I’m afraid someone may get the idea from reading our blog
that all we are doing in China is taking trips, seeing new and exotic sites,
and generally on a 1 year vacation. The
purpose of this entry is to dispel that idea.
While it is true that we have been on some marvelous trips
and have seen some amazing things, we have also been working our tails
off. We want to take advantage while we
are here in China of seeing and doing as much as we can since we are so close
to the locations. (Also, to reward
ourselves for working so hard.) But our
normal workday is anything but exciting and exotic.
Let me describe our
typical work week from last semester. I
taught 7 different classes; two classes of Sophomore electrical engineering students
and 5 classes of Master students. Anne
taught 5 classes; two classes of Soph EE students and 3 classes of PhD
students. Our graduate classes were
generally limited to 50 students each, but Anne had one class with 80 PhD
students – (because she is such a good teacher, they all wanted to come to her
class!) These are very bright people and
we don’t want to short-change them with weak lessons.
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| View from the back of the classroom |
We had to prepare three different lessons each week, two for
the sophomores and one for the graduate students. We actually taught the one class of
sophomores twice a week – requiring the two lessons for them. The graduate
students required a third, different lesson.
(The sophomores had better English skills than the graduates, so we
couldn’t recycle undergraduate lessons with them.) Preparing each lesson took around 10 hours
each. Oh – each class lesson was two
hours long. All of Anne’s classes and 5
of mine were on the new campus. (3 of my
graduate classes were on the old campus.)
We would easily spend 2.5+ hours on the bus round-trip for each day we
taught. Do the math – 30 hours
preparation and (for me) 14 hours teaching.
Some of my classes were back-to-back, so I had to go to the new campus
twice a week for 5 hours. We are up to
50 hours so far.
Why does it take 10 hours for preparing each lesson? Well, for one reason we have no manuals, so
we have to find/create all our teaching materials from scratch. Try doing that with an unstable internet with
only “dial-up” speed. There are some
wonderful sites out there, but getting at them is challenging, especially with
China’s computer firewall. We try to
prepare PowerPoint presentations to cover the material in the lesson. This helps those students who may sit at the
back of the room and can’t hear very well, or who just can’t understand our spoken
English. Their reading skills are
generally better than their speaking skills.
Anne is a very a conscientious teacher and very good at
preparing lessons. I have borrowed
several of her lessons; she has only wanted to borrow a couple of mine. (What does that tell you?!) But we still modify each other’s lesson to
fit the way we present the material and include it with our other materials.
Basically, we find a topic we believe would be of interest
to the graduate students and make a lesson out of it. We review the topic and then get the students
to discuss it amongst themselves (“pair, then share”) while we roam around the
room, asking questions to stimulate more discussion and noting errors in
speaking we can correct either then or at a later time (so as to not cause them
to “lose face”). As the semester went
on, we could give immediate feedback rather than wait until another time
because the students got to know and trust us.
We may then combine the groups and they have a different audience to
discuss the topic with. Finally, a few
will be called on to present their opinions to the class.
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| Discussing topic with a small group |
As an example of what we taught – for one
lesson I discussed the Ebola virus and what was going on in the world at that
time. I downloaded some audio from the BBC
and played it for the class. Some of the
discussion questions were, “Should experimental drugs to control the virus be
given to humans? If yes, who should get
the limited drug? Old people who are ready to die anyway, young people who may
have the ability to recover with the drug, or random people? If no to human experimental testing, what
other alternatives could be used? Assume
a case of Ebola was reported on campus – What should the school do to
respond? What should the government do? What would you do?” We had some very interesting
discussions. I was very surprised in one
class where a girl stated that the first thing the government should do, before
anything else, was to lock down news reports of the Ebola case.
Anne had a very successful class where she
reviewed the holidays in America, complete with pictures and descriptions of
what people did on the holiday, what kind of foods they ate, special clothes
they wore, etc. Then she broke the class
into small groups and asked them to invent a new holiday. What would it celebrate, how would it be
celebrated, who would be involved, any special foods or clothes, etc.? The groups then reported on their new holiday
to the class and a vote was taken as to which one was the most popular. They had a fun time doing that. The main goal is to get the students to talk
in English as much as possible.
