Mid-term Exam Freedom

Second week in November saw mid-term exams for all the students at my school.

What this meant for me was holiday!!!

Due to some pretty fortunate timing, all four of my grades were given exams on the days I was supposed to teach them, leaving me with a whole week free. A week I fully intended making the most of.




The week began with a trip out into the mountains with Class 111. These guys are the top class in the top grade. I don't teach them. In fact, neither does Anthony. They have so much work that they couldn't fit an oral English lesson into their timetable.

One funny thing about classes here is that the top sets are all taught through video lessons transmitted live from another, wealthier school somewhere else in China. Apparently this decision was made to improve the standard of teaching here. Forget about hiring better teachers or training them further, or maybe replacing the missing glass in the classroom windows...lets spend a load on sparkly novelties like long-distance interactive video lessons.

That's a laugh too. They call these things interactive lessons. Couldn't be further from the truth. I've sat in on some of these lessons, and it's just like watching a TV show. A TV

show with poor picture and sound quality. I couldn't even understand some of the things the teacher was saying, so how can the students? The poor kids just sit there in silence while they watch teams of students from another class in this rich school play hangman together or come up to the front of the class to read their compositions or answer questions.

Our kids should be playing hangman together or showing off their own work. It's like a form of punishment. Look at all these people having fun. Just look and see what we're denying you.

The teacher in this other school asks her students questions or gets them to read out things she's written on the board, and I've watched our kids mouth the words or mumble the answers to themselves, but no-one's listening. No-one's there to check their comprehension, or pronunciation, or to give them praise. They can't have a grammar point reiterated if they didn't quite follow it. The lady on the TV just keeps on going.

Of course there's a teacher in the room while they watch, but these teachers are just there to press play. They've been demoted to technicians.
And these are among the best teachers in the school, with the best spoken English. If I were them, I'd feel insulted and humiliated. I'm sorry, you're teaching isn't good enough. We're replacing you with a TV. What a waste.

A TV will never be a replacement for a real life teacher nor observation of any amount of high quality teaching a substitute for actual meaningful interaction.

It really grates on me.


But I digress... Anyway...the reason I got ranting in the first place was to explain why I went out with Class 111. These busy, busy students had an extra day off because their long-distance school was on holiday at that time, so they could have no instruction (Again, how dumb is that? Grrr...). While Anthony still had classes to give, I was free so went with them to have a picnic. The top four photos are from then. We had a great time. We scrambled up steep slopes in search of firewood, I sank ankle-deep into a hidden, muddy stream, was scratched to death by vines and bushes, nearly got sunburnt (in early November!!! Fantastic.), caught crabs in the reservoir to roast on the fire, ate barbecued chicken's feet and numerous other dishes, jumped rope with everyone, ate some more, took plenty of pictures, chatted and generally had lots of fun (See, too much ranting, no room for detail). Suffice to say, it was cool.

A few days later, I decided to fully exploit my time and go
on a little jolly up to Liuyang to see our Canadian friends. My
fellow colleagues here had the most trouble trying to grasp the concept that I was going away somewhere without Anthony. We were going to be parted. Was that even possible? Surely we could not possibly manage to survive if we were not within a half mile radius of each other?

I poke fun at the situation here, and it sounds absurd, but you cannot imagine the shock that it gave these people to hear I was going away somewhere alone. It was like I'd just gone and smacked them across the face. Utter disbelief.

And then when I told them I intended on going
by train for comfort and speed, well, no combination of swear words under the sun could possibly have hurt their ears more.

It would have been laughable, were I not pretty pissed off at the time. They just don't see us as two unique human beings. They tried to get me to postpone my trip until the weekend, when Anthony was also free, which would have given us just 1 full day in Liuyang and been a complete waste of time. They tried to arrange for us to go to a nearer town to see other friends instead - friends who weren't expecting us. They even started to cancel Anthony's outstanding lessons that week so he could go with me! Ridiculous!!

I stood my ground, but compromised on how to get there and took the bus instead. The 7 hour bumpy bus ride with the loud crappy techno music and awful Chinese VCd films. The bus that arrived back in Lanshan so late that I had to climb over the gate well past midnight to get back on
campus and into my apartment. Yeah, that was a good idea...

So, it was a hellish trip, but I managed ok. I bought a crappy little Mp3 player especially for it. The only way I managed to survive. My foreign affairs officer placed me on the bus like a 3 year old and scoured the aisle trying to find someone she vaguely recognised to babysit me and see me onto the right bus in Changsha. Humiliating. She found two ex-students. Once we left I didn't speak to them again. I found my own way. It was the second time I'd done this trip anyway. I fully understand that I am her
responsibility and that if anything happened to me they'd never get another foreign teacher again, but all I'm asking for is a little faith and respect.

I met my friends in Changsha and we took a taxi service into Liuyang. The last eight photos are all from this trip. Liuyang is a city of about 1 million and is where about 40% of the world's fireworks are made. They're going off constantly. Due to this industry, Liuyang is pretty rich. The school where my friends teach certainly is. They have huge, well-maintained buildings and even their own observatory on top of the science building!
Blimey, they even have a science building. Our science facilities consist of a tray of apparatus which the science teacher carries from class to class... This town also has some western food (which I sampled), decent shopping (which I exploited) and most importantly some nightlife (which I overdosed on!).

God, I've missed going out to bars, getting nicely fuzzy and dancing the night away to some halfway decent music. We went out on three of the four nights I was there. The Saturday night was best. We had a pretty good Chinese meal with plenty of beer. Beer I could drink at my own
pace. Heaven. We then went to this little street-side BBQ place where they did cheap little fried snacks and had cheap beer before going on to a bar called the Blue Fox. Jess and Sarah are regulars there and the bar owner even joined us for the night. We were drinking red wine mixed with sprite (which made it very down-able) and what was best is that it magically replenished itself. Every time I looked down, there was another full glass waiting for me. I was soon on stage with everyone, encouraged by 'DJ Michael' (seen upper left at the top of the stairs waving us goodbye at the end of the night), who invited us especially to come and 'make a crazy party' dancing my ass off, only pausing to reach down and pick up another glass of that magical wine...


God it was a good night. We were the last to leave and even after that I sat up with some other foreign teachers from the same town at the street-side BBQ until 4am when I finally stumbled home, on my own, and into bed.

If my foreign affairs officer only knew. She'd probably have a heart-attack. Earlier that day the Canadians received a call from their officer 'reminding' them (for the first time since they'd been there) to make sure they were home by 11pm. This bore all the hallmarks of Susan interfering and checking up on me, but to hell with that!

Great night. I felt it in the morning. I looked like I felt it too (see above!). But it was the kind of hangover where you just laugh all day at it cos you know it was well deserved and worth it.

Other activities over those few days included a trip to Changsha where the girls got Chinese character tattoos done (at least it's authentic, but not quite as mystical in a place where people can actually read it and start asking you why you've got 'happiness with your mother' written on the back of your neck when you really intended it to be interpreted as 'peace'...) and I bought a new Ipod!!! I now possess a shiny new black 30gb video Ipod, and at a cheaper price than in the UK too. It cost three quarters of my monthly salary but is oh so worth it. In fact I spent so much this trip that I came back with my backpack fully stuffed and another two carrier bags full of purchases. Ha, one of those carrier bags even happened to be a Morrisons Supermarket carrier bag. That's right. Morrisons. 'More reasons to shop at Morrisons' Morrisons. The Morrisons that I used to visit weekly up in Bradford and that proudly states on the bag 'Keep Britain tidy'. This I was given in Changsha. A Morrisons carrier bag, in China. You could not have made it up.