Friday, March 5, 2010

Wow!  This week has been crazy!  So much stuff has been happening… I guess I'll just have to start from the beginning.  Well, when Sam tried to get our schedules from Luke he was told that they still weren't finalized, so we didn't need to teach tomorrow (Monday) and maybe even Tuesday.  See, Luke was trying to make it possible that we didn't have to teach on either Mondays or Fridays so we could have a 3 day weekend.  Not starting class yet was okay with me because I had been hearing horror stories about the first day of class from some of the others.  We did get our schedules on Monday though and discovered that we don't have classes on Mondays!  My schedule has me teaching Senior Ones- I have 5 classes on Tuesdays, 5 on Wednesdays, 4 on Thursdays, and 2 on Fridays or 16 in total.  Each class has somewhere around 65 students in it, so I have over 1000 students.  Names will be really hard to learn.  Speaking of their names, some of them have the craziest names!  It's really funny seeing them choose their own names, and they'll all laugh at some of the names.  Here are some of the more unique ones (feel free to skip some if you want):

JJC, Yvonne, Burk, Luffy, Tao, Uthers, Vincy, Angel, Vacation, Crazy, Grey, Panda, Mien, Jaff, Jhe, Zero, Kidy, Eminem, Zeus, Winty, Bei, Still, June, Hero, Kaka, Ariza, Ranning, Fread, Iverson, Xixi (meant to be said Cici), Fiona, Wells, Snow, Watson, Ven, L, DLK, K, Muhamad Ali, Lancer, Aink, Vampire, Ina, Miu, Moon (one boy and one girl), U7V, Mace, Kill, Pierre, Caddy, W-King, Wook, Erlyn, Stone, ViVi, Laugh, Cabola, Kobe (lots of those), Brown (very popular for some reason), Memory, Echo, Retro, Jk, Jik, More, Kk, Sven, Hedin, Godfrey, End, Bottle, Amina, Arthas, Ezio, Jaken, Ehome Victor, Leenow, Dale, Enoch, Force, Baron, CK, Lucifer (a girl), Serena, Fiorelli, Amos, Belia, Menorca, Enrid, Confucius, Poke, Sunday, Della, Nan Bill (sits next to Bill), Veya, Bob, Line, Sweet, Harry Potter, Sunny Boy, Ming, Reb, Boos, Make, Snail, Deila, Duke, Green, Colurky, Browns Tang, Fallen, Cassiel, Baha, Billn, Sunset (it's a boy), Strong!, Blue, Legend, Muriel, Kreey, Lebron, Jude, Holmes, Day, Mcgrady, Shreey, Cement (a girl), Daybird, Mad, King, Free, Window, Rare, Candy, Jassica, Door, Zoro, Yummy, July, Black, Monster (a girl), Baby (a boy), Dragon, Bobo, Badi, Wall Eye Janstronet, R, J, Tear, Vacancy (a girl with pretty good English), Joe and Harry (both girls who liked boy names), Chairs Paul, Lrine, Merke, T, Shaokun P, Hong chan Z, Altraman Y, Beckham, Ark, Xie Lingbin, Jiro, Japan, Oh hey oh, next to him is Hey-oh, and next to him is Oh-hey, Page, Theron, Athena, Elf, Happy, Vanilla, Monkey, Cassius Clay, Killer, Somnus, Kobo, Sid,  Tom Cruise, and Obama-baba

I have kids with other names too- this is only 11 of my class' funniest names… but there are normal names too.  Anyway, if anyone actually read through all of that, good job!  Alright so now I guess I'm going to tell a little about the week.  I teach the Senior 1 class (kinda like the sophomore year, I think but things are a bit different here when it comes to school).  There are probably 60-70 kids in every class and in every class there are the good kids and the more rowdy kids.  I feel like I'll probably lose my voice in not too much time because of trying to talk over them.  Having the authority of a teacher is really weird; it makes me feel as though I've suddenly grown up and am part of the middle age group.  Almost like I could actually have a family now, and that's something that hasn't really felt like something that I could do   Of course Nikki and I still play around and laugh, but suddenly everything is just different.  I saw Nikki walking home from school and I felt like both of us were being more adult-like rather than just ourselves.  So in order to make sure we don't start acting too old we've skipped home, walked/danced home in the rain, and just had fun while we could.  It's rather funny walking into class the first time though, they all stare out the window as I walk by until I walk into the classroom then there're a number of reactions.  I've had them clap for me said "ooh" at the same time, and a lot of other random things.  Another thing that's rather amusing is how many people only know maybe one word in English- either "Hello" or "Hi."  Some of them know "I don't know" too. 

Shopping in a grocery store here is ridiculous!  There are people hired to follow you around and help you out, but they don't know English at all so I've had to try and act out what I wanted multiple times.  Sadly I don't think I'll be able to cook much American food because I don't have an oven- only one propane burner- or else they don't have the stuff.  That's okay though, I'm excited to learn to make some real Chinese food… they use Woks for basically everything- it's really impressive to watch them cook.  Speaking of food, you'd never believe some of the things I've seen here.  I've seen pig snouts (still pink and fleshy looking), pig ears, cow hooves, I saw a basket with one live chicken and one dead chicken on the side of the road to buy and eat.  I've seen ducks hanging gutted so you could see their spines and ribs.  There are snakes, frogs, eels, fish, all sorts of other animals just sitting in bins on the side where people can buy, kill, cook, and eat them.  The restaurants are probably even worse- just the other night we watched as a lady knocked a fish out, then proceeded to gut and skin it (it was still moving while she was cutting it) then stick it on the grill.  It brings an entirely new meaning to having fresh food. 

Life here is definitely extraordinarily different and it's not really something you can understand unless you've actually experienced it for yourself, but I'll try to do my best to explain some of it for you.  It's funny- whenever there's a white person that walks by everyone stares; people in the cars, on the street, even I stare now because I'm not used to it.  Often I want to just go up and start talking to them just because they're white, so now I understand why the minorities usually group together.   

One thing I really like here is how beautiful the surroundings are, it seems to balance out the dirt, grime, urine, food, etc that's on the streets.  I'm really coming to love this place!  Lingling is becoming home to me.  According to Luke, "We have very beautiful school. Maybe even #3 most beautiful school in Hunan, maybe #2! Maybe even #1 most beautiful school in ALL of Hunan!" (Sam has told me this story multiple times, so I feel justified in quoting it). 

Well, I'd better go now; be sure to email me, leave comments, whatever!  It really is great to hear from people.  So, again my email is mreid08@gmail.com and my skype name is madison.reid.  :)