Dear Sixth-Grade-Betsy,

Tonight I went searching for a business envelope and found you instead; one page front and back of your bubbly cursive from 11 years ago. Another 11 years and nine inches have passed and its time I get back to you. To answer your question, OJ was found not guilty. Some teachers let us watch TV in class when the verdict was read. During passing period, we ran up and down the red brick path at school spreading the news. We wrote, “The juice is loose” on every white board in the science building. The smell of roses will forever remind you of the OJ trial because right when it was in the thick of things, a porcelain bottle of rose water in Mom’s bathroom fell off the counter and shattered. The scent of roses wafted through the house for days. You spent a lot of Friday nights watching TGIF perched on the corner of Mom’s bed, while the others watched Unsolved Mysteries in the family room. That show scared you. A lot of things scared you over the next few years. And yet, even with your fears, you continued to hide in Jake’s room in the dark and whisper to him. When he sucked in a gasp of air, body tense, and eyes wide, you laughed and laughed. It was never funny, but you wouldn’t figure that out for a few more years.

You went on to learn that friendship was much more than you ever expected. I remember when that was an original thought in your mind. Through high school, college, and work the one constant was friends as a close as famliy. Last year, you moved to China, and after the culture shock wore off, you felt something missing. Something really big. Finally you put your finger on it: friends. You are different without your friends. Kind of boring, and you annoy Josh a lot. You know that now, but you can’t stop. At this age, you know lots of things you should change about yourself, but somehow the current is too strong to fight, and you have resigned to letting time smooth you out.

Along with your letter, I found your transcripts and had a sinking reminder that you were a solid B student. And with the grades were comments. I had forgotten about the pages of thoughtful comments that came with the grades and was struck by the memory of how hard all your teachers worked, how evident it was that they were willing to meet you and others half way or more. You could have gotten more from all their hard work, I think. A’s probably would have taken you on a different path. Maybe not to New Zealand, though its impossible to say. I’d like to think that A’s or F’s, New Zealand was your destiny somehow; the ultimate adventure passed onto you from your Mom along with her spirit.


Some years after Space Camp, you stopped pursuing that whole astronaut thing. I was relieved to see in writing that you wanted to be an astronaut or a teacher because you have come back to the teacher idea, but sometimes you aren’t so sure. You’ve been looking for this so-called “passion”. You can’t “find it” and you have come to believe it must be the most precious commodity on earth. Finally, instead of tying yourself in knots about passion, you have decided to settle for something you like, and that happened to be teaching. That’s what you are doing now. Last year, you did it too. Its fun, but its harder than you thought. I am not certain, but I have a hunch that most of all you are passionate about travel and adventure---and you are drawn to the idea of those three months of summer vacation wide open for adventure with family and friends and one day your kids.

You remind me of how uncomplicated life can be. Most of your favorites are the same: dogs, blue and chocolate. Spaghetti and Entertainment Tonight got lost somewhere along the way. Soccer has also become a stranger, but you’d have it back in an instant if you could. The setting is all wrong here.

Has Jake told you yet that “we are all our own person”? He was really marveled at that idea back in the early days at Macallan Road. Those words would form in his mouth and his eyes revealed that his whole paradigm had shifted. He said we lived “in our own worlds”, his ‘Jake’ and mine ‘Betsy’, and that we had control over our own actions and feelings. You would go on to hear that a hundred more times from other sources, but when you finally got it, you thought of Jake and how he wantd to share it with you years back.
It hasn’t always felt that way---the control---and there have been times when you have wanted to deny that it is true, but he is right. It’s a neat thought, and if you can wrap your head around it, you suddenly feel like you’ve been given the most valuable and fragile gift.

I don’t remember what you expected, but things have turned out well. Your story is a happy one. You didn’t win lots of awards “like Jenny Burney”, but you will continue to tell anyone who will listen about that plaque from the sixth grade. Sixth Grade Scholar, wasn’t it?

So. You and me. The same person. That’s weird.

Colder than Bageezuz

Dear Betsy:

It's becoming cold for these days.Please wear more clothes for warmer!
Must look after yourself! Have a good day our sweet angel!

Yours sincerely,
Echo


The courtyard in front of our apartment block. We live on the first floor, so thats the tree in our yard.










