Today was wonderful. I laughed more today than I have in all the other days combined. When I went to my classroom, Flora accompanied me, and I was very nervous. When I walked in, the students, about twenty-five of them, all began cheering and clapping. I was so embarrassed I turned right around as if to leave (a brief moment of panic), and then quickly turned around towards the students, so it seemed I spun in a circle! I must have looked so silly. But then I looked at the girls and they were all smiling, and I was smiling, and we were all laughing.
Flora told us all to settle down, and had me talk a little about myself. I talked about how I just finished at the university, four years, and that I studied psychology. I told them that I had two sisters and two brothers, and described how much older than me they all are. When I told them that my oldest sister is in her forties, their eyes all got so wide (some people who know me when I am drunk, know that I am quickly won over by a captive audience). When I told them my age, they laughed at me, and shouted, "So young, so young!". I told them that I lived in the mountains in a very small town, and I drew them a picture of the mountains, with me as a smiling stick figure in the middle. Then they asked me questions, and all they seemed to want to know is, "Why China? Do you like China? How long do you want to live here? Do you like the food?" I told them that I loved it here, that I wanted to stay forever. They looked surprised.
I'm going to digress for a moment, because this kind of interaction keeps coming up. Everyone who can speak English seems to want to know the same thing, why on earth would I come to China? And it's not just the question, it's the feeling behind it. They will often say something like, "China is very poor, why do you want to live here?", "In America you are rich, and life is different here for you", "The food is different here". It's like they are embarrassed of China, and it makes them take my impression too seriously. I tell everyone who asks that it is not so different here, and that I am happier here than I was there, and that everyone is so much nicer. I can't seem to explain that it doesn't matter that I have to squat over a hole in the floor to pee, and have to hang my clothes to dry, and that the electricity is always going out, and that the plumbing is older than my mother, that I am not so spoiled that I can't live this way. Here it is different for me than for them, because here I am free, more free than I have ever been, even quarantined to my apartment. When they ask me why do I want to live in China, I can't explain to them that if I weren't living in China then I would not be meeting all of them, and I would not be living in my first apartment all alone, and I would not be exploring a Chinese supermarket, and I would never have seen, in my whole life I am sure, a birdcage hanging from a lamp post at dusk. These feelings can't cross the language barrier. When I first said the word "love" to Flora, she didn't know what I meant. This is not a word that she was taught when she learned English. I doubt she was taught what joy means, and how can I explain why I want to live in China, if I can't tell her about joy?
In any case, I stumbled a little my first day. There were some moments of awkward silence during which I just stood, smiling, waiting. And they sat, smiling, waiting. They are supposed to be the best English speakers in the school, because English is their major field of study, but they can barely understand me when I speak. They read and pronounce English quite well, every one of them. I found that out today because I walked around and practiced speaking with each of them individually. I notice I had an ear for what each of them could do well, and what each of them did poorly. Some of them had an excellent accent when they spoke the words, but their speech wasn't smooth. They paused and had difficulty moving from word to word. Some of them had very good pronunciation, very precise. Some of them had a good tempo, and spoke quickly, which I know can be hard when you are speaking a foreign language. I am only worried that they couldn't understand me when I spoke, so the students I teach that aren't majoring in English will probably not follow me at all. Oh well, I will burn that bridge when I come to it.
