Taizhou Sept 10, 2005
I made it through my first week of teaching. The students are doing better than I was told so I'm going to have to prepare more work for them to do in the future. I had a class avoid telling me about themselves by asking me lots of questions. The most popular questions were about my family, why I came to China, what do I like about China. One boy asked if American girls were pretty. So I asked him if he liked girls with yellow hair. He said no. Red hair? No. Purple hair from a can? no. Girls who smoke? NO. Girls who drink? YES.
When I told the class that lots of American women smoke, you'd think I'd told them the moon was made of cheese. In a little over a month, I have only seen five women smoking, and two of them were in one day in Hong Kong.
I found a "go" club and got beat pretty badly. I think they were making fun of me and then they lost interest in my being there. Nobody wanted to play with me at the go club in Portland, either. They told me to play online for awhile and then come back.
So I thought I was going to attend a party at the Crispy Chicken tonight at 8 and even told some Australians I'd run into about it, but I got there early and no one was there. Just before I got up to leave, a couple of college kids sat down with me and we had a little English Corner as they practiced speaking. The guy even bought me some grape wine for 20 RMB; it tasted like it was worth $2.50, too, but at least it wasn't rice wine. His girlfriend "Chris" was a sweetheart, but most Chinese girls are. When he found out I wasn't married, he said I should marry a Chinese girl; I'm told that a lot around here.
One of the reasons students want to learn English is to pass the tests allowing them to study in the West. Various Western governments got tired of universities accepting students, taking their money, and flunking them out because their English wasn't good enough, so now Asian students have to pass an English test. I couldn't pass the same kind of test in German, that's for sure. One problem with the test is that it's written by academics with a background in English, but lots of the students actually want to study the sciences, so the vocabulary requirements are a little off.
When I told the class that lots of American women smoke, you'd think I'd told them the moon was made of cheese. In a little over a month, I have only seen five women smoking, and two of them were in one day in Hong Kong.
I found a "go" club and got beat pretty badly. I think they were making fun of me and then they lost interest in my being there. Nobody wanted to play with me at the go club in Portland, either. They told me to play online for awhile and then come back.
So I thought I was going to attend a party at the Crispy Chicken tonight at 8 and even told some Australians I'd run into about it, but I got there early and no one was there. Just before I got up to leave, a couple of college kids sat down with me and we had a little English Corner as they practiced speaking. The guy even bought me some grape wine for 20 RMB; it tasted like it was worth $2.50, too, but at least it wasn't rice wine. His girlfriend "Chris" was a sweetheart, but most Chinese girls are. When he found out I wasn't married, he said I should marry a Chinese girl; I'm told that a lot around here.
One of the reasons students want to learn English is to pass the tests allowing them to study in the West. Various Western governments got tired of universities accepting students, taking their money, and flunking them out because their English wasn't good enough, so now Asian students have to pass an English test. I couldn't pass the same kind of test in German, that's for sure. One problem with the test is that it's written by academics with a background in English, but lots of the students actually want to study the sciences, so the vocabulary requirements are a little off.