Trophy Case

Let’s talk school. In the past week or so I’ve experienced some situations that I think are unique to China and to this day I still can’t really get my mind around it.

                I gave my seniors their first AP Biology test. It was unit one and the information was not necessarily ultra difficult or that new to them. After grading the majority of the tests (apparently people like to disappear on test day and are currently still making up exams), I was appalled to see that half of my students failed (six out of the twelve that took it). Considering these students had to test into this special “AP” class within the school and considering the “dumbest” kid scored in the top 80^th percentile on the SAT, the failing rate on my measly bio exam seemed a bit high. There are obviously a few reasons why this could be so. One could be that the students don’t care. Now, why would they not care when obviously their GPA’s matter for college applications AND the information I’m testing them on will be on their AP exams in May. I’m not just giving a test for no reason. I’m trying to help them learn the information slowly over the course of the year so they will be prepared when the time comes. Trust me, no teacher spends the time to make an exam just to be mean. I spent my time looking for old exams that have been released and going through them to find old AP question applicable to our unit to insert into the unit test so my exam would be close to the AP exam. I tried! I really did! And what I get is half the class failing.

                 Two, when I asked the student who received the highest grade (B+) what he thought about the exam, he responded that he wished he had more time. Hmmm ok. Let’s think about this one. For the past two or three weeks we (the teachers) have been specifically told by the office not to give homework (that is a whole different story), which I can personally say at least 2 of the 3 AP teachers (Brandon and me) complied. Additionally, the seniors have at least four to five “study halls” every day. So with that much time to study and no homework, how the heck can this boy tell me he wished he had more time! This just leads me to believe that they don’t care about their grades, because if they did, they would have used one of their four study halls a day to study for the unit test! So this just takes me back to my first point, they don’t care. Why? After living here in China for a few months now, I can get a sense that the school “takes care” of the student’s grades if you know what I mean. I was just yesterday asked into the AP office to help one of the teachers answer some questions about weighted and unweighted GPA and weighted and unweighted class rank. She was filling out the Common Application that some schools use now a days. The entire school has about 850 seniors, 15 of which are in the school’s special “AP” program and 15 of which are actually applying to American Universities. I also have to point out that the “AP” Office does not work hand in hand with the main office. Aka they report their students information separately. If I had to guess right now where those 15 students will fall in the class rank…. Well I’m sure you guys can figure out what I’m saying.

                As for when the students will actually take the time to study and learn the information needed for the AP Biology exam… well I can only guess. I have a feeling that a month before the AP exam, my classes will be cancelled for no apparent reason, and the kids will sit and memorize the entire Princeton AP Review book for every AP subject exam they are taking. In other words, they will sit and memorize (not learn) an entire year long curriculum in one month and get 5s on the exams. So why am I here? If they don’t care to learn now because they need to focus on the one thing that can’t be faked or fixed for them (their college personal statements) and if they don’t need me later when they are cramming on their own, then why do they need me at all? Answer: trophy.

                On a separate topic, I show up to my AP Psychology class Saturday morning ready to give them their unit test, to find that only 4 of my 15 students are in class. Earlier in the week I had asked them if they wanted one class to take the test (Friday’s we only meet once) or two (Saturday we meet for two periods back to back). Everyone responded with two. Ok so I go and schedule the test for Saturday and made Friday a review day. This all went down on Tuesday. So basically, between Tuesday and Saturday, not a single one of my students bothered to tell me that they will not be in class on Saturday. The office did not inform me either. When I walked into my nearly empty class room on Saturday, I just about had a hissy fit! I was not going to give a test to four students in Psychology, nor was I going to continue teaching in Biology next period to those same four students! I ended up editing one personal statement and walking out of the class.

                Communication about attendance with teachers here is not considered mandatory I guess. And due to the fact that the office probably had no idea how many students were in class and that I just walked out of the classroom and left the kids alone, I’m guessing the school doesn’t have any liability issues or any regard for knowing who is in their school and when. I’m sure the school and the students don’t think this, but I think it has to do with respect. Because they cancel our classes last minute and don’t show up to meetings last minute and do other things to push us around AND on top of it, I get a class of four students…. This just confirms to me, again, that no one cares what I do…I am in fact just a trophy but a damn good trophy at that.

How to do laundry in China

Doing laundry isn't really that fun back home, but it's a lot worse over here. Let me shed some light on how I have to do laundry for the next 8 months or so!

Meet our washer and spinner.... Notice... no drier included. Ugh. 

