Chapter 2

Here we are, back again. The last few weeks have been thoroughly enjoyable, and we want to share a little more about our time here!

As we mentioned last time, because we will be teaching almost entirely freshman classes and the freshmen have 3 weeks of mandatory military training, we have not yet begun teaching. We should start in a week, which means this week we get to plan introductory lessons, make name cards, and prep whatever other materials we can think of before we begin! Hopefully sometime during the week we’ll also receive our schedules, so we know what to expect and when/where to go to teach…

We did learn a fair bit during our meeting with our liaison, whose name is also Christian. Leigha will be teaching (at least) 4 freshman classes of English majors, while the rest of us will teach non-English majors (English classes are split into those two groups). Andrew L, one of our co-teachers, was assigned to a class of non-freshman Business majors – some sort of Business English class, though he didn’t get more details at that time – because he studied Accounting, the only of our majors remotely close to Business. Three days later, he was given a 3 hour heads-up before his first class, so he frantically pulled together a lesson plan, arrived at class, and taught 80-some students about introductions. This is one example of a primary characteristic of our time so far: when we need to know something, we’ll be told — often with little if any forewarning. Such an attitude seems to characterize many teachers’ experiences in China, and we know that it’s not necessarily up to our liaison: he seems to be telling us as quickly as he can, but things are not necessarily figured out or decided ahead of time. In any case, we are kept on the edge of our seats!

In similar fashion, one day as we were sitting in our living room, CWNU (university) Christian knocked on our door to let me (Christian S) know that we had music practice right then. Some backstory: a few days earlier, I had said I’d participate in a singing competition with other volunteers from the department, but I hadn’t heard anything since. Well, Andrew T and I were whisked off to the music building to practice. We had a great time, enjoying the mystery of not knowing what was going on, where to sing when, or how to pronounce any of the words. To our advantage, we know solfege, and we were quickly able to learn the tune; now we just have to memorize the stanzas of Chinese characters praising the flag and nation. One small adventure in our new life! And so it goes. We’ll try to put up a video of the singing competition once it happens.

UPDATE: A week later, we now have our full schedules and Leigha begins on Monday! We’re both teaching 6 classes a week, with at least one day off; our schedules line up for the most part, but not completely. Music practice has continued, with 10+ hours of group practice time so far.

For the last two weeks, we’ve been attending Chinese classes with some of CWNU’s foreign students. There are two sets of classes: one had a number of Pakistani graduate students as well as two African students, the other is fully undergraduate African students from all over the continent. The former is a higher level, but both are more than challenging, and we enjoy the classes immensely. Leigha and I have been attending the classes with African students and are glad to meet other foreign students as well as connect over our time in Africa, especially with the East African students. Leigha accidentally started speaking Swahili halfway through her Mandarin introduction to the class.

We’ve gotten through almost all the entry logistics for our time here – a couple visits to the police station, moving furniture around our apartment, unpacking, buying soaps, hangers, towels, a water distiller… (oh yeah, gotta get used to not being able to drink tap water again). We started watching Avatar the Last Airbender while folding paper to make name cards for all 600+ of our students. (Yeah, we’ve got a lot of students).

It’s usually overcast here – Nanchong has like >150 rain days every year – but the few days of sun are bright and beautiful. It was very warm when we arrived, in the 30s (90s, you Fahrenheit people) but it’s cooled down to the 20s and it’s pretty breezy. Quite humid, which makes both heat and cold worse, but it’s manageable and we’ve appreciated opening our doors and windows this last week and avoiding the AC. Our water distiller (an idea we got from our Peace Corps friends) creates a lot of heat, which we’ll appreciate more in the winter :).

Many people mentioned wanting to see some pictures, and we’ve done our best to take more! We’re not very good at it, unfortunately, but we’ll continue trying.

Some photos need a longer explanation:

We enjoyed watching this man attach character strokes to a building’s side. We did wonder: does stroke order apply, even while hanging high in the air?

This isn’t the best picture to show it, but you see the separators in the middle of the road? In the space of two days, we saw a long section of those separators (along with the road) ripped up and then replaced. We were amazed at the speed of the construction process, pondering how long a similar project would have taken in the states or especially Kenya — 2 months?

We were suuper confused about this truck (middle of the road, in front of the red vehicle). It shoots water… into the air? Sure, it was a hot day, and sure, it felt good to get sprinkled some, but this picture was taken at like 8:30 pm. What in the world? It easily reaches even the top of the bridges over the road, soaking everything around it as it goes.

And some extras: