Some Stories

Story #1

A few days ago I was subbing at this center where I hit it off with the Chinese assistant I was working with, Chloe.  We were having so much fun teaching together and at lunchtime we decided to go out for pizza.  We were sitting in a booth and she was in the middle of telling me all about a recent trip she had taken to Las Vegas, when this boy in the booth behind her started making faces at me over her shoulder. 

I laughed and said, “I’m sorry I can’t focus, this boy behind you keeps looking at me.”

When she turned around to see him, the boy screamed something at her in Chinese, let loose a peel of maniacal laughter and disappeared behind the booth.

Me: What did he say?

Chloe: He said, “The foreigner is here!”

Like I was Godzilla. 

It was pretty funny :)

Story #2 

Shanghai is such an international city that, even though the Chinese occasionally stare at me, they aren't that surprised at seeing foreigners.  However, the other day I had to sub at a center that was located an hour from the city center.  Evidently it is an area that's not used to Westerners because people were gawking at me everywhere. You should've seen the people on bikes and mopeds rubber-necking as they rode by me.

I got off the metro and had to take a bus to the center, something foreigners don't do much I guess, and as I got onto the bus I could feel everyone's eyes on me.  I knew what they were thinking, "What the hell is that white lady doing on this bus?"   

I sat down and pretended not to notice their leering.  After awhile I saw the young guy across the aisle from me elbow his friend and nod at the street behind me.  I turned to see what they were looking at and I realized that there was a camel walking down the sidewalk.  A CAM-EL!  We were in the middle of the city!  There were buildings, sidewalk, cars, buses, and for no apparent reason a CAMEL walking_down_the_street!  I looked around to see if anyone else was as shocked  as I was and found that, while a few people were watching without expression, many others had glanced out the window and gone back to texting or talking to their neighbor.  

What is happening?!  Have I fallen through the looking glass??  Why is there a camel walking down the streets of Shanghai?????? And why is nobody alarmed?

I saw two more camels while I was on that bus, and nobody reacted.  And I thought: Oh sure, camels are nothing but ME they stare at!  Oh, China.

For whatever reason, a camel on the street was common place in this area but I was the unusual thing to be seen.

Story #3 

Two things that made me nervous about coming to China: Japanese Encephalitis (a brain disease spread by mosquitoes) and The Plague (a real thing, spread by fleas on rats and other animals).   Though I know these things are really more of a risk in rural areas I can't help but be irrationally afraid that I will contract one of these diseases and die alone in a Chinese hospital.  

A few things have fueled my irrational fear:

-I have seen many people with nasty mosquito bites all over their legs.  Not just a few bites, like 30 bites that appear as swollen welts.  I got bit a few times and it took days for the bumps to go away.  These bugs are vicious.

-I find little nats and things in my hotel room all the time and one my friends actually had a roach, which she caught in a bottle and marched down to the front desk. 

- Chelsea told me a story about how when she lived in Guangzhou she had a rat in her apartment. It was big enough that it dragged her partially filled trash bag from the kitchen to the living room and hide it under the couch! 

-One night I was walking down an alleyway with Stacy and we saw a huge rat!  She screamed and it scuttled away. Though I pretended to be cool about it, I'll tell you what, that rat got into my head!

 

So it's no really a surprise that I spent the better part of one night laying in bed imagining I was being eaten alive by bugs.  I kept feeling like they were crawling all over me.  After about two hours of tossing and turning and scratching at bites that didn't actually exist, I got out of bed and sprayed my entire body down with insect repellent I'd brought from The States.  

I climbed back into bed and buried myself down in my blankets so that none of my skin was exposed to those bloodsucking jerks.

I was laying there trying to will myself to go to sleep...when it happened.  I heard a rustling in my room.  I sat bolt upright in the dark

Oh God.  There's a rat in my room.  Theresaratinmyroomtheresaratinmyroomtheresaratinmyroom.

  

RUSTLE...RUSTLE...RUSTLE

There's a rat_in_my_ROOM!!!  What am I going to do?!     

Should I make a run for it?  What can I use to kill it??? Ahhh!!!! Don't be a coward, Ashlee.  Just deal with the rat!

I reached over and turned the light on.

Turns out it was just the air conditioner blowing onto a plastic bag.

Crisis averted.

Demo and Assessments

Since I can't post photos from Disney English, this is from the website.  I like it because it's exactly what it really looks like in the classroom.  I spend so much time, just like in this photo, on my hands and knees with stuffed animals or other objects drilling kids on vocabulary and pronunciation.  And the high five is our official DE affirmation.  I must high five kids 200 times a day.  Sometimes the kids get nervous about speaking, especially it's sentences, so I'll grab a Mickey hand puppet and this kids can talk to him.  They love Mickey. 

