it was in my neighborhood. That’s the way Beijing works, that’s one of the reasons I love it.

So, whom do I teach? I teach about 250 kids altogether. 5 sections of 5th grade, an after school classes of 4th graders and 2nd graders, 3 classes of 1st graders a week, and an hour and a half with some 8th graders to top it off. It’s a lot of kids, and though I know their names in the context of where they sit, beyond that I’m pretty lost.

It’s great fun though, really. I think I talk too much and don’t play enough games, but it’s really fun to have a captive audience. They’re also, most of them, really sweet kids. I’ve gotten a couple presents already, and, were I to tell them I was leaving before the day of, would probably get many more. Some of them figured it out already, when I brought my camera in to school, but they were mollified when I said I wasn’t leaving just yet, and that I promised to tell them before they did. Their former teacher, a woman named Sarah, did not. Though I never met her (she left the day before I got my job after all) this lowers my opinion of her fairly extensively.

I must admit that I like my fifth graders best. They’re old enough to sit reasonably still and pay attention…but still young enough that school is cool. My 4th graders I like the least, they’re brats, and the fact that class is on Friday afternoon doesn’t help. The first graders are highly cute…but generally don’t have a clue. We jump around a lot to try to keep things simple. H was a fun letter. Put your hand on your head. Put your hand on your heart. Take off your hat. Hop. Hide. Hop. Hand on your hair. Hair on your heart. And so on. The junior high kids are fun too. Their English is really good actually, so we mostly just hang out, talking vaguely about figuring the grammar exercises out together. It was pretty embarrassing when I had to teach them modals…and didn’t actually know what a modal was. But we have a good time, and they make fun of my cell phone a lot.

Which brings me to another aspect of life as an urban 20something. Text messages (called SMS outside the confines of our great nation) now make up a large part of my social planning, surpassing email by at least a time and a half, and the actual act of speaking by, well, lets not even talk about that. That said, I still haven’t mastered the art of SMS speak, so I tend to spend a lot of time laboriously typing things out. This is made harder by the fact that my lcd no longer lights up (the kids make fun of the phone with good reason) but makes me feel better about myself, as if I were that guy who insisted that using a typewriter was better than using a computer on moral grounds.

What social planning, one might wonder. Are you not a social recluse, doomed to stay in and watch pirated DVD’s? No more. I wouldn’t call myself the must invite member of every party. But I do know people, and end up meeting up for dinner or at some happening with regular irregularity. Last spring, when faced with the prospect of a fake college cocktail party, I ran downstairs, hid in my basement, and called my friend from New York. She told me how to dress, what to talk about, and even offered to make me a fake New England prep school identity. I thought that was a little much, but taking the clothing and conversation advice to heart, went up and didn’t make a complete ass of myself. Now, I do ok, and even picked up a Chinese cell phone stalker last weekend. I talked to her for a while, and though slightly confused when she asked for my number, gave it to her. Since then, she has send me three messages, the latest of which, I quote forthwith:
yes, if you are free, you call me, have a good time

It’s rather flattering…but I don’t want to encourage it…especially because I thought she was kind of snooty at the time anyway. And, to top it off, some chick was hitting on me in the subway on Tuesday. Her opening line was pretty good, I’ll admit. I was sitting there, reading my anthropology book about the English, when she slid over, saying “excuse me, I see that you are reading…. I wonder, what do you do when you find a word that you don’t know?” Slightly taken aback, I responded, “well, I know most of them and the ones I don’t I generally pick up from context. But, I dunno, if one catches my eye I might go home and look it up later.” Things went on fairly mundanely from that point, until, apropos of nothing, she came out with, “I think you are cute, yes?” and while I tried to look politely thankful for the comment, continued on, “but I think you are too young” and got off the subway. Go figure.

This has, in essence, been my life of late. My folks were around for thanksgiving, which was good fun. I got kicked out of my bed onto the couch, but having automatic company for dinner was a nice change. It’s also the principal reason it took me so long to get caught up. Specific stories elude me at the moment, so we will leave at that, and the month of November will be considered closed, unless I remember something truly worth telling. I’ve updated the blog a bit, thanks to the google partnered beta, so now you can look at my photos without clicking on the link, though I think they would be easier to navigate on the flickr page if one wanted to browse extensively. I’ve got a little over a week left in the Big Dumpling, before I head south for most of January. And then, it’s back to the kid’s table, going to school in midland Maine.