wuhan: November 2008 Archives
I just realized I have quite the few months ahead of me...to Hong Kong next weekend (for a part-ay!) then a few weeks later I'm in Hawaii (to see the fam.!) and then a few weeks after that I am in Vietnam/Cambodia for a month of volunteer work (no big deal...just saving the world by setting up sustainable farming on the border).
Having foreshadowed your entertainment for the next few months, I now need to update you all on my current (relatively boring) life prior to wowing you with my forthcoming exciting extracurricular activities.
So here are a few random pics and stories of my peeps.
First of all, (just so my mum doesn't have a heart attack when she sees me in 3 weeks), yes, I got a nose ring.
This is my "please don't get mad, mum" face.
My amazing students in a physics lab.
Me wandering around learning more from them than they are learning in the lab I have set up for them.
Typical.
My amazing students in a Chemistry lab.
I am showing them something that they already know and they are correcting me on how to do it.
Typical.
Having foreshadowed your entertainment for the next few months, I now need to update you all on my current (relatively boring) life prior to wowing you with my forthcoming exciting extracurricular activities.
So here are a few random pics and stories of my peeps.
First of all, (just so my mum doesn't have a heart attack when she sees me in 3 weeks), yes, I got a nose ring.
This is my "please don't get mad, mum" face.
My amazing students in a physics lab.
Me wandering around learning more from them than they are learning in the lab I have set up for them.
Typical.
My amazing students in a Chemistry lab. I am showing them something that they already know and they are correcting me on how to do it.
Typical.
Albeit the picture has about the same focus ability that I did at that point in the evening, I suspect you still 'get the picture': Me with Canadian Dave and American John out at the bar.
Pre-game (aka: drinking-on-a-walk-about-towards-the-bar) we were inspired to take what I'm becoming quite fond of as well as talented at: "drinking art".
American John and my Aussie girl, Gemma. I like to call them "my kids".
Gemma and I in Xi'an at a water show. Yep, more drinking art.
Although it may not appear so, I am sober more often than not. So here is some sober, "alley art", that I have accumulated from around Wuhan over the last month. You all know how much I love the alleys and markets here.
Pre-game (aka: drinking-on-a-walk-about-towards-the-bar) we were inspired to take what I'm becoming quite fond of as well as talented at: "drinking art".American John and my Aussie girl, Gemma. I like to call them "my kids". Gemma and I in Xi'an at a water show. Yep, more drinking art.Although it may not appear so, I am sober more often than not. So here is some sober, "alley art", that I have accumulated from around Wuhan over the last month. You all know how much I love the alleys and markets here.At our school recently, we played a Teachers vs. Students soccer game. When I showed up to play, a student actually said: "so you only have 7 players not 8...because the girl does not count." He said it so matter of factly that all of us teachers were flabberghasted and I just started laughing and walked out onto the field; leaving it up to my male counter parts to sort out this confused child.
But after that comment, I did feel like I was back in elementary school again - trying to play with the boys - who for whatever reason seem to think you require a penis to be able to play sports.
I wish I could say I sure showed them a thing or two about how girls can play soccer. However, soccer was never my thing and I was just out there to have a good time...yeah.... i scored on my own team.
I hate it when that happens!
Furthermore, I have a club at school (which I am sure you will hear much more about later) and last week we collected old winter clothes from students and staff. This weekend the club went out and handed the jackets et. al. out to the homeless in the community. It is getting down to about 5C at night here now, and without any form of social welfare, the needy are more than appreciative of any thing offered. Here is our pile of clothes ready to go.
At last, when I am not drinking or working, as I have said before, I am spending most of my time studying. Here is my wonderful Chinese teacher, Vicky, and I at the end of a long class on radicals and reading.
Last but certainly not least....in fact, I saved the best for last.... how could I possibly forget my bad ass lcb... wang jun, aka： Victor； with whom I eat over half of my 'real' meals with and spend almost all of my free evenings a week with these days.
Here we are having a typical dinner of veggies and fresh fish and beer in an side alley restaurant... I taught him the word 'ghetto' a week prior, with which he then used to described my choice of restaurant quite fittingly on this night.
And we tried a new veggie, to which he taught me the name: 萵苣。
萵苣很好吃！
王莙很好玩！
But after that comment, I did feel like I was back in elementary school again - trying to play with the boys - who for whatever reason seem to think you require a penis to be able to play sports.
I wish I could say I sure showed them a thing or two about how girls can play soccer. However, soccer was never my thing and I was just out there to have a good time...yeah.... i scored on my own team.
I hate it when that happens!
