Lao Shan

Just a few minutes to write a quick update, we are going to spend the next couple of days in Qufu, Confucius' birthplace during our week off. We were planning on leaving earlier today, but since we only went to the ticket office early this afternoon, and getting around Shandong province takes much more time than we thought, we've decided to go at night and take an overnight train. We'll get into Jinan, the capital of Shandong province, at 5 tomorrow, and then take a bus to Qufu. Hopefully it should be a neat trip.
Yesterday we went with the other teachers and the school to Lao Shan, or Lao mountain, which is a mountain about an hour outside of Qingdao that is a famous Taoist holy mountain. We left at 7am and didn't get back until 7 pm, so it was a full day of hiking. We hiked up two peaks, a southern peak in the morning and a northern peak in the afternoon (it was hard to tell if they were THE peaks or two of several). The mountain was beautiful, and the day was cool and misty, which ruined the view but made hiking pleasant. It wasn't exactly the pristine wilderness that we expect from hiking in nature, given that there were tons of little stalls of people selling tea, dried fish, and nick-nacks, but there were long stretches where it was just the mountain scenery and us, with almost no other hikers. Indeed, we were the only ones at the northern peak summit, the taller and more isolated rugged one. One other difference was that much of the path was steps, either stone or concrete, which was actually more difficult; it's much harder to walk up steps to the top of a mountain than to climb a steep path. All things considered, it's definitely something I would want to do again. Along one of the paths descending from the mountain we came across a monkey cage, although the monkeys seemed to have found a way out. One monkey in particular was quite aggressive and stole one of the teacher's gatorade bottle. He was unable to open it though, before another monkey nursing her infant stole it from him. Eventually the teacher took off the lid and put it at the top of the cage and the alpha male dumped it on top of himself, but managed to get a sip in.
We also had a very nice lunch in a restaurant that consisted of lots of little private buildings. The lunch included, among other things, some fried insects that we dipped in salt and pepper. They didn't have a lot of flavor though, they were mainly just crunchy.

our life

So it's been awhile since we have last written, partially because this last week of summer classes has been busy with grading tests and writing final evaluations. Now however, summer classes are completely over, and we get a nice break until fall classes start in september. The fall classes will be much more relaxed, we won't be teaching more than 15-20 hours a week, or so we've been told. Also, this past week my rommate and her friend visited us after teaching in Seoul for the summer, which was very fun but also kept us busy. We did some actual sight seeing of Qingdao, which was long overdue after living in the city for two months. We saw both the protestant and catholic churches, (otherwise known as the catholic and 'christian' churches). Both were actually quite charming, although I must say that the interior of the catholic church definitely beat out the protestant church in terms of interesting interior. Yet at the protestant church, we were able to climb the bell tower for 4 kuai. It was a bit of a let down to anyone who has ever been in a bell tower in a European church, but we did get a pretty good view of Qingdao, which is actually quite a gorgeous city. Both churches are in the German area, which is full of old Bavarian style buildings and newer imitation Bavarian style buildings. It's also nearby the old governor's mansion which looks like a European palace. It's now a governmental building and we weren't allowed to go in, but we peered in the door (or at least I did) and caught a glimpse of the some of the old wood work. I wouldn't say exactly that Qingdao is exactly like a European city, but it does have a very European feeling, although instead of being able to get gelato on every street corner, we can get squid on a stick. Qingdao has lots of trees and fairly wide stone sidewalks which makes it nice for strolling around.
THe beer festival has also been going on, although with our schedule, we have not found time to go. Tonight is the last night, so Dan and I will go when I finish work at 7:30. I don't work until 5:30 today, so I made an attempt to go earlier with a Chinese English teacher (about half the teachers at the school are Chinese), and we went to the smaller beer festival site, but no one was really there and she had not a lot of interest in staying, so we walked to the beach and then went to a Korean restaurant.