Leaving for work this morning. The main gate of our campus.

A Hop on Easter

Last night, we got a jump-start on Easter celebrations with an English Easter Party for kids at Josh’s second work, the Australian/English School. You might be wondering if an Australian/English school means English is taught with a seasoning of, ‘G’day mate’, ‘Throw some shrimp on the barbie’, and ‘no worries’, but alas it was originally set up by Australians, and is now owned and operated by a Chinese couple. The couple that call Josh asking for favors every day, “I think you need to look at our new text books and write some lesson plans for the teachers. We need it by tomorrow night, okay?”. The couple that had his signature on a yearlong contract up until a week ago. They are certainly not bad people, but I think they have taken advantage of Josh’s willingness to help when he is asked.

Back to the Easter story. So, last night I tagged along because they needed more dancing bears and it meant I got to spend some time with Josh, whose work steals an unfair share of his time. When we arrived at the school, things were in their natural state of disorganization. We carved a path through a crowd of parents waiting outside the school doors, and up the stairs to where the foreign teachers were sitting around asking each other “So, what exactly is going on tonight?” Finally, Gao, one of the owners, quickly swept us into a little classroom. He hurriedly tried to explain where we needed to be and what we needed to do. And of course, in these situations where something is explained under a time limit, there are always those who interrupt and say, “Wait. Sooo, do we staaay where we aaare or follow the stuuudents?” or any obvious question that starts with squinted eyes and each word is painfully drawn out “Wait, sooo…..?”

Gao told us that we each had 15 seconds to introduce ourselves to the kids, and to “Make it very, very funny. Make the kids like you in two sentences.” Darn. Humor is not my strong point.
The woman called Shelley demonstrated that her name rhymed with belly and then tickled several kids’ bellies. An instant hit. Josh, of course, was in his element. The man has a gift. He pulled out a little persona I have seen before at Nature’s Classroom, “Hi, my name is Josh. I like to sing” (lets out a meek “Laaaaa” like the young, shy nun from Sister Act), “and I like to dance” (flails his arms and legs around like a Muppet).

To borrow from Miss Elizabeth, I assure you I am not afflicted with false modesty when it comes to silly humor. My 15 seconds came and went in a lull between a limb flailing Muppet and a rendition of Jingle Bells by a man called Jing from Cameroon.

Next on the party agenda was for Shelley to tell the story of Easter through a Chinese translator. Shelley started, “Easter is the most wonderful holiday in the Christian church. It is when we celebrate Jesus’ resurrection” then turned to the translator who walked back and forth sputtering Chinese in front of an audience of smiling six year olds. I wondered if it was okay to talk about this in front of six year olds in China. I thought he might translate something different. And then he stopped, and quickly flung his arms wide out to his sides, let his head fall onto his shoulder and crossed his legs. Although I could not understand what he was saying, I could certainly see what he was demonstrating.
And so there we were: talking about Jesus in China with a translator posing as Jesus on the cross and giggling six year olds.
Next came egg painting, the hokey pokey, and quick exam for each student to assess their English level. The foreign teachers sat at desks in a classroom with a stack of papers and a bucket full of pencil bags. We would ask a series of questions like “How are you?” “What time is it?” “What’s the weather like today?”, give each student a mark from 1-3, award them a pencil bag and say “Next!”. Josh had so much fun with that, he is considering a career change to bank loan adviser.
Tonight: the same routine two more times. Maybe I will buzz around like a bee. Bee for Betsy?

In case you were beginning to suspect that there were never any students

Language Lab 415

Common Courtesy Lost in Translation

Last year, as the weather got colder, I received a number of emails from my students. Each one went along the lines of, “Dear teacher, it is getting cold these days. Make sure to wear many warm clothes now.” And then at least once a day in class, someone would say to me, “Teacher, you need to add more layers.” Never mind that my arms are sticking out like a puffed up penguin. Never mind that I am a grown up. And never mind that I am the teacher, I still got the “you need to” treatment. In English, as soon as you hear “need to”, you want to groan, you want to protest, you immediately start searching for excuses for why you don’t need to, no matter what it is. This, of course, is lost on many who’s’ first language is not English and so “you need to” rolls off their tongues left and right.