Our undergraduate students were a different matter. Their class size was limited to 18 students
because this is a premier program for the university. In order to advance to the next year in the
special program they are in, they must pass the International English Language
Testing System (IELTS) with a score of 6 (out of 10). (It is a joint program with the University
of Glasgow – yes – in Scotland.) We had
to create lessons to help them be prepared for the test. There is a lot of materials on the internet,
but see my prior comments about the internet.
(Side note – we found the internet speed was better in the middle of the
night, so we often got up during the night to download videos for class.) Sadly, many of the students are not up to the
6.0 level yet. The problem is that our
class carried no credit or grade so most of the students didn’t bother to show
up. Still, if we had a student or two
show up, we had to give them the lesson.
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| Our kitchen and fridge |
When we talked to the
couple we replaced from last year, they said most of their time was spent on
teaching related activities, similar to what we have found. Their second biggest use of their time was
for procuring and preparing food. That
surprised us, but now we understand why.
We were advised to always wash and peal all our fruits and
vegetables. (That’s one reason we like
bananas and citrus fruits – they are always pealed anyway.) There are a number of street vendors selling
fresh fruit/vegetables, so they are not hard to get. But not one location has everything we
like. For example, we have spoken about
the “icky market”. It is one location about
a 15 minute walk away where we go to as a place of last resort. Other, better locations are farther away. It is a longer walk, or a 20+ minute bus ride
each way there and back. We have a very
small refrigerator, and the fruit/veggies are ripe when purchased. We have learned that we have to use them in a
couple of days or they will spoil.
Most of China’s bread is generally full of air – think of
angel food cake without the sweet – not very substantial or satisfying. (Trying to spread peanut butter on it totally
destroys the bread!) We have found one
bread market that has a good, whole-grain loaf of bread (still small in
size). We get to the store on the 20+
minute bus ride. Once again, we can’t
store much, so we have to frequently go on shopping trips.
Another reason for not storing much food (besides the small
fridge and ripe fruits/veggies) is that the power to apartment frequently is
turned off – or the electric breaker for the kitchen frequently trips when we
are not here. If we don’t notice it, or
we are away from the apartment, the food will spoil. (We have learned this from sad
experience!) We have some grocery stores
(Walmart, Carrefour) for meat – chicken breasts and pork roasts. (We use the crock pot we purchased a lot.) But the produce at these large stores is not
as fresh or good as from the street vendors.
We have also discovered various stores throughout Chengdu which offers
some types of western food – cheese at one, maple syrup at another, canned
beans at a third, etc. None of them are
close, they are very expensive, and we try to plan those visits over the
weekend or on our days off.
We get eggs at one store, bread at another, produce from a
variety of stores, meat from a supermarket, etc. It all takes time. In other words, we have to shop at least
every other day for something. We try to
combine trips, but each excursion can easily take a couple of hours. Chalk up another 10 hours per week for just
buying food. This doesn’t include the cleaning
and preparing meals.
Because of the air pollution in China, our apartment can get
very dirty, even when we are not even here.
Dust just settles on everything from the air. Our windows are not air-tight at all; we
always have drafts leaking air. We can
easily spend several hours each week dusting, sweeping and mopping the floor. We have a wood laminate floor – which shows
all the dust bunnies that seem to multiple during the night. Add to that the kitchenette and bathroomette
where rusty pipes leave stains. Cleaning
is a never ending battle.
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| Our washing machine |
We have a very small
washing machine. (Still, we are very
glad to have a washing machine!) We have
to do a batch of laundry every other day, it seems. One day lights, two days later we do the
darks. The machine is slow – think 1
hour per batch. We have no dryer, so
everything is hung up on hangers in our utility room to dry. (We open the windows and I positioned a fan to
blow on the clothes.) That is why we
were so excited to be in the fancy apartment after Christmas that had a
dryer. One reason we have to do laundry
so often, other than the small washer size – we were limited by space and
weight for what we could bring to China on the plane. Anne is very tired of the old, unattractive clothes
she brought and was happy to find some new ones in her size on our trips. The old clothes are being retired and will be
left here when we come home.
