First Day Exhaustion

Tuesday, May 15


This one is going to be short. I'm exhausted.

We arrived in Tianjin around 11 p.m. last night. Our rooms at the Tianjin Foreign Studies University are pretty sweet, and definitely a luxury for students (especially compared to Rice and Rivers Hall). They have high ceilings and wide windows overlooking the skyline. Last night I saw the lights. This morning I saw the dawn just as it had slipped above the horizon. We met up with our guide at 6:30 this morning and got on the bus that's to take us to the other campus to teach our students. An hour later we arrived in Dagong at the Binhai campus.

The Binhai campus is nothing very pretty on the inside. Initial glances of the stately French-inspired building which towers over the rest of the campus gives the impression of a very clean cut, well-manicured school. The illusion is shattered after walking through the first plastic-flapped doorway. It’s interesting because it doesn’t seem like a deliberate attempt at covering up some sinister side. It just seems that all the attention—and most of the budget—went to the building that just so happens to be front row and center to receive students and guests.

After the plastic flaps come rooms that received paint maybe once in 1980. Floors are mopped, but the mops are ragged and the water dirty. I don't think this takes away from the quality of the school, by any means. But it does give the place a certain energy that was completely unexpected. A courtyard between buildings opens up with dirtblown bricks and grey buildings covered in chipped paint. Even if I read Chinese, I wouldn’t be able to read the sign above the door: letters were missing for what appeared to be a long time.

The students we're teaching seem to be very nice, but I think their English is less than half of what we prepared for. We were ready for Level 3 or 4 speakers. I wouldn't place them any higher than 3, and that's being generous. I'd place their overall, combined skill at 2, maximum. Their names are Song Mei Yan, Chen Ya Yuan, Ze Liu, and Zhang Huan. One thing I've found interesting about Chinese people is their willingness to choose English names. I'll avoid a postcolonial discussion on the power of naming and importance of identity and simply say that, if it were me, I would hold my name up high and not be tied down by anyone's tongue. Regardless, many people choose English names for various reasons. Sometimes it sounds cool, it's easier for Western folk to remember, or maybe something about keeping up with the English language being the most popular international language. Ya Yuan's English name is Cindy, Liu's is Oliver, and Huan's is Thomas; Mei Yan hasn't chosen one yet. Mei Yan is by far the most skilled in the group. I'd actually place her at an easy 3, but I have no way to know that yet--the assessment test wouldn't download to the campus computers just yet.

We played a few ice-breaker games with them and did a few small talk exercises. The ice-breaker was called "All of Your Names." Each person asks the other person what else they go by other than their given name. For instance, I'm Andy, Andrew, Phillip, Bo, or Bob. Come to find out, they don't really use many pet names or nicknames in China. If they do, then they didn't understand the game, because I had a lot of blank stares for a minute. Instead we tried "Two Truths and a Lie." You basically tell two truths and a lie and a person guesses which one is the lie. I think they thought this was more fun. Oliver got clever and said he had seen the President, which we thought was a lie. Turns out is was a truth: he'd seen the President on TV. I think he's going to be a cool student to have.

After the ice breaker, Kayla did a lesson on how to engage in small talk. We discussed situations about how to weave in and out of small talk. One specific situation was one in which a mother is showing off pictures of her children in a grocery store line. We covered what's appropriate to talk about and, more importantly, what isn't. Conversation, after all, is like a dance in which you need to worry about stepping incorrectly as a opposed to getting everything "right."

I think they got it, but I really can't be sure. They liked the ice-breaker games and the skits themselves that Kayla led them on, but they were pretty unresponsive otherwise. Maybe I'm expecting too much though. This is my first time interacting with ESL students from the teacher's side. I think I need to back off a little bit.

Like I said, this one is short. It's been a 13-hour day, and I'm still suffering from jet lag. I'm out.