One student asked me how my Chinese was coming along, and when I answered a modest, “Oh, not that great, but I am working on it” he nodded sympathetically and said, “Hmmm, you need to study more”. Of course you have to agree, its much easier than trying to explain that telling someone they need to do something is usually a job reserved for that person’s parents.
Another funny, if not mildly irritating, gesture is when you are pulled out of the road abruptly if a car or bicycle is slowly approaching. This too, I know, is done out of love, but the situations in which you are yanked back by the strap of your backpack are not life threatening. They don’t involve vehicles traveling at high speeds, or even real roads. This takes place on campus roads where the students walking to class outnumber the cars 30:1, where you would have noticed the car only a moment later and taken a step to the left or right so it could pass.

Today I must swallow this ungrateful attitude because at the intersection of two real roads, a ‘grab and yank’ from a complete stranger saved my life, or at least saved me from minor injury. It went like this: I was crossing at the designated crossing time on a journey led by the green man. Almost to the other side of the intersection, I was distracted by the brave actions of an elderly crossing guard. She was a small lady in a long blue coat armed with a yellow flag. In America, we don’t defy the crossing guard. We all know that when the flag, or the sign, or even just the flat palm of a crossing guard is in action, you are going to pay attention. It’s for the safety of the people.
But the crossing guards and yellow flags are not given the respect that they deserve around here, particularly not from big and shiny black cars with tinted windows who seem to think they own the roads. So, two big and shiny black cars begin to turn the corner side by side despite the fact that our crossing guard has both arms extended to her sides, is prominently displaying the yellow flag and is gesturing for the cars to stop. I watched as she gallantly jumped side-to-side using her body as a blockade, but they weren’t stopping. The moved slowly forward, forcing the crossing guard to choose her life and turn sideways, as the two cars continued on parting the herd of pedestrians. I had been watching the situation unfold as I crossed unaware that now my eyes were facing the in the opposite direction that my feet were traveling. I felt someone grab the collar of my jacket and quickly jerk me backwards, squealing something frantically in Chinese. Alarmed I looked at the woman who restrained me, and then my head spun around to find a taxi one inch in front of me. The driver sped on by and gave me a look that said it all.

Work?

Getting back into this whole work thing is not easy.

Josh studies his characters.















And two minutes later....















Halfway through the week and we have already met 100 new students each. I learned so much last term and was eager to get right into it on the first day with pronunciation drills and correcting their oral English at first chance.

We did pair interviews and introductions to warm up:

“This is Liu Bo. He—“

“She.”

“Oh, yes, sorry. She is from a beautiful city called Wentai. His major—“

“Her major.”

“Her major is Civil Engineering.”

That scenario comes up a lot. In Chinese there is no distinguishing between the two. ‘He’ and ‘she’ are both said “ta”. Of course the characters are written differently.

Other than the, his/her/he/she agreement, I let everything else slide because some of the students are like hermit crabs. And my job is to coax them out of their shell, not to scare them all the back in to the darkest corner never to trust again. Just as I remember doing in Spanish class, many of my students try to become in invisible by avoiding eye contact with me when it seems I am about to call on someone for an answer. As a student I always thought it was subtle and effective, but it can be a disheartening—or just funny---from where the teacher stands. Suddenly everyone in the room is checking to make sure his or her shoes are tied.
I might be standing next to a student, smiling right at them and saying, “Would you introduce your partner?” and they will still be trying very hard to look preoccupied and unaware of my presence, desperately hoping I will give up and move on to someone else. Finally they will look up at me surprised, glance quickly side to side, blink a few times, point at themselves and ask: “Wo?” meaning "Me?" I feel the urge to laugh at the obviousness rising in my throat but let it translate only into a warm, encouraging smile. "Yes, you."

Well, I'll be darned

I was catching up on my American news stories at today.reuters.com when I saw a headline: Northeastern US hammered by snowstorm
Sun Feb 12, 2006 11:58 AM ET


'Wow, DC got a lot of snow.....look at the Capitol building...pretty.....wait, that woman looks familiar...is it?...nooo....It is!....It's my Mom!"










