I take it all back!!!

Last entry I said I missed all the piped Christmas music that everyone is subjected to back at home. Seems I was listening through rose-tinted headphones.

Guangzhou seems to have only one Christmas CD. It is played everywhere. I am assaulted by 'Frosty the Snowman' and 'All I Want For Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth' at every turn. The most offensive Christmas song of all though is a little Mexican-inspired number, which goes along the lines of:

'Mama Sita,
Donde esta Santa Claus?
Oh where is Santa Claus?
It's Christmas Day...

Oh Dasher, oh Vixen, oh Pedro, oh Blitzen,
Ole, ole, ole, ole, ole!'

Kill me now. And Merry Christmas to you all!

Have yourself a merry little Christmas

Season's cheer to those who care. And a merry 'bah humbug' to the rest.

As for me, I've been in a strange kind of Christmas limbo.

Three days to go and I am barely aware of it. Guess that comes from not living in a Christian society, or one driven by a major consumer culture. Even though I used to moan about the way the shops over-exploit Christmas, I really have missed seeing everywhere decked out in all that festive crap. And, believe it or not, I have missed the Christmas songs that get piped out everywhere you go. I find myself walking around and humming cheesy Christmas tunes to myself without realising it. I miss that.

I can't really put it into words, but it's such a strange feeling, especially when I think back to a year ago, when I was rushing around like a headless chicken in Harvey Nicks while everyone did their last minute shopping. It kinda made it feel special though, all that last-minute stuff, the dark nights, the cold weather, music, lights and people wishing each other a happy Christmas....

Today was the warmest day we've had so far in December, the internet temperature thingy said 17 degrees. A bit optimistic I think, but not too far off. Either way, it's bright and sunny and as un-Christmassy as you can imagine it. And I'm about to make it even more un-Christmassy by spending a decent portion of my break on a tropical island. More on that to come... Walking through town there is barely one shred of evidence to support the calendar's claim that it is, in fact, December 22nd. It could just as easily be October.

Still, Christmas is Christmas, and we couldn't let it pass unnoticed. I think we most certainly achieved that!! Last Saturday we went shopping for Christmas. It took a while and we walked many streets, but we eventually found a shop that sold Christmas. 300 yuan later we were the proud owners of 3 Christmas trees, two bags of decorations and two stuffed Father Christmas'.

I decided that my kids needed educating on Christmas, and I think I have had the best week of lessons ever. I exploited these kids curiosity by taking a huge bag round with me to every class, which had them all out of their seats with eyes fixed on me from the beginning. After a little suspense building, I pulled out a stuffed Father Christmas, and after the clapping and cheering had died down I went through who he is, where he lives, what he does and where the traditions came from. Then I spoke briefly about what my family does for Christmas, pausing at the point of decorating the Christmas tree, when I reached back into my bag and pulled out my plastic Christmas tree, getting the students to decorate it themselves in return for answering some questions correctly. Then I taught a verse of Jingle Bells and we all sang it together. It was an ace lesson. It was diluted accordingly for each level but the basic format was given to each class. There was plenty of opportunity for laughs, and after 15 runs, it was a finely tuned performance. To top it I took photos of everyone at the end of class and have loads of great pictures of all my students now.

It has been a good week. We got cable TV installed, including CCTV9, the English language channel (though I'm yet to watch any), and found out that our Christmas holiday would be extended to join up with a New Year break that we were completely unaware of. Bonus.

In bad news, I saw a massive rat run through the teachers canteen into the kitchen at lunch and lost 60 yuan in a game of Mahjong last night with some teachers. I've never completely figured out my attitude towards money here, but when on such a monumental losing streak I revert back to thinking in terms of pounds (ah, only 4 quid, not a problem) instead of yuan (shit, that's more money than I spend in a fortnight!).

Still, the good news far outweighs the bad and the best of all concerns our now 12 day Christmas and New Year break. We're off down south tomorrow to Guangzhou to get some big city benefits in a 4 star hotel before making our way down to Hainan Island, which is the only officially tropical part of China. Expect sickening photos to be posted on my return.

Man, I'm knackered. I haven't thought about packing yet and our bus leaves at 10am tomorrow. We just got back from judging a special English-language talent contest in honour of Christmas and it was a real blast. Anthony and I rounded it off with a manic performance of 'The Twelve Days of Christmas' and it went down a real storm. They went mad for it.

Eh, Christmas in China has actually been pretty cool so far. Life is what you make it. I'm glad I'm here.

Chinglish

Yesterday I bought a few new DVDs. One of them was Spiderman. Decent film, but to be honest I bought it more for what it said on the back of the sleeve:

' Peter the gram is an ordinary senior high school to living originally but he drive on having only the spider of the emanation line bites empress he owned every kind of super ability:Can at wall with ceiling the north bound walk and can project spider's net etc. from the wrist.At first Peter just uses these super abilitieses earn to order the small moneybut his uncle is after wering murdered by bad person, he swear to to use his super a scientist however the inhales the graduates the juniors to work into the news agency, must under the direct of the scathing boss hide on the other well with bad love with hate card amid... '

Love it.

