Quick synopsis of travel so far

Okay, want to write a little bit about my current travels, still have
a lot to finish writing about from May, but that will have to wait.

Anyway, I finished teaching a week ago last Friday and then that
afternoon went up to Guilin to pick up Mom and Chris from the airport.
There was some confusion checking into the hotel (they needed to hold
onto my passport, I thought they'd call me when they were done, but
they didn't) and I ended up getting into the airport late.

We'd planned to take a cab back, but they cost more than I'd expected,
so we were going to take a bus when some people I know from China
Climb came out of the airport and offered us a ride towards town in
their bus. They'd just dropped off a big school group after a long
day, but we weren't out of the way and it worked out for them to drop
us off pretty close to our hotel.

The next day Mom, Chris, and I took a cruise down the Li River, on one
of those big boats I was complaining so much about before. They're
really not so loud if you're actually on them, they're built to block
most of the engine noise from the passengers. It was a great trip,
the day started out gray and foggy, with wisps of clouds swimming
between peaks, and ended up getting a little sunny.

We spent the next few days in Yangshuo doing some of things available
there, saw Impression Liu SanJie, rode around on bikes, went to the
Butterfly Cave (better than I'd expected, a cool cave with some
interesting water-worn figures, including one of a butterfly, plus a
hill to climb and look out from, some dancing, and a butterfly
garden), Chris and I went rock-climbing, ate some of the local food
I've been eating, and my taiji teacher took us out to dinner.

On Thursday afternoon we headed back to Guilin airport, having
arranged tickets and a well-priced ride through a continually helpful
CITS travel agent in Yangshuo. He also got Echo and me tickets to
Heng Yang in May and lots of other tickets for stuff around. For most
of the time in Yangshuo I took care of stuff, but since then Echo's
been travelling with us and usually ends up making the arrangements in
consultation with us. It's been immensely helpful, since our
itinerary is so scattered across the country.

So we flew to Chongqing, formerly a part of eastern Sichuan, but now
an independent "municipality" like Beijing and Shanghai. It's a big,
dirty, hilly city. We were lucky to find a helpful driver at the
airport who took us to a decent hotel and a place to get tickets for a
Yangtze cruise. The next day we had lunch at a widely recommended and
delicious hot-pot restaurant (two bowls in one, one has a white broth,
the other is spicy, red oil, and you boil the food in either then dip
it in sesame oil with garlic and salt, or just eat it straight, it's a
local specialty that's very good when done well).

After that we went shopping for food on the boat trip. We were
heading back to the hotel to pick up our bags to go to the ferry
terminal and decided to stop in on an interesting sounding Buddhist
temple on the way. Unfortunately, instead of the reputed 500 brightly
colored, life-size statues of arhats (Buddhist saints), there were
only about 18. I felt mildly betrayed.

Then we didn't have anything else to do, so we picked up our bags and
went to the ticket office. Where it turned out that our boat was
delayed (a recurrent problem on this leg of the trip, the amazing
thing is that we actually docked on time, at 3 am Saturday morning),
and we didn't really need to be there until 8:30 instead of 6. The
charge for checking bags was exhorbitant and we didn't really have
anything else to do, so we sat around, except for a trip to get an
additional bag (the best I could find in the right size and price
range was a dark blue Nike duffel) and to get some baozi for supper.

When we finally got on the boat at 9:30pm, and got up to our room, we
first discovered that the A/C wasn't working, and were then informed
that in order to see the first site, the ghost city and temple at
Fengdu, we'd have to get up at 5am. Of course we didn't actually get
there and off the boat until something like 8 or 9, but it was the
start of us all being overtired, overheated, and cranky. The A/C
worked intermittently throughout the two-day trip, keeping the room
pleasantly cool when functional, but leaving us in stifling heat when
not. Overall it was a cool trip, but we snoozed through a fair amount
of it towards the end. I'll try to write more specifics later, on a
time budget now.

We got into Yichang, in Hubei province at 3am on Saturday morning and,
rather than try find a hotel and risk not finding train tickets to
Xi'an in the afternoon, we opted to take a bus to Wuhan, a bigger city
a couple of kilometers further east. The bus ride was miserable, with
hopelessly undercompensating shocks that left us bouncing up and down
at the slightest bump, of which there seemed to be an inordinate
number. The main road we travelled on also seemed to be almost
entirely under reconstruction, at least that part I managed to open my
eyes to see.

