My first Chinese haircut

This was awesome. It's cold here in Jilin and so the glass doors of the local salon were frosted over. As I entered for the first time I didn't know what to expect...is it big, small, crowded? Do they cut Westerners hair? How am I going to communicate? Turns out it's big and crowded. As I opened the door every head in the place turned to look at me...it was just like when someone enters a bar in a Western movie. All talking stopped as everyone stared. Me, being a bit apprehensive about the whole ordeal as it was, stared back. As the tension mounted I realized that it was going to have to be me that made the next move, but you can imagine this is tough when you can't speak the language and don't know who's in charge. So I boldly looked around the room, slowly moved my hand close to my head, made steady eye contact and began making snipping movements with my fingers. It was like popping a bubble...the room sighed, a few people giggled and a young man leapt over and led me to a seat. The hair cut itself was pretty much identical to Canada but the entry was priceless...a moment I'll never forget.

Pedagogy

*Warning: if you're not a teacher you may find this post boring. **Warning: even if you are a teacher you may find this post boring.

If I was doing a headstand I'd be ankles deep in the pedagogical wilderness here in China. We're in a private program that has started slow. When I arrived there were only 5 students and as of today we're up to 15. They've been trickling in and in the last two weeks alone we've had 5 new students sign up. In one sense this is fantastic, but from my standpoint it's a mammoth headache. Imagine trying to lesson plan for this. I've got ESL students showing up 2.5 months into the year...it's insane. I've been fighting a losing battle against EVERYBODY to prevent streaming. The students have, predictably, identified the "smart" class and the "dumb" class. I'm watching the good and the bad of streaming unfold before my very eyes. It's fascinating...but kind of like a train wreck.

I'm also dealing with the issue of trying to provide meaningful education for a student who, I'm convinced, needs psych testing for a low IQ. I keep saying this to the people around me and they nod and agree when I say it but then the next day suggest that if she stays in the evenings for extra lessons or comes in on the weekends for extra lessons, she'll get caught up. It's unbelievable. It's like suggesting that if a dog just tried harder and took more lessons it might learn some math.

Assessment is, funnily enough, a cinch. The kids are cool with the new system that I was using at BiHi last year. I spend almost no time marking. It's awesome.

Discipline has been interesting. Furthering my theory that kids are the same everywhere...I was having trouble getting them to respond earlier this year. They were unfamiliar with a Canadian approach and couldn't figure out the boundaries no matter how hard I tried to explain them. So I started giving punishments out and, lo and behold, they figured out what appropriate behaviour was pretty quick!

I'll try to return to funny posts next time up :)

Fire in the Hole

...quite literally. There's a garbage chute in my school and today there was a big fire in it. Exciting stuff! Because of the proximity of my classroom to the inferno I was the first to notice the blaze. Gathering my courage, a coworker and I fought the conflagration thus saving dozens of lives and millions of dollars in infrastructure. Okay, so maybe I just pointed a fire extinguisher in a hole but it was still fun...how often do you get to pull the pin on one of those things? I think my bigger contribution to saving the building was checking the fire extinguishers afterwards and finding that, in true Chinese fashion, they had returned the empty fire extinguishers back to their storage place with pins replaced. Good grief, who are they trying to trick?

Talent Show

To entertain a group of American exchange students our school hosted a talent show last night. And a big talent show it was...2 hours and about 300 people in the audience. My students were involved as MC's and did a fantastic job (obviously) but the performers were primarily students from the rest of the school. What a show. It ranged from extremely talented young individuals to some of the most bizarre performances I have ever and will ever see. Let me tell you about some of it. First (and favourite) on my list is the Chinese hand puppet show which broke into a rendition of a Michael Jackson song. Four hand puppets in traditional Chinese character, like the Monkey King, singing Heal the World in off key, Chinese accents. I was sitting in the front row laughing uncontrollably. I nearly had to leave. Next up, things didn't get much more normal. A group of dancers came on stage. Girls first, and they were actually pretty good...but then the boys came on. Break dancers, but not good. Picture Elaine from Seinfeld on steroids and doing her best break dancing imitation. Out of sync with the music, deadly serious expressions on their faces, trying their best to work the crowd by raising their arms and shouting "Make some noise!", but completely awful at dancing. Now, normally, this isn't something you laugh at, this is a time when you feel sorry for the person on stage because they're not good, but the thing is, the crowd went nuts! The crowd loved it! It was some of the worst dancing I've ever seen! Coupled with my first experience at a Chinese club last weekend and I'm getting the impression that Chinese people are looking for something different out of their dancing than we are. One final highlight was a boy and a girl doing a duet version of We Are The Champions. They sang romantically to each other the entire time. It started well but as the music began to crescendo around them, they kept singing gently at each other like it was a ballad. It was really weird, but again the crowd loved it. I finished the night with sore cheeks from how hard I was laughing.

Things I Miss

Living in China you expect to miss things back home. Obviously friends and family are the most important thing but there are other little things that I wish I had here. Here is a list of my Top Three Things I Miss:

3) My iMac. I have to restart my computer here about 8 times a day - every time I get new a new add-on, update, software or hardware. It's stupid. What idiot would design a computer that you need to restart this often? And the pop-ups, my God! They're incessant. And if they're not bad enough, every time my browser blocks one it makes it's own personal pop-up bragging about how it's prevented a pop-up. C'est stupide, non?

2) Remote controls that are in English. I find remote controls hard enough to navigate as it is...there's like a thousand buttons on them. Imagine trying to find the menu button if the buttons weren't labelled. Now imagine trying to figure out how to change the language of the DVD and turn off subtitles when none of the buttons are labelled. It's an iterative process nightmare.

1) Milk. I've said it many times. I'd give up beer before I'd give up milk. But here I have no choice. The milk is awful. I dare not think what lengths I would go to for a glass.

Pictures...at Last!

Good news, ladies and germs...the pictures have arrived. Well, some of them. They're on a site called Flickr. Go to http://www.flickr.com/photos/44196127@N04/ to have a gander. I think you need to have a Yahoo account so you may need to go sign up at www.yahoo.com first.

Flickr has limited me to 100MB a month so this is just a small selection. I hope you like :)