Furthermore, I have a club at school (which I am sure you will hear much more about later) and last week we collected old winter clothes from students and staff. This weekend the club went out and handed the jackets et. al. out to the homeless in the community. It is getting down to about 5C at night here now, and without any form of social welfare, the needy are more than appreciative of any thing offered. Here is our pile of clothes ready to go.At last, when I am not drinking or working, as I have said before, I am spending most of my time studying. Here is my wonderful Chinese teacher, Vicky, and I at the end of a long class on radicals and reading.
Last but certainly not least....in fact, I saved the best for last.... how could I possibly forget my bad ass lcb... wang jun, aka： Victor； with whom I eat over half of my 'real' meals with and spend almost all of my free evenings a week with these days.
Here we are having a typical dinner of veggies and fresh fish and beer in an side alley restaurant... I taught him the word 'ghetto' a week prior, with which he then used to described my choice of restaurant quite fittingly on this night.
And we tried a new veggie, to which he taught me the name: 萵苣。
萵苣很好吃！
王莙很好玩！
As I have eluded to in previous posts, I more often than not I feel like a child here. This is due to not only my inability to communicate properly verbally; but additionally I cannot read or write anything. Now, although this has it's perks: getting past a large line up of people or out of trouble because I "don't understand"; being oblivious to negative marketing campaigns or government propaganda; and being the cute dumb one for the first time in my life - for an overly independent girl like myself, these sorts of things get boring and then tiring fairly quickly. What I have found much more fun and interesting is working really hard at learning the language and having this hard work pay off. In turn, learning to communicate in a way that very few foreigners ever bother to, and then knocking the socks off a local has a tendency to make my day. For this, and other reasons, I have had my nose buried in the books over the last few months, feverishly trying to learn Hanzi (Chinese characters) and this is opening my eyes to so much of my environment which I had previously been missing.
For example, a store that sells shoes is no longer just a shoe store. Now that I can read the sign out front I find it is a special store that sells shoes made of leather from pigs in another province. And on my run to the park in the mornings, I realize for the first time that this park is dedicated to the People's Republic Army. Although these are by no means life-changing events, nor is the information helpful in anyway; this new-found skill of mine has begun to add another dimension to my experience here. It almost feels as if I have been given another sense; a way to understand my environment that I previously had been unable to do.
Experiencing the process of learning how to read and being able to understand my environment in ways that had previously been unavailable to me, made me think of literacy, and furthermore how I'd really like to volunteer or work with illiterate adults or at least try to help out in some way. I now know how they must feel but more importantly I now know first hand how life-changing learning how to read must be for them. After doing some preliminary googling, I found some frightening information. According to UNESCO, in the world today there are more than 1 billion non-literate adults.
* This 1 billion is approximately 26 percent of the world's adult population.
* Women make up two-thirds of all non-literates.
* 98 percent of all non-literates live in developing countries.
* In the least developed countries, the overall illiteracy rate is 49 percent.
* 52 percent of all non-literates live in India and China.
* In all developing countries, the percentage of children aged 6-11 not attending school is 15 percent. In the least developed countries, it is 45 percent.
But don't assume that your neighbor can read the paper and garner from it what you are able to. According to the National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL) in America in 2005, the reading ability of 14% of adults (30 million people) was 'Below Basic'; 29% or 63 million are at the Basic level. Together 43% of the population can't read a newspaper article and answer questions about it. Nor can they fill out an application, read a food label, or read a simple story to a child. Furthermore, only 13% of American adults are considered proficient. This means they can read information from two different sources and compare, analyze and extrapolate the information to form a conclusion. For instance, that only 13% of the population is able to read information about the health care strategies offered by the various candidates for the office of President of the United States and can then, draw conclusions about which plan they would favor.... Need I say more?
The point here being, illiteracy doesn't just affect the individual - it affects an entire country - and therefore the whole world. Furthermore, U.S. Department of Education statistics reveal that 60% of prison inmates are illiterate, and 85% of all juvenile offenders have reading problems. Illiteracy leads to low self-esteem, unemployment, poverty, and crime. (Remember how a year ago I punched that guy to help the woman because I couldn't communicate?). Literacy empowers people to better their lives and the lives of their families, and our communities.
But don't think Canada is much better than the Yanks. Over 10 million Canadians are working at marginal or modest levels of literacy. "This represents a massive loss of productivity for individuals, for society and for our economy especially as we enter a future where knowledge and adaptability will be essential. But the situation is even more complex. Many with low literacy skills manage well in their lives and may not see themselves needing any help at the moment. Many others (estimated at 10 to 15% of Canadians) require specialized help for learning disabilities. For the 5 - 10 % of less literate Canadians who do come forward for training there are significant socio-economic barriers and burdens to overcome. Even well-intentioned literacy programs cannot address these without appropriate resources and a broader social shift. Since literacy is about all of us, the challenge for Canadian society is to truly become a culture of lifelong learning. Literacy is for life."