The Curse of MacDonalds

Hey again.

After that pretty 'interesting' week, I had an wicked weekend. After everything that had gone on, Friday was such a relief and both Anthony and I really felt the need to get out and do something.

So, Friday night. What to do on a Friday night in Lanshan?

Not much.

We went and hung out at a pretend MacDonalds. Man I felt like I was 14...

A few weeks ago this place called 'Happy Tom' opened up in town. It's a 'western' restaurant chain and all the teachers were raving about it, trying to get us to go. We walked past once and it seriously is the most audacious rip-off of Maccy Ds that I have ever seen - even down to the clown in the window. Pretty funny to be honest. We've sampled some of these small town 'western' restaurants. The only one that resembled 'actual food' kept me within spitting distance of a toilet for about 3 days and the rest serve the lowest quality greasy fast food possible.

So funnily enough we weren't all that keen to go.

Still, that Friday Anthony had a craving for coffee and ice-cream, and the only place that may serve either of those things here was going to be 'Happy Tom'. There was something strangely comforting about being in such a familiar environment. I could have been in any country so as long as you didn't look outside at the old women burning their rubbish in the streets then it was alright. They didn't do coffee, but the ice-cream was pretty nice. It wasn't purple, or bright green, and didn't taste of popcorn either(we've had some bad previous experiences with ice-cream here). Yeah, nice.

Gradually I began to become aware that the place was starting to fill up, whereas it had been empty when we walked in. And everyone was eating ice-cream. I started to look around and thought to myself 'I'm sure that person just walked past...and that one...and that one'. I began to watch the people going by outside and noticed a fair few more who clocked us, did a double-take, walked a few paces on, then turned back and came in to order ice-cream!! We should have been getting paid!! Damn straight!

It would have been pretty sad to hang about in the pretend MacDonalds all night, so after a little while we ventured further in search of what looked like a bar, which we had glimpsed at one point in the past. We found it. 'Soho Bar'. The name gave it away really. We had been successful in finding what we believe to be the only bar in Lanshan. It would have been rude not to have gone in. It looked a little dodgy from the outside but inside it was pretty cool. It was small - about half the size of my apartment - and almost empty, but it was 'normal'. Now that's something! We had a couple of beers, drank them at our own pace and relaxed.

It was outstanding. A real night out. We were home before 11pm, but that's just the way it goes here. The point is, we went out and found entertainment that didn't involve rice wine, ladies of negotiable affection or KTV!!

The rest of the weekend continued in that relaxed and pleasant way. I went and bought an electric heater for my apartment cos it has got bloody freezing here now. Somewhere between 1 and 4 degrees apparently and with no heating ANYWHERE. My air conditioner which also blows out hot air just couldn't compete anymore. The lightbulbs dimmed every time I switched it on, and seeing as we had power cuts almost every day last week, something more economical on the juice seemed a good idea! So I spent many hours in my one warm and cosy room watching episodes of Battlestar Galactica on my Ipod. Perfect picture quality. I love that little thing. PS. link of the week is www.pandora.com - this is an ace music website. Type in the name of your favourite artist and it'll produce a radio show featuring artists similar to that which you typed in. Doesn't work too well on my crappy computer but the concept is genius. Take a look.

I played a couple of hours of ping pong, a couple more of badminton and I swear I am getting good at both now. The Chinese are ping pong masters and everyone from kitchen staff to department heads have been giving me pointers on how to improve my game. It shows, but there's still a long way to go. I was playing against some random lad and thought I was doing pretty well, until I swapped with one of the guys who's been coaching me. The two of them had that ball hurtling round at the speed of light. Amazing.

My badminton is also getting pretty good. I'm learning how to play Chinese kung-fu style! My teacher Mr Peng is an ex-kung-fu kid and he applies all those principles to badminton. It's not as crazy as it sounds, but he does spin through the air sometimes to take shots...

This Sunday after a morning of badminton he said he'd like to go out to a western restaurant for lunch so I could teach him how to eat western food. I knew this could only mean Happy Tom, but hey, whatever. He turned up at my apartment half an hour later all dressed up in a suit as if he were going to a wedding. He seemed surprised that I was just in trainers and shabby jeans. I thought then that this could only be one big let down for him. Putting all past associations with food poisoning aside, I took him to the 'classier' western restaurant, but it was shut, so Happy Tom it was! Bless him, it was like watching a baby when they're trying to figure out the world by tasting bits of it. He picked up a french fry with apprehension, looked at it carefully, sniffed it, dipped it cautiously into the ketchup and slowly put it in his mouth. I couldn't help but laugh. It was as if he'd just bitten into a lemon, he pulled such a face. The burger was just the same. It was hilarious. He came to the conclusion that he didn't like western food and I had to go through the whole rigmarole of explaining that this wasn't 'real' western food, that we don't normally eat this crap and that proper food is very different and much nicer. Unfortunately for him it's also a 7 hour bus ride away. MacDonalds has a lot to answer for.