last day

today was the last day of class for one of my classes and two of Dan's classes. Truth be told, no matter how tired and grumpy I've been or no matter how unruly they've been (and they've been pretty awful for the past week), it's still a little bittersweet. I've spent 2 hours a day for 5 days a week with them for six weeks, and now I probably won't see most of them again (though it's highly possible that they'll take more classes at Lee-wen). Some of the students I'll really miss. One of my favorite students was a boy named Peter (I actually have about 6 students named peter, three in that class) who wore a light blue neckbrace. Many days at break, he would come up to me with elaborate drawings of dinosaurs and ask me to write the English name. He soon gave up after he realized I couldn't tell a diplodicus from a brachiosaurus, and so he researched their English names and then asked me to write the phonetic spelling. Every kid in China seems to know that phonetic dictionary spelling as well as they can write English, and are shocked that we English teachers can't. I did manage to find the phonetic spellings of several on one kid's expensive electronic dictionary, though they didn't have "memenchisaurus" or "sinosauropteryx."
Back to my classes though:
The attrition rate for my class ending today was pretty steep; today in a class that once had 26 kids only about 10 showed up, and I'd probably been averaging about 15 for the past two weeks. This seems to be vacation time for families; many students disappeared for a week or so and then suddenly showed back up with a tan. It did make teaching somewhat difficult, and definitely I think learning was a bit spotty. On the final exam, the class average was about 55%, compared to the midterm the class average was about 78%, only 4 out of 17 students taking the test scored anything remotely respectable, respectable being C or above. I think partially it was the student's attention spans drifting as the end drew near and summer vacation hit its high point, but also the book did become much harder at the end. For example, the kids went from having to make sentences like "this is my book" to "what do you think about the Greenhouse Effect. Write a letter to the editor," to give an example of an exercise completely over their heads. It was depressing to spend over an hour on the basic past tense and have only about 2 kids be able to use past tense at all correctly (It's not like they weren't creative though: 'She movis to Qingdao' and 'she moven't to Beijing' are two examples). Or on a match English-Chinese vocab section, to realize that most students couldn't tell the difference between 'sausage' and 'headache.' But to be fair, many of the better students stopped coming, so I'd like to hope they would have done better.
Other than that, life has continued as usual, the weather has been mercifully cooler and less humid. I'll still have to work until 8:30 most nights, but I'll be free until 3:30 in the afternoons, which is better than having to start at 1:15. Dan only has his 6-8:30 left, so he has pretty much the entire day free.
Other than that, I have found a track near our house, it's one of Qingdao University's smaller tracks, and it's a nice place for jogging. The gates are locked, but the fence around it is easy to squeeze through, and this being China, there are routinely about 30 people playing pick-up soccer in the grassy part, and small children playing on the track. I have gone running twice, though both times the humidity was killer and I am woefully out of shape. Somehow a steep 15 minute climb to our apartment every evening hasn't helped keep me in shape for a 30 minute jog.
Well, I have to go and teach my nightmare of a kindergarten class now, so I have to stop writing. This class is a room full of 5 year olds screaming, along with some four year olds who look suspiciously like 3 or 2 year olds who mainly seem to doodle on their books, desks, clothes, and the chalkboard when I turn my back.

shirts

so, we haven't been blogging as much, mainly because there have been classes in the computer lab when we are at school and also because our internet is broken and we've been busy, but we'll try to be better about it.
Lots of students have English writing on their shirts, though much of it is unintelligible or perhaps not exactly the type of shirt a 12 year old American kids would wear. I have one student who only wears mickey mouse tee-shirts, he has about 4 different ones. One girl wears a shirt that said "fashion is crescent." The best example of unintelligible writing though, is a boy who wears a shirt that says:
PAOHF
SEFKING THFIR OWM PFRSONALITV...
OMLY GFNUINE THIMGS HAVF DEFN
LEEF AF TIMF PASSFD
BASHF STREFT STYLF
Now that it is the Qingdao beer festival however(which we haven't gone to yet), about half the boys have been wearing Qingdao beer festival shirts.
Well, the lab is filling up with students for an evening class, so we have to go now.

typhoon

I only have five minutes, but a typhoon hit Qingdao last night. It was called "mai shao." It hit land in a different city so by the time it got here it had quieted down a bit, but it still meant torrential rains and fierce winds. We were teaching when it started but got home before the worst of it, which was about 12 at night. We did get completely soaked though, even though we had umbrellas. I have to say, it was not quite as exciting as it sounded (I don't think the winds quite got to 25 mph), but it is my first typhoon. (Portland has incredibly wimpy weather in pretty much all categories). The sea is very wild still, and the beaches are closed until further notice (which should be in a couple of days). I did go yesterday morning, and alhtough there was caution tape and a sign blocking off the sea, about 25 people were still swimming.
Well, back to class.