A few minutes into my class, a Chinese woman came in, and told me she was the beginning English teacher there, and asked if she could sit in. That made me somewhat nervous because I thought, Oh, she's going to think we're competition or something and critique me, and tell everyone that I'm a fraud! And she did give me a few suggestions, but they were good ones, and I needed them, and she was very tactful and classy about it, not seeming once to be critical or judgmental. During the students' break she came up to speak to me and tell me all about herself. For some reason she thought it pertinent to mention that her mother and father were doctors, and her husband is a doctor, and her stepfather was a college professor, and her brother is a dentist, and that she is in graduate school to be a history professor. I can't really remember, because she spoke so quickly, and with such enthusiasm. I am glad to find that I am just as good a listener (almost) in China as I am at home. I sat quietly and nodded and smiled, and widened my eyes in amazement at all of her wondrous feats. She kept suggesting all these things we should do together, like go on trips, and take walks, and have dinner at her home. She was so kind, and she was very warm. She kept telling me that I was doing a wonderful job, and then telling me what I could do to improve it. I welcomed the guidance, honestly. I kept it together pretty well by acting confident, but I was floundering a little. Yesterday I was thinking about class today, and getting prepared, and I remember reading somewhere that "Confidence is the best, if not the only, preparation for anything". I really tried to take that to heart today, and be confident even when I was totally lost. And I felt great about the whole class. I felt really happy with it, and I really enjoyed myself.
I also learned some teacher-y things today. I learned that the worst students really do sit in the back of the classroom. And that watching your students you can tell very easily who is doing their work or not. Some of the girls would move their lips aimlessly, not reading the dialogue they were assigned, until I walked past them, and then I could hear them speaking more loudly, "What are you doing after gym practice today?". It was great fun for me. After class several of them followed me around trying to talk to me and talk about America. I would have loved to talk to them, but Flora wanted us to go somewhere. They asked if they could come to my apartment, and I told them yes, any time they wanted. All this evening when I would see my students around campus, they would say hello so cheerfully. I wonder if all teachers feel so special when their students say hello to them outside of class, or if it's just because I have been alone for so many days?
I also had a lovely afternoon with Flora. She took me around to a few shops, because the power is going to be out in my building for four days, and she wanted to make sure I could go to a restaurant for food and buy my water (I have to buy it in these huge jugs like in water coolers in some offices in the States). And she told me the most exciting news. She said that she had arranged with a cook at a restaurant around the corner to give me cooking lessons! He'll show me what to use and how to cook things, and then I will take the examples home to eat. She said she would accompany me the first few lessons to smooth everything over, and then just let me and the cook figure it out for ourselves. I am so happy about this because I have been wanting to take cooking lessons for months, even back in college I was talking about how much I'd like to take cooking lessons. So now I get them one-on-one with a private tutor, and I get to learn how to make Chinese food. I was so excited, and I think that made her laugh, and made her happy. Another digression, I have noticed that when you are happy and people can tell, they are kinder to you, and like you more. I can just feel the way Flora looks at me and rolls her eyes and smiles, that she thinks something like, "Well, it's nothing to be that excited about, but what an endearing creature you are for being so amiable". Well, maybe that's a bit too much, but I think it amused her still. She said the first thing he's going to teach me is how to make "tomato and eggs fried in sauce". Hell yeah! That sounds delicious, as all I've eaten for five days is ramen noodles and sesame crackers, and the occasional orange.
Alas, with every silver lining there is also a puddle of mud. Today Flora took me to a restaurant and I haven't had any meat since I got here. I have some beef jerky, but I'm saving it for a special occasion. So she asked me what I wanted, and I said chicken and rice. I thought that was pretty innocuous.
I got a whole dang chicken.
Feet, beak, bones, skin, and all! I knew when I came here that they use every part of the animal when they cook, and that the animals are not like the animals in the States, because they aren't raised the same and packed with growth hormones, etc. And still, digging through my chicken dinner with chopsticks and pulling up a chicken's little clawed foot somehow managed to make me flinch with disgust. The chicken doesn't even look the same, I mean the meat. In comparison, the chicken meat in America is made out of plastic or something, it's not even identifiable as the same animal. But I promised myself I would be fearless and adventurous here, so I picked through the meat to find pieces that weren't bone or foot, and ended up eating very little, because it smelled like chicken. I mean, you know how fish smells like fish when you cook it? Well, chicken has a smell as well, I just didn't know that until I came here. And it smells like crap.
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