Suggested Canadian Literacy Resources
¸ International Adult Literacy Survey. Report called Reading the Future is available online through
Statistics Canada at www.statcan.ca or tel: 1-800-263-1136.
¸ Movement for Canadian Literacy, online at www.literacy.ca or tel: 613-563-2464.
¸ National Literacy Secretariat, online at www.nald.ca/nls.htm or tel: 819-953-5280.
Here is where I will give you a respite from my ramblings and throw in some more recent photos.
Me and Michelle (the other chemistry teacher) at her home for a traditional Chinese meal.
A recent tug of war event at my school where the teacher's team was annihilated by the student's team.
My classroom now that I have had a chance to decorate it in the way I wanted to.
My amazingly geeky and brilliant students during a Chem lab.
The crew of teachers at my school. The two to note are Neil (back centre) and James (front centre on my right) who are my drinking/weekend warrior buddies from Whales. Only three of us in the picture teach A-levels (university level): besides me, the "Physics and Chemistry lecturer", the other two are Allison (behind me) who has a PHD and teaches Maths, ad Chris, (to Neil's right), an ex-London cop who teaches Business and Economics.
And just because they like to keep us segregated, we of course had to pose as well as just "foreign" teachers. The other foreign teachers teach the same age of kids (15-18 years old) but the program is less academic and more focused on improving English. It's a good group to come to work to in the mornings - with a lot of British humor in the office. Dan, to my left is American and teaches Maths and other than that, the rest are from Britain (POMES).
Getting back to me and my spare time: i.e. studying. I was on a plane this month returning from Beijing. It suddenly got very turbulent to the point where people were screaming to be saved by god. It is moments like this in life that allow you a new awareness of what is really important to you. In these brief near-death minutes, I smiled at my thoughts. My first thought was my mum. I worried she would be devastated. And then my only other thought was to look down at my Chinese text book and curse the possibility of death since all of the hard work I have put into studying would have all been in vain.
Look, I even write a journal in Hanzi now!
These pre-death thoughts on the plane got me thinking quite a bit over the following weeks.
Why am I working so hard at this language? What do I want to get out of this experience? Why did I come back to china? What am I going to do in the next few years? Ultimately I can't really answer any of these questions. In fact, I think I have been feeling so free, so happy and so lucky over the last year because I have learned to not bother with these questions. To just live life and enjoy it and take it as it comes. What I do know now is that I love learning Chinese. It is so challenging and therefore rewarding. And I quite obviously plan on being here a while (forever is not out of the question) if I am dedicating over half of my spare time to just sitting and studying. In fact, the more time I spend on learning Chinese, the less I feel like I can go home. But this is very, very OK. As I was telling a friend last night, this is the first time in my life where I am not planning on what to do next, where to go, who to see...and it is the first time in my life where I feel settled. I am not looking forward to the future because I can't wait to get through the present. Rather, I am just looking forward to the future. More importantly, I am settled in the present. I am settled. It feels very right. Very unfamiliar - but very right.
For example, a store that sells shoes is no longer just a shoe store. Now that I can read the sign out front I find it is a special store that sells shoes made of leather from pigs in another province. And on my run to the park in the mornings, I realize for the first time that this park is dedicated to the People's Republic Army. Although these are by no means life-changing events, nor is the information helpful in anyway; this new-found skill of mine has begun to add another dimension to my experience here. It almost feels as if I have been given another sense; a way to understand my environment that I previously had been unable to do.
Experiencing the process of learning how to read and being able to understand my environment in ways that had previously been unavailable to me, made me think of literacy, and furthermore how I'd really like to volunteer or work with illiterate adults or at least try to help out in some way. I now know how they must feel but more importantly I now know first hand how life-changing learning how to read must be for them. After doing some preliminary googling, I found some frightening information. According to UNESCO, in the world today there are more than 1 billion non-literate adults.
* This 1 billion is approximately 26 percent of the world's adult population.
* Women make up two-thirds of all non-literates.
* 98 percent of all non-literates live in developing countries.
* In the least developed countries, the overall illiteracy rate is 49 percent.
* 52 percent of all non-literates live in India and China.
* In all developing countries, the percentage of children aged 6-11 not attending school is 15 percent. In the least developed countries, it is 45 percent.