(BTW. I know it's hypocritical to slag off MacDonalds when I ate there just a month ago, but hey, I'm weak.)

Hmm...

It's Friday night. I finished my last class of the week a few hours ago and am chilling out in my apartment before heading out with Anthony in about an hour. It feels a bit like the end of a battle. The battle this week has been a 'in my head' kinda one. One where I came close to jacking it in here. One of those weeks that could have become either a turning point or, as is the case, a defining point in the whole experience.

It began relatively well, but a nightmarish Tuesday with my Junior 2s set the whole week into a downward spin. That Tuesday I had already seen my class from hell, which always depresses me cos I just can't do anything with them. I have tried every approach with little success. I hate not being able to get through to them. I feel bad for them, but hey, it's a give and take situation... So, in the afternoon I had my last junior 2 class, class 171. These kids are borderline. I like them, we get on well, but they don't like working so much and can get unruly if I'm not careful. The junior 2s are a pain in the arse really, because they are all so different. One class are stars, the others are monsters, class 171 are slap bang in the middle. This means I never know which way to go when preparing lessons for them. Do we do what worked well with the star class or go with something more boring and mindless?

This week I went with something more creative. Noughts and crosses (tic tac toe) with simple past tense sentences. Depending on the outcome of a thrown dice, the kids would have to make either a question, affirmative statement or negative statement using whatever verb was written in the box they wanted to place their nought or cross in. It worked beautifully with my star class the day before and is really useful because I give them 3 formulae to create the sentences by. Simple, straightforward and nowhere to be found in their books. This is actually teaching them something.

Unfortunately these take a little time to write out on the board, which can cause some to lose interest. So I try and get it down as quickly as possible so I can get the kids involved again. This week I was aware that they were starting to chatter so as soon as I could I turned round from the board, looked across the class toward the source of the noise and saw a girl turned round to her classmates holding a hand of playing cards.

I went nuts.

Now, not many of you have seen me lose my temper. It's not common and I can assure you that it is about as subdued as you can get! No-one gets scared, I don't scream and spit or throw chairs about, but you'll know it if you know me well enough.

These kids knew.

My face flashed red and my voice rose above even it's normal class-conquering level, clear and sharp.

"Cards! You are playing Cards! Right, stand up!".

I then made her choose a verb in a box, rolled the dice and told her to make a past tense question using it. I gave her no leeway. She was on the spot and was being made an example of. I stood there and stared at her while she awkwardly tried to laugh it off with her friends. I silenced them with one glance. We stood and waited, until she finally said "I don't know".

"Really? Why?... Because you are not listening!"

Then I pointed to the steps I had written on the board and made her follow them and come up with the words. It's not rocket science. I gave them an extremely simple explanation of what is an absolutely essential part of their English education. If these kids can't even ask someone about what they did yesterday then they're lost forever. Remember, in China no-one waits for you to catch up. That's what bugged me. I hate people who don't help themselves.

That same point got me thinking. It got me questioning what exactly I was doing here. Why was I stuck in a school of unmotivated children, teaching a subject that many of them don't want to learn? What is the point? I thought back to my CELTA training when I taught classes of people who had come to the UK especially to learn English. They expected something from you and wanted more. There were objectives there. Things to achieve. Results to be had.

I invested a lot of money in that course. I invested a lot of time and hard work. I got a good grade. I know I am a good teacher. Surely I could be using my time more wisely? After all, I'm only planning to do this for a year before going back to uni. Shouldn't I be getting the best teaching experience I can? I shouldn't have to be faced with classes who couldn't care less. I have travelled thousands of miles to come and help them learn good English. I deserve better.

There's nothing like doubt to get you down. My classes the next day were dull and lifeless and I just felt steadily worse and worse about things here. My mind began to mull over other options and one evening I started checking out TEFL job sites... A good move.

A few hours spent reading job advertisements and trying to figure out exactly what the deal was in each case cleared my mind somewhat. Another few checking out messageboards on a popular TEFL website made me realise that what I was going through was pretty normal and that my situation is actually far better than many others. In a dedicated language school I would be lumbered with more hours, an even wider range of pupils in terms of age and ability, more lessons to plan and only slightly more money. Even if I could hack all that, it appears that a lack of motivation remains an issue for many teachers even in these specialised centres. Moving schools wouldn't be a solution either. These situations are everywhere. Richer kids just seem to get more obnoxious, even if their English is better and, well, as Kylie said, better the devil you know...

I picked up a few tips. I took on board some advice. I decided to stay put.

Things are not so bad. We have a better deal than any other teachers I know and I do like this place. I would feel extremely bad leaving halfway through, for both the teachers and the students. A few bad experiences shouldn't deter me this much. I feel I have come away from all this more determined, more focussed, more flexible. Some kids won't learn, some require humour and entertainment, some will love grammar lessons but card games are still unacceptable!!

All this doesn't quite convey how seriously I was considering my position here, but I don't want to dwell on the downside. As I said earlier, make or break. I think this time, it's made.