Here you can see the very clear instructions on how to run this machine. Thankfully our brains were able to use context clues to figure out what to do. So first you have to fill the main compartment with water. This is a manual task: all you have to do is turn the knob. However, there are a few tricky parts. One: don't forget to turn off the knob when the compartment fills.... it will not turn off itself! Two: if you want hot water.... you have to boil it yourself and pour it in, or use cups to transfer hot water from the sink in the bathroom. Aka getting warm water is a pain. But then again, nothing cleans your clothes free of dirty China smog as hot water so we have to do it. ( so far at this point its been at least 10-15 minutes boiling water and slowly adding it to the main compartment)

Here you can see the water slowly filling up the main compartment. Isn't it lovely?

Here is the washer killing our clothes. Yes, I meant to say killing because all it really does is mush our clothes around until they turn into one big knot. Then we the laundry is done, I get to play a game of untangling. It's joyous really. Not only is it a game, but I can also see at the same time my clothes getting destroyed. I'm coming back to Chicago naked I swear. My clothes will be in shreds.

After the wash cycle is done, I get to drain the water. You'd think it would be relatively simple to somehow install the draining mechanism to drain directly into a pipe somewhere, however, instead, there is a hose that goes to our bathroom and since the drain there isn't wide enough to drain the water fast enough, the dirty China smog filled water floods our bathroom. You can't see it that clearly but the water basically is past the toilet and on the green rug. We usually have to plan when we do laundry and use the facilities prior to laundering as no one likes walking into a wet bathroom. Then you fill the main compartment and repeat for the rinse cycle, sans the hot water this time thankfully.

Then comes the spinner. Just load up the clothes, make sure they are balanced, and spin away. I have to say that the spin cycle here is a whole lot more efficient than back home.... but that's not big enough of an improvement to ever justify this method of doing laundry.

Finally, we get to be all old school and hang our clothes out to dry. Takes about one day on a sunny day, or more if its cloudy and China smoggy. :/

And that is how my laundry lives it's life here. My clothes are stretched out since there is no drier to shrink them back. Like I said, I have a feeling half of my clothes won't make it and will meet their ends here in China. O how I hope it's not my favorite polka dot sweater! :)

Let’s just rename all the famous places

I want to start this post with a question: do you know what the Terracotta Warriors are? I hope you do, because the Chinese certainly do not. Why, do you ask, do they not know one of the most visited sites in China? Well, let me tell you, because there are no Terracotta Warriors in China! Their real name is Bingma Yong and that’s what the Chinese know them as. We, westerners, have decided that it’s totally cool to rename famous places in other countries to whatever we want to call them. Interesting right? Thankfully, we found this out early in our getting-lost-on-the-way-to-the- Bingma Yong -warriors day. Otherwise, it might have turned in to we-got-so-lost-that-we-never-made-it-to-the- Bingma Yong -warriors day.

Fun Fact, the Chinese will never give you more information than you ask for. For example, we asked the front desk lady of our hostel which buses we should take to get to the Bingma Yong warriors. Our reply was take the 603 to the end, walk over here (points on map), and take but 306 to the warriors. Sounds simple enough but we genius forgot to ask a few clarifying questions such as “how far do we walk to find the 306 bus”. Well, after actually doing it, we found out that walking 20 minutes in one direction was not what we were supposed to do. We ended up in this little plaza that had a bank, market, and a bus stop for every bus but the one we were looking for. With nothing to do but go back, we start slowly making our way back to point A to try out our luck again, when a bus with a huge picture of the warriors on it drives by. The conductor waves, stops the bus, and in an awkward way that makes us do the back and forth dance as we try to figure out if he is shooing us or beckoning us, motions us over to get on the bus. Seeing this as (hopefully) a ride to the warriors we were so set on seeing, we hop on the bus after confirming it wasn’t going to cost us and arm and a leg. Once the bus starts moving, we quickly realize there are no more seats on the bus for us and that we are being starred at by every person sitting in the bus. We are the only white people on the whole bus. O joy. The conductor guy manages to squeeze past all of us and produces two teeny tiny chairs for us to sit on in the aisle. With my life being the huge joke that it is sometimes, I laugh and strategically place my tukis on this tiny chair. Brandon, being the good sport that he is, ends up standing for 30 minutes and endures the curious unrelenting stares in his direction.

Turns out we got on the right bus and made it to our final destination. The stars were aligned for us this past weekend. Lesson learned on this leg of the trip: sometimes looking like a lost confused tourist will get you unlost.