But don't assume that your neighbor can read the paper and garner from it what you are able to. According to the National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL) in America in 2005, the reading ability of 14% of adults (30 million people) was 'Below Basic'; 29% or 63 million are at the Basic level. Together 43% of the population can't read a newspaper article and answer questions about it. Nor can they fill out an application, read a food label, or read a simple story to a child. Furthermore, only 13% of American adults are considered proficient. This means they can read information from two different sources and compare, analyze and extrapolate the information to form a conclusion. For instance, that only 13% of the population is able to read information about the health care strategies offered by the various candidates for the office of President of the United States and can then, draw conclusions about which plan they would favor.... Need I say more?
The point here being, illiteracy doesn't just affect the individual - it affects an entire country - and therefore the whole world. Furthermore, U.S. Department of Education statistics reveal that 60% of prison inmates are illiterate, and 85% of all juvenile offenders have reading problems. Illiteracy leads to low self-esteem, unemployment, poverty, and crime. (Remember how a year ago I punched that guy to help the woman because I couldn't communicate?). Literacy empowers people to better their lives and the lives of their families, and our communities.
But don't think Canada is much better than the Yanks. Over 10 million Canadians are working at marginal or modest levels of literacy. "This represents a massive loss of productivity for individuals, for society and for our economy especially as we enter a future where knowledge and adaptability will be essential. But the situation is even more complex. Many with low literacy skills manage well in their lives and may not see themselves needing any help at the moment. Many others (estimated at 10 to 15% of Canadians) require specialized help for learning disabilities. For the 5 - 10 % of less literate Canadians who do come forward for training there are significant socio-economic barriers and burdens to overcome. Even well-intentioned literacy programs cannot address these without appropriate resources and a broader social shift. Since literacy is about all of us, the challenge for Canadian society is to truly become a culture of lifelong learning. Literacy is for life."
Suggested Canadian Literacy Resources
¸ International Adult Literacy Survey. Report called Reading the Future is available online through
Statistics Canada at www.statcan.ca or tel: 1-800-263-1136.
¸ Movement for Canadian Literacy, online at www.literacy.ca or tel: 613-563-2464.
¸ National Literacy Secretariat, online at www.nald.ca/nls.htm or tel: 819-953-5280.
Here is where I will give you a respite from my ramblings and throw in some more recent photos.
Me and Michelle (the other chemistry teacher) at her home for a traditional Chinese meal.A recent tug of war event at my school where the teacher's team was annihilated by the student's team.My classroom now that I have had a chance to decorate it in the way I wanted to.My amazingly geeky and brilliant students during a Chem lab.The crew of teachers at my school. The two to note are Neil (back centre) and James (front centre on my right) who are my drinking/weekend warrior buddies from Whales. Only three of us in the picture teach A-levels (university level): besides me, the "Physics and Chemistry lecturer", the other two are Allison (behind me) who has a PHD and teaches Maths, ad Chris, (to Neil's right), an ex-London cop who teaches Business and Economics.And just because they like to keep us segregated, we of course had to pose as well as just "foreign" teachers. The other foreign teachers teach the same age of kids (15-18 years old) but the program is less academic and more focused on improving English. It's a good group to come to work to in the mornings - with a lot of British humor in the office. Dan, to my left is American and teaches Maths and other than that, the rest are from Britain (POMES).Getting back to me and my spare time: i.e. studying. I was on a plane this month returning from Beijing. It suddenly got very turbulent to the point where people were screaming to be saved by god. It is moments like this in life that allow you a new awareness of what is really important to you. In these brief near-death minutes, I smiled at my thoughts. My first thought was my mum. I worried she would be devastated. And then my only other thought was to look down at my Chinese text book and curse the possibility of death since all of the hard work I have put into studying would have all been in vain.
Look, I even write a journal in Hanzi now! These pre-death thoughts on the plane got me thinking quite a bit over the following weeks.
Why am I working so hard at this language? What do I want to get out of this experience? Why did I come back to china? What am I going to do in the next few years? Ultimately I can't really answer any of these questions. In fact, I think I have been feeling so free, so happy and so lucky over the last year because I have learned to not bother with these questions. To just live life and enjoy it and take it as it comes. What I do know now is that I love learning Chinese. It is so challenging and therefore rewarding. And I quite obviously plan on being here a while (forever is not out of the question) if I am dedicating over half of my spare time to just sitting and studying. In fact, the more time I spend on learning Chinese, the less I feel like I can go home. But this is very, very OK. As I was telling a friend last night, this is the first time in my life where I am not planning on what to do next, where to go, who to see...and it is the first time in my life where I feel settled. I am not looking forward to the future because I can't wait to get through the present. Rather, I am just looking forward to the future. More importantly, I am settled in the present. I am settled. It feels very right. Very unfamiliar - but very right.