We found a good street stall to have breakfast and then caught a cab
to the train station, where we got tickets for Xi'an and checked our
bags. We spent much of the morning and early afternoon in the Wuhan
museum, which has a number of interesting exhibits, although the
English is a bit sketchy. It was then past time to find lunch, but
Echo strongly objected to the food available at stalls outside the
train station, so I suggested catching a bus elsewhere. She asked a
woman for advice on where to go, but the woman didn't tell us how long
it would take to get there, and it ended up being a 40-minute bus ride
and an expensive cab ride back to the station, just in time to hop on
before the train pulled out.

We then read and mostly slept for the 12-hour journey, which got us
into Xi'an at 5am. On trying to find a hotel outside the station, we
were harassed by several touts, and eventually found some guys who
seemed okay who offered to give us a ride into town for 5 kuai. We
took it and ended up getting dragged to a couple of hotels we hadn't
been interested in, but the second one seemed okay, decently priced,
so we took it. Then the same group offered to give us a bus to use
for 20 kuai/person to get out to see the Terra-Cotta warriors and
stuff out east of here in the vicinity of the Qin Imperial tomb. It
was impressive, Qin Shi Huang had way, way too much power and wealth.
In my opinion. The stuff's pretty cool though, it's just, well, he
built a full-scale palace around the site he chose for his tomb, and
it took 720,000 people something like 38 years to complete, most of
the laborers were forced away from their homes to work on it, many
were killed to maintain secrecy... The only problem was that these
people who had offered to arrange transport, get us to a hotel, etc.,
there was some miscommunication, at first we were about to be joined
by a group of Chinese tourists, which would have forced us to move
much faster than we'd be interested in, and they also made us stop at
a jade exhibition (cool, but it was not a museum, they were definitely
trying to sell to us), and then they wanted us back in two hours,
which we just ignored. We wanted as much time as we needed, and it
was with the understanding that that would be available that we took
the offer.

It worked out, but then when we got back to the hotel the guys we'd
talked to before seemed not to have gotten train tickets for us, which
they'd said they would do. It was frustrating, and we had to make an
extra trip to the train station before dinner last night. Now we're
on a different train than the one we'd originally hoped for, leaving
an hour earlier. It's all working out, and I'm looking forward to
Beijing. More soon, I hope.

I figured I should write something...

...so I'm basically copying this from a letter I wrote to some friends
from Suzhou. Sorry I haven't written for a while. They moved the
computer out of my room, and I've been busier. And I've got
people/someone to spend time with here so there's less reason to
write. Most of this is talking about some recent problems at school,
nothing too serious, but ranging from annoying to offensive. It might
be kind of funny to read about, for the most part it doesn't get to me
any more, although it's kind of adding up to a jaded cynicism about
TEFL, at least in China, at least here. All told though, my time here
should still finish up pretty well.

First, there's no real curriculum support, no Director of Studies or
anything, which was especially frustrating when I started. The
closest thing is the Chinese boss/principal, Odar, who's teaching
style, umm, leaves a little to be desired, although he does at least
have enthusiasm. Since late February I haven't been trying any harder
than I have to (I'm not proud of it, but, given the lack of support,
I'm afraid my teaching has suffered significantly, and I'm getting
more sleep), and I still do a better job than Odar would.

We're also supposed to make up our own level tests, but there's no
real guidance on what students should know to advance a level. This
really got to me the first time I had to make up a test, I think it
was in early April. I spent the whole day desperately trying to
figure out what the test should be on and ended up settling for a few
pages from a few unit tests in the back of the main book for levels 3
and 4. I also gave a nominal oral examination, which I've since
dropped, since I can usually tell speaking ability from classroom
participation, no one actually checks (or seems to care) whether or
not I've done it, and I don't have any interest in committing extra
time outside of class for something like that. A social night,
dinner, sure, but a fake test... Students to move up is usually based
on teacher recommendations anyway, and then we go through the test
motions for the administration.