Run in with the PoPo

A while back in the land of camels and Sahara Desert, Brandon and I met a Brazilian couple who quit work and decided to go travel around the world for a year. They have since hit 200 days of travel! Congrats! Anyways, as luck would have it, they were coming to China right when we would be here. Having stayed in contact since Morocco, we decided to go to Xi’an this past weekend because it would correspond to them being there and hence, us being able to have a mini reunion. So the ridiculously overpriced high speed train tickets were purchased and bags were packed! Xi’an here we come!

As a little side story, after having been in China for a month, early last week it was our duty to go submit our passports to the Exit and Entry Office of Zhengzhou where they would hold our passports for a week so they could fasten our residency visas inside. Easy enough right?

Anyways, we made reservations at the coolest hostel in Xi’an and proceeded to head on over there. Upon arrival, since Brandon and I did not have our passports with us, we find out that our photo copies were not enough; they also needed our visas. Ok, easy enough, we had both taken pictures of our visas when we first got them and had them stored on our cameras. Well, after having submitted that, we find out that that was STILL not enough. They wanted to see the stamp that we got upon entry into China. After ten minutes of my trying to explain to them that no one can enter the country without a stamp, so why not go ahead and assume that I have a stamp and just let me check it, I gave in and called our school foreign coordinator, Samantha, to help us out. Thankfully, she had copies of this information in the office and emailed it to us.

Great, so at this point, I have moved past the bitchiness of the woman checking us in and have settled down to enjoy a Qingdao beer while my email containing our visas loaded (world’s slowed internet at this hostel) so I could forward it to the hostel. Thirty minutes go by peacefully as I sip my beer and chitchat with fellow travelers. Then the bomb drops.  The lady at the check in counter states that our visas are expired. This was obviously news to us since we had just turned in all of our paper work to the Chinese Government and had our residency visas processed. After confirming to ourselves by checking the Chinese Consulate Website that the visas were in fact not invalid, but actually 100% legit and ready to go, we started to state our case to this now even bitchier check in lady. After an hour of this and me being on the verge of tears, Brandon over hears the lady talking to someone in Chinese basically admitting to having been wrong, but was "trying to save face" and not backing down from her original stance.

Frustration and fatigue set in and there was nothing to do other than leave the hostel after an adieu containing a few not so nice words to the entire hostel staff. Tired and hungry we went wandering looking for any place that would take in two “illegal” foreigners, as dubbed by stupid check in lady. Now, usually, my navigation skills are on par with gold medal standards, however, due to excessive emotional turmoil, I now can admit, that I lead our tired and angry little threesome in the wrong direction for longer than I want to admit. We ended up wandering down a dark abandoned narrow street on the verge of collapse. All hope of finding our next intended hostel gone, we helplessly walk up to the only people on the street: a bunch of guys sitting around playing poker. They were highly amused by our giant backpacks and giant guidebook and had no problem chatting (aka speaking Chinese to us while we stare back with blank faces repeating over and over Shuyuan Hostel) with us as they passed our guide book around trying to figure out where we were trying to go. At one point, it became obvious to us that they had reached a consensus about something since they stopped randomly saying the three English phrases they knew to us and started saying Shuyuan over and over again. Then out of nowhere, they all get up and walk out of their little poker room and start gesturing to us. Confused, we just kind of stood there and watched one of the men walk up to a car and open the driver’s side door. He waved to us to join him. Now I can say this was a bit of a scary moment; to enter a stranger’s car or not, but after exchanging the “look”, all three of us decided to go for it and hope nothing movie-like happens to us.

Driving with this guy was a whole different adventure, but I’m glad to report that I made it out alive. After being in the car with our driver and watching his turns, it came to me that I had been lost and led us in the totally wrong direction. Feeling better and encouraged that we were finally making progress, I started enjoying the crazy ride this guy was giving us. At one point, our driver stops at a red light and start fiddling with his pockets. We were ultra confused and a bit concerned until he whips out his wallet, or should I say badge! He flashes his shiny gold emblem and all of a sudden his friends hand motions and random gestures now make sense! We had gotten into the car of the Chief of Police of Xi’an! No wonder his friends kept saying FBI!

So to make a long story short, we got a ride in the back seat of a cop car to our hostel in Xi’an. Believe it or not, but I swear it’s true. I’m not lying; this stuff does really happen to me. :)

*note: we were not able to meet up with the Brazilians as they hit a few transportation problems. :( Perhaps in another country another time.

Keeping my sanity.... or at least trying to

"Before the beginning of great brilliance, there must be chaos."

-The I Ching