From Russian to Thai

Sometimes I wonder how life will seem when we are back in Canada. One thing that has become apparent in the last two weeks is how often we eat out in restaurants. The truth is that cooking in our apartment is difficult and dangerous. The kitchen is small and we only have 2 hot-plates and a microwave to cook in. We can’t seem to find a decent pot and often end up scorching the pots we do have as it is very difficult to regulate temperature on the hot-plates. The other thing is that we can eat out so cheaply that we don’t save any money eating in. So at 6ish most nights we often find ourselves going out to a restaurant. There are literally hundreds within a short walk or cab ride and a meal for 2 can range from under 3 dollars to about 30 dollars. In the last two weeks we have had some interesting meals – a Russian restaurant where the floor-show was better than the food (I’ll include some pictures), a couple of Thai restaurants that both had good food and one that had a sort of gay pop song troupe of entertainers and several excellent Italian restaurants. WHo knew there was a big Russian population in Beijing? So I wonder how we’ll adjust to living at home, where going out to dinner is the exception rather than the rule.

Another feature of this past two weeks has been the workload. We have had report cards, an Open House, a Student Talent Show, a Sports Day, a Halloween Haunted House, a Halloween class decorations shopping trip, a hotdog grill out, Parent-Teacher meetings and at least 2 PD sessions after school. My major effort was a slide show produced by my after-school group for the Open House. Brenda and I have both got an after-school activity 4 days a week and I have an additional activity after that 2 days a week. So, many evenings we haven’t got back to our apartment until 9 and then we have often had marking or preparation to do. Despite all this, we have managed to squeeze in some fun. We visited the Summer Palace here in Beijing and we had a roaring Halloween bash in the residence.

Personalities are also becoming apparent now that we have been here for 10 weeks. We are getting to know our fellow teachers quite well and also learning about the idiosyncrasies of Chinese ways and the school administration. I am slowly getting the equipment I need to run my BBT lab. I had a meeting with the owner about 2 1/2 weeks ago and a long list of things was approved which he promised would be in my hands by the end of that day or at least by the next week! It has been slow in coming. A lot of it was dumped on me this week. And I mean dumped – I walk up to the IT Department and spot the new arrivals and start asking for the stuff to be released to me. After anywhere from 2 to 5 days they might give it to me. Then I carry it by hand to my lab and set it up. I unpack it, do the software installs and network configuration, troubleshooting, figure out how it works (Chinese manuals) etc. I am not sure what the IT Department here is for. Actually, I think they are just here to waste my time!

Our student’s personalities also have really emerged. We teach all the same students – about 75 in the high school and middle school – and so we spend a fair bit of time sharing insights and information about them. In some ways, they can be difficult to teach as they don’t understand a lot of what we are saying and they just don’t react like Canadian kids. They don’t often get the jokes and I hope they don’t take me literally! One thing you notice is that they bow to you when they see you, even when they pass you in the hall. I quite like the bowing actually! There is an eye contact thing too – if you look at them they will look down. It is unconscious thing and they really can’t help themselves. Another oddity that gets on my nerves is being called “Teacher”. I know that sounds like a small thing but try hearing that 50 times in 40 minutes and it will drive you crazy. I am trying to teach them to say “Mr. Badger”, but they seem to find that hard to say!

Trying to photograph them is also difficult as many of them continue to turn away or cover their faces when I point a camera at them. So getting good pictures has been difficult. Strangely most of them have digital cameras or at least phones that take pictures and they take a lot of pictures of each other. When I do get a picture of them, 10 or 12 kids who want to see the picture will often swarm me and then inevitably one of them begs me to delete it. So they are really interested in seeing pictures, but they don’t want you to take any. I thought things would change after the slide show at the Open House, which they liked, but I am still having problems.

I think when you are a foreigner; there are some things about a culture that you will never really get. I am sure they find us as strange as we find them. I hope that they like us as much as we like them and that we will be able to teach them something of value.
First Published November 2, 2006