Rhonda Spydell, of Washington, takes a picture of the U.S. Capitol after the first major snowstorm of the season hit February 12, 2006. Airports from Washington to Boston are shut down due to high, gusting winds and large accumulations of snow. REUTERS/Gary Cameron

I said CEASE FIRE!!.......please?

What gets me are the 8am fireworks. It’s not even dark. Who gets up to do that? WHO?

Today is the Lantern Festival.
What I know about the Lantern Festival:
Everyone eats sticky rice balls filled with bean paste and there are a lot of fireworks--- all. day. long. From where I am sitting in the computer room, there could very well be golf ball sized hail falling on our ‘tin roof’, while drummers from a high school marching band practice in the living room and hundreds of small Chinese children are throwing handfuls of gravel at our windows. Can’t leave out the pirate ships run aground in the courtyard firing canons over the apartment building.

Surprisingly, fireworks are not the main attraction of the Lantern Festival; Lanterns are. We followed a crowd out the North gate of campus, and under a red archway where the crowd thickened considerably. Big crowds feel like an out of body experience to me. I become a zombie, rhythmically moving forward with the mass. I feel like I don’t even control my own legs; we, as a herd, share one brain. Josh, on the other hand, feels very alert in a big crowd; one hand clutching wallet in pocket, other hand tethering zombie girlfriend, eyes darting every which way. Eventually the combination of dense crowd + deafening fireworks became too much and we ducked into an alley that took us around the campus and up to the South gate. Not before we got a few blurry pictures.










Bei Bei Jing Jing Huan Huan Yin Yin Ni Ni

Just another Saturday Night Out in Jinan...

...with cresanthemum tea















and the guy who squirts hot water from his long-spout tea pot.

Paradox of the Lazy Good for Nothin'

We only have one weekend left of this long winter break and all I've got to say to that is THANK GOODNESS. I am so cooped up that I can't even motivate myself to leave the apartment. Make that any sense does?
Fortunately there is plenty of good reading material around thanks to a recent motherly care package.

And of course, there is always the planning of the future, which seems to be an ongoing project in my life. It involves flow charts, Ven diagrams, list making, parental consultations, groupthinks, and endless Internet research. I have made a full time job out of looking for a job. At least for now I have settled on a plan, and that is to head for the homeland after this summer and get myself a real honest to goodness license to teach. Not only for the big bucks, but darned if I don’t love how this job brings you something new everyday. Whether it be headstrong sixth graders or demure Chinese grad students, just lemme at ‘em. But maybe I need a little more formal training first.
Right now there is a man in Florida by the name of Quicksall who just might be panicking. But don’t worry, Dad; Jake can support me. Right, J?

Josh plans to stay in China until he can read the local newspaper, or at least for one more year. He will take another contract with Shandong University and terminate the contract with the Australian school he had agreed to work for next year. That might cause a little friction, but having worked for both schools for four months now, he can clearly see which one he would prefer to give another year to. We have gathered, from the talk of English teachers around town, that Shandong treats its teachers best.

And so there is the end product from many days’ worth of decision-making. The upcoming term will bring about a couple of changes. Our classes will be three hours long, and our students will be the half with the lower scores from the English proficiency test given at the beginning of school year—before we got here. Last term we taught the higher-scoring half.
We are to leave out writing skills and focus entirely on listening and speaking.
New students, longer classes, less content to cover; bring it on.

If they weren't looking before...

If we had a pet, I'd say "No, pet, we aren't going away again. Josh is packing up for his pack test."





This morning Josh's task was to make his backpack weigh 45 lbs. It was the one time he was frustrated that all his gear is so light! He added books, cans, sweaters, two bags of laundry detergent, kitchen appliances...

Yep, now its heavy.

Josh wanted to see if he has what it takes to pass the fitness test a wilderness fire fighter must take: 3 miles in 45 minutes carrying 45 lbs. No jogging allowed.

And he does. 43 min 24 sec!

The things we do for fun around here.

A Whole New World

Would you believe that it took nearly six months of living in China for us to begin studying the characters? No joke. I was convinced that just speaking and listening would be sufficient. Reading and writing? Nah, not necessary. It would slow down my learning considerably.