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| Our bathroom/shower |
Anne thought of two other things I might need to
mention. The all in one toilet room and
shower. You will notice that
there is no tub or dividing wall separating the shower area (on the left) from
the toilet area. That means you have to
be careful when sitting on the toilet after someone has showered – you might
slip off! Or worse yet – you don’t know
what the fluid is on the toilet before you sit down. J But we have
installed a shower curtain between the two that keeps the toilet mostly
dry. The other thing to notice is that
there are two pipes in the room. (All pipes are exposed in China buildings –
nothing is hidden in the walls.) The
pipe on the left is for hot water, the one on the right is for cold water. But the hose going to the shower head is
only attached to the hot water. I’ve
written about “Smaug” before, our on-demand, instant water heater, which is
located in the kitchen. Normally Anne
gets in the shower before me. (That way
she can have more time to get beautiful in the morning – and – I have the
privilege of using the squeegee to wipe down the walls and floors after my
shower.) Smaug is very sensitive, and
it is hard to get the temperature just right.
On most mornings I hear, “It’s too hot!” or “Too Cold!” It takes two or three adjustments to get it
just right. (The poor, single fellows
above and below us in the apartments.
Who can set their water temperature??)
Actually they just leave it on the shower comfort setting and never
readjust it daily for doing the dishes.
“What dishes?!”
And the other time consumer – the many hours each week we
enjoy speaking to our kids and my mother (and occasionally other relatives) on
the phone. The connection doesn’t always
work and there are frequent hang ups but we manage.
Side note - On our trips we were debating what gifts to get for our
family. This is what we decided:
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| Ties for the guys |
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| Pearls for the girls |
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| Squids for the kids! |
We saw plenty in each category and ended up buying two of
the three. Now how to get those
perishables home?
Anne and I are both teachers in the church primary. She is also a counselor in the primary
presidency. We have the 4-6 year olds, 7
of ‘em, very high energy, not well disciplined, and class is held in a bedroom of an expat member. My task is generally to keep the kids from
fighting (by holding a couple of ‘em on my lap) and to make sure no blood is
spilled during lesson time. Anne generally
prepares and gives the lesson. (Did I
mention we don’t have teaching materials or supplies, other than what can be
taken from the internet? Did I mention
how much we love our internet?) She also
would be responsible for preparing/presenting the sharing time lesson a couple
of times a month. We take three
different buses to get to church – about a 45+ minute trip each way. I figure we spend 5 hours/week just going to,
attending, and returning from church – this doesn’t include Anne’s lesson prep
time. Still, we are very glad to be able
to have church here in China and a branch to meet with. Members in some other cities only have the
virtual (internet) branch.
We get two English speaking channels on our TV. One is CCTV – the Chinese version of CNN in
English. The second is the Discovery
Channel, which mainly shows only reruns over and over again. Our internet is not stable enough to stream
any shows. We basically couldn’t/didn’t
watch any TV until we had the semester break, and then we watch the DVD’s we
purchased. I doubt we’ll watch many of
those once the new semester kicks in.
We are grateful to be able to share this experience with the
Hadds, the other BYU teacher couple. We
help each other out and do many things together. We have tried to have some adventure
discovering Chengdu or the surrounding area every week. We go exploring on the buses or metro system
to temples, parks, museums, etc. Frequently
these excursions occur on a Saturday. We
have also evolved into a standing Thursday evening, “I can’t stand to cook
anymore; we are going out for a decent meal tonight.” We take turns picking the place to eat. It may be a Pizza Hutt, Peter’s Tex Mex, Grandma’s
Kitchen, a noodle restaurant or a fairly good steakhouse nearby, etc. We would be much more miserable if we had to
go through this entire experience alone.
I hope this little note gives you an idea of what our
regular life in China is like – it is not all fun and games! It is still a “Great Adventure”, but not
everything about it is good. I guess
that is true of most things in life.
