Class, Banquet, Doctor

I can now officially call myself a teacher, or maybe even a professor if I wanted to stretch it (I mean I do teach at a college). I taught five classes the past week. Four of them were to sophomore classes of English majors, and the other one was to sophomores as well, but I forgot to ask their major. In China the students are grouped together with other students of their major and they attend all classes together in the group. Thus all the students in each class all know each other well and have the same schedule. Oral English is the subject of all of my classes, which poses on fairly large challenge: getting the students to talk. The Chinese education system is based on the Confucian system of learning, which essentially means the instructor has all knowledge and students dutifully listen and obey in order to learn. In the US I think we use a mix of this and the Socratic method, with a little more weight toward the Socratic method. This along with the Chinese culture's strong aversion to 'losing face' or being embarrassed makes gettign volunteers to speak up very difficult. This, along with eliminating Chinese chit-chat will be my two main challenges. But my students were very fun, pretty attentive, encouraged, and many had quite good spoken English. Each class was sure to have a student to ask what I thought of Chinese girls (not the easiest question to answer in front of 30 or so 19-20 year old girls). The classes were full of hilarious (or odd) English names, but I hold back any judgment, as I went by Taquito (little taco) in most of my high school classes. I am excited to meet my 3 new classes next week (to make eight in total) and begin to get to know my students better.

Last night featured an absolutely wonderful banquet with members of the English department and the foreign affairs department. The food was amazing, the people were great, there was just one big problem. Baijiu. Look it up on the internet, and if it says anything but the worst liquor you will ever drink, then it's wrong. Baker, the government representative in the foreign languages department, and the person (I think) ultimately responsible for us being here, was the most gracious pourer of the baijiu, as well as full of toasts. The problem is, in China, when they toast, or ganbei it means to drink the rest of one's class, or "bottoms up" as Baker likes to say. Needless to say, plenty of baijiu and pijiu (beer) was drunk by all last night.

And this morning, when I got up at 7:45 for my doctor's appointment, I realized that I had way too much baijiu, way too much. But, I still went out to the car, where Teddy, our advisor was waiting and took the four of us new teachers to the center for foreign medical examinations. We made the best of the exam (which is required for the residence permit) by making light of the sometimes less than perfect translations on the signs. For example, instead of gauze pads, the instructions on the wall told us to put tampons on our arms after having blood taken. But, as a reward, Teddy took us to KFC after the 4 hour process was finished, and it was delicious. In the tradition of firsts, I did have my first ultrasound as part of the exam! And, no worries, I am not pregnant.