Additionally the constant in, out, and up of students makes it hard to
craft a progressive plan for teaching that keeps everyone on the same
page. There's a similar revolving door of teachers, especially since
it's gotten into tourist season, although that's usually more a
problem for the students than for me. It has gotten to the point
though where I actually don't know the names of all the people who've
taught here in the last month or so.

These issues have gotten me into trouble recently, however. It
started when 8 out of 10 students in level 3 asked to test to move up
to level 4. I wouldn't have recommended that any of them be tested,
but they insisted, and there was some pressure from below (level 2
students ready to move up), so I gave them the test I'd concocted. 5
of them passed it, most barely scraping by, and at the weekly meeting
we decided, mostly just to balance the numbers, to move up the three
best (one of whom has since returned to level 3).

The next week was uneventful (although, getting a little lazy, I did
show an episode of "the Simpsons" on the Friday), but then, on the
Tuesday of the following week (last week), Odar called me into his
office to talk about some bad marks I'd gotten on the weekly feedback
form he gives to students (first time he'd ever done that to me, since
I've been here). I don't know how much the testing results played
into that, and there's one student who seems to really enjoy the type
of language learning (?) that involves yelling out English words or
phrases at the top of your lungs, a style I do not go in for.

Anyway, it resulted in Odar sitting in on a couple of classes in level
3 (and when he sits in, he's just as likely to jump up and start
teaching with you as to observe) and eventually spending the last part
of the week teaching level 3 while I got to watch. For the most part
that was really frustrating, since I was still preparing a lesson plan
for each class, I wasn't getting a chance to try to improve my
teaching skills, and Odar was going way too fast for the students. On
Friday he finally realized that the BE book is just a wee bit
challenging (if the sarcasm doesn't come through, go back and read it
in, heavily) for the level, and to teach, especially going at the
speed he did.

Then this morning, Monday, I came in hoping to actually be teaching,
and found Odar introducing a new foreign teacher named Nathan and
saying something about us cooperating. I then had the pleasure of
sitting through his lesson. He seems like a nice enough guy, but,
again, it was frustrating. Fortunately, we've decided that rather
than trying to figure out a way to co-teach the class, he'll just
teach it and I don't have to worry about it, yet, after talking with
Odar, it sounds like I'll still get paid for it. Which is pretty
sweet, in some ways.

But it leads to another gripe, namely that Odar treats the teachers
like gold and the students, not so well. And remember that the
students are one of the elements that made me like the school in the
first place.

Anyway, my girlfriend (yes, I have a girlfriend now, more about her
later, although nearly everyone who's likely to read this probably
already knows about her) decided that she wanted to sell her remaining
month of study so she can go to a different school in Yangshuo, which
is significantly cheaper, and because she, along with most of her
classmates, was dissatisfied with the teachers in level 6. She's been
looking for someone to buy it for a while and finally found someone
this weekend.
But then she had to get Odar to approve it and ended up arguing with
him for several hours, during which he said a variety of unpleasant
things. He even had the gall to say that she was the first student
ever to ask to sell her course, which is completely untrue. I've
known several other good students who have successfully sold their
courses, and while I may have missed having them in class, I didn't
blame them for wanting to go somewhere more cost-effective.

So I kind of think Odar's trying to buy me off with the paid untaught
class, hoping I won't put anything bad about him on the internet. If
I do write up anything, well, I'll do my best to keep it fair. At
least his approach is better than confiscating my passport and forcing
me to sign something saying that I had a great time, which I have
heard of happening other places.

About my girlfriend, her name is Echo and she was a student here (and
I don't think our relationship was at all unethical, as she was in
level 5 when we started dating, would now be in level 6, and I only
teach level 3 and 4). She's from Hunan (during the May 1st Labor Day
holiday we travelled together to her home, which I've got a lot to
write about), recently graduated from university, taught English for a
while, then decided she wanted her own English to be better before she
continued teaching. It's been going very well, but we've agreed to
end it when I leave China (or rather, that was the condition I set for
continuing it while we're here) because, well, I don't think I have
the energy or inclination to keep up a long-distance relationship like
that, and to be frank, and without any disparagement intended towards
Echo, I don't think it would work out as a long-term thing.

I think I'm going to have to end it there for now, want to get in some
taiji this afternoon, but with my newfound basketfuls of free time I
should have another entry written soon. I've got one started, I just
need to finish it.