I teach intermediate English for 6 1/2 hours a day, which can be interesting and draining. I've not spent this much time with 11-12 year olds since I was in 6th grade and I'd really forgotten what it was like. In some ways, I really like my students, and in other ways they seem impossibly immature. I must say though, by the time 8:30 at night rolls around, my sense of humor has also dropped a few maturity points as well. In my classes, the funniest thing, especially for boys, is the W.C. Most of these kids have learned British English, and so, if they want to be risque and inappropriate in English class, they do so by making jokes about the W.C. Of course to me, it's funny in a different way to hear 12 year old boys using the rather stuffy euphamism "W.C." for toilet. "You are W.C. man" is a big insult, followed closely by "Your mother live in W.C." Whenever we play a word game, one student always has to mention the W.C., followed by the requisite titters. Of course, next to the W.C., girl friends and boy friends are also a sure way to make a splash. If I want to make the class laugh uproariously, all I need to do is ask a student about his or her boyfriend or girlfriend. For example, one boy was goofing off, and in revenge, I asked him, "were you and your girlfriend at the park last night?" The two or three kids in the class who knew "girlfriend" in English started shouting "yes! yes! say yes!" and eventually the boy said yes. A kid translated the sentence and answer into Chinese, and the class started shrieking "you have a girlfriend." The boy turned bright red and the class (including the boy) burst into giggles. Another hilarious thing is if there is ever a picture of an ugly person, if someone's friend points to it and says "who's that?" the answer is often "your girlfriend." This means that actual sort of interaction between girls and boys is clearly taboo. One of my classes is impossibly noisy, to the point other teachers have to come over and complain (they are rare in that they are noisy but fairly strong students who overall do pay attention). One day I assigned them an essay "Why am I so noisy?" as homework. I received fairly hilarious results, given that their English writing skills are not quite at paragraph or perhaps even sentence level yet (that can be another post). A few days later, I threatened in desparation to seat them boy-girl, the ultimate punishment. I had to carry through, and I have to say, the effectiveness of the noise reduction was completely offset by the whining and sulking the new seating caused. Half the class refused to do any partner work with a person of the opposite sex, and one girl was almost in tears.
On a somewhat less humorous note, another big insult is to call someone Japanese. Saying that someone speaks Japanese, or is Japanese, or has been to Japan is probably the biggest put down after calling someone a W.C. man. In the text book I use, there is a Japanese foreign exchange student as one of the characters. When I showed his picture in the front of the book to the kids, one boy said, oh, he looks Chinese. When I said, no, he's Japanese, the kids were totally stunned and the boy who made the comment looked sheepish. It's hard to know what to say to comments like that. If something is really extreme, like "we should kill Japanese people," I usually frown and say it's inappropriate, but it's hard to know how to deal with this undercurrent of pervasive nationalism.
(I had another bad experience on a similar note. We were learning nationality, and to get the kids to answer, I asked them questions like "are you Korean?" and they would say "no, I'm Chinese!" I had asked them if they were Korean, Vietnamese and Japanese, and I decided for kicks to ask boy if he was Thai. After I did, all the kids started pointing and laughing and calling him Thai, and I realized he was slightly darker than the others. Then one kid shouted, "yeah, he's African!" and I knew I had made a horrible mistake that brought out a rather ugly side of Chinese racism. I told the kids that they were being inappropriate, and then I asked the lightest skinned student in the class if she was Thai to show that it was random, but I felt I probably should have thought that out better beforehand).