To be fair, Josh has always said he thinks we should learn to write and he has been studying characters in earnest for over five days now, diligently teaching himself five new ones every day. He even gave himself a pop quiz yesterday, graded it and everything; thirty words with their pinyin spelling and their characters for a total of 90 points. He showed me his paper marked up in red pen and said, “What really killed me was labeling the tones on the pinyin.”

To learn how to write, Josh has a book where on each page is a character and a grid with nice little boxes to practice in. You are shown how the character is created one stroke at a time. Because if you draw, you will have the Chinese in fits of laughter, as my students were when I drew my Chinese name on the overhead projector. At me, not with me. The stroke order counts big time.

So this book is pretty neat. It separates out each component of the character. It identifies radicals and their meanings. For instance, there is a radical made of four strokes that looks kind of like a stick figure with a third leg in the middle. It means ‘tree’ and it’s a component of the character guo* (fruit) to suggest the idea of fruit growing on trees, but also found in the character bei (cup). The character for bei combines the tree radical with bu (not) to suggest that cups are not made of trees or wood.
So if you saw that character, you might say… “hmm… Not tree…. oh yes, of course, cup!”


All this to say that I picked the book up yesterday and taught myself a dozen characters. Later that afternoon we walked to the grocery store and it was like stepping out into a whole new world. I finally figured out why Josh has been staring out the window of taxis looking forlorn and distracted for the past few days. I’d ask the girlfriend-y “Whats wrong?” and he’d say he was just looking at all the signs and billboards trying to recognize a character.
I was taken with the labels in the grocery store. I felt like we were in Disneyland, but instead of pointing and shouting “There’s Mickey Mouse!” or “Look! Over by the castle! Its Sleeping Beauty ”, I said: “There’s the character for ‘enter’!” and “Look! Over by the frozen foods! It’s the radical that means ‘roundish object’!”

As we walked home I felt like I was a the barcode scanner from the grocery store scanning thousands of characters all over storefronts to see if I recognize anything.

……………..blip…………………………………………blip…………………….

We would notice really intricate characters and say, “Woah, check that out. That’s gotta be, what…14 strokes at least.”





* The pinyin is not entirely accurate, as I have not indicated a tone.

Just to get a closer look at the foreigners

Communication Consultation Days Are Over

An easy way to get laughs out of my students is to try and say something in Chinese.
Some mornings before class began, I'd walk over to couple students and try out a new expression. Nine out of ten times, I would be met with the same reaction: a blank stare and then "Wait. Ooh..Are you speaking Chinese?"

I have taken note of a recent development in our Chinese language communication abilities (OCLCA) . Previously, when Josh or I wished to communicate with someone in Chinese, there was a process involved:

A: Do you think we should go ask that taxi driver if he knows where Sanfo is?
B: Yeah, that might not be a bad idea. Do you want to do it or do you want me to do it?
A: I don't mind. Here, I'll do it.
B: Okay. Just go say "Sanfo zai nar?"
A: Yeah, I know. I will. (clears throat) Oh wait. Do you think he'll be mad cause we don't want to actually take his taxi? >>>insert any excuse<<<<
B: No, I doubt it.
A: Okay... Oh, shoot, I think that lady is about to get into the taxi. Yep, he's busy now. Hmmm.
B: Should I just go ask that man by the bus stop?
A: Yeah. Go ask him. Or do you want me to do it?
B: Yeah. Sure. If you don't mind. Thanks.
(A takes a moment to get him/herself into the zone/psyched/pumped. A lets out a quick breath and dauntlessly embarks)
B: Nice one. What did he say?
A: (coming back with an exhilarated expression) Huh? Oh. He didn't know.

Very time consuming. But with our recent trip came a change.
A confidence was gained. A barrier was broken. Open the flood gates and let our 30-word vocabulary flow.

Still banging in the new year

"BLAMMY!" is Josh's favorite new expression in light of incessant firework blasting (and multiple viewings of Anchorman) alleged to last until February 6th.

Its been pretty much non-stop since we got home a few days ago. It picks up at night time. Who likes fireworks this much? Just. so. dang. loud! BLAMMY!

People are starting to emerge from their secluded familial gatherings to restock on food. Everyday a few more shops are open, and a few more people are on the street. I missed everyone. The streets have been lonely. No traffic, no bicycle mobs, no nothin' out there.