A couple of weeks ago my boss at my temporary center trained me on demos and assessments.  A demo is a free lesson that we present to parents that are thinking about signing their children up for Disney English.  They sit in the room with their child and other prospective families and we deliver a scripted lesson.   Afterwards we do an assessment with the child to figure out what level they should be placed in while the parents meet with the sales staff.

The demo was fascinating to watch. 

I have to hand it to Chinese parents.  I’ve never seen a collection of adults that show such open and intense adoration for their children.  When their child would speak a word of English in the demo their face would just explode with joy.  They were so truly happy and proud, they’d even exclaim with excitement.  It was really sweet.   And the affection seems to be mutual, the children are devoted to their parents.  I know it’s normal for little kids to be super attached to their parents, but I wish I could describe how it’s different.   

Example: On the subway last night a little boy, about 8 years old, came on with his mom.  The boy was playing a video game and when the mom started coughing a little bit the boy stopped with he was doing and reached up and patted her on the arm saying something like, “Are you ok Mommy?” The concern in his face was so sincere, I can’t get over it.

At the same time, watching the demo, I’ve never seen parents look so stressed about their child’s success.  At the beginning of the demo the presenters remind the parents, in English and in Chinese, that the children are in a new environment and sometimes feel a little shy so if they don’t speak it’s totally normal.  But it didn’t help the parents feel better.  As soon as other children started to say the English words the other parents got super nervous.  In one demo we had a group of ten children and there were two that just refused to speak at all, because they were shy not because they didn’t understand.  Both girls’ parents started side coaching them, trying to prompt them to say “fish” or the colors being taught.  One even came and sat with her and tried to push her to say it until finally she burst into tears and Dad had to take her out.  The other girl participated in all the activities but just wouldn’t speak, which is fine, but I looked over at the father and you could see by his face that he was humiliated. 

After the demo I watched my boss perform some individual assessments, which mostly consists of talking to the child and filling out a form about their language ability.  Older kids are also assessed on reading and writing.  I watched him do three or four assessments and then he said, “Ok now I want you to do the next one.”

I thought: WHAT???  But, but, but,….I don’t know what I’m doing!

I said: “Um..ok”

So I fumbled through the assessment and then afterwards we talked about it and he guided me through filling out the paperwork.  I was talking through why I thought the child could be placed at either of two levels but that I wasn’t sure which, when my boss stopped me and said, “Well it’s really up to you.  We can put her in whichever level you think would be the best fit.”  I was surprised, he really wanted ME to choose the level? Right now? By myself?

 Wow.  I can’t believe he trusts me to do that, I’m just the new person.  But actually, I can’t tell you how much I appreciated that he said this to me.  I felt like he was empowering me.  He was telling me that I’m the professional, I know what I’m doing and that he trusts me.  Double wow.  I’ve missed this kind of leadership.

Also, how awesome is it that I’m just a sub and he’s taking all this time to train me so that he can send me off to another center in another city?  It sends a message to me that it’s not about my place at the individual center, but that Disney English is an entire community that we are trying to make succeed in China.  There have been many times in the past that I’ve felt invisible to the leadership that I’ve worked for.  Disney English is not without flaws but I’m so relieved to be someplace where they make me feel like I’m a part of a team.  They  train me, they check in on me, they sit down and talk about what’s going on in my classroom, they respond to my emails!  Such a relief.

Good thing he taught me how to do assessments because three days later I was subbing at another center and a sales person came running up to me. “Ashlee, can you do an oral assessment?  We have two kids waiting and there is no one to do the assessment!  Please can you do it?!”

Yes, of course I can.

Qibao

During my day off last Tuesday I went with Krit, Tanya and Tanya’s family to visit Qibao.  Qibao (pronounced CHEE-bow) is an ancient water township that survived the fast urbanization of Shanghai and is located about 12 miles from the center of the city.  The town was built during the Northern Song Dynasty (960AD-1126AD) and has a very Old World feel.  Krit lived there a year ago and loved it, she was eager to take us to see her old stomping grounds.

 Unlike a lot of the buildings in the major cities, the ones in Qibao are actually the originals

 Qibao street

 Streetside fruit market

 Chicken eggs, duck eggs, quail eggs and more!  Eggs are very big in Chinese cuisine

Mixing mortar on the street corner, cellphones being sold in the glass case on the right

Chinese alleyway 

Dumplings being cooked, dumpling lady texting on her iphone

 

 I was pretty sure these are braised pigs feet, then Krit pointed out that the one on the far right looks like a paw?  Who knows...

 Chicks on a stick

I can't even begin to tell you how many baby birds on a stick I've seen since I moved to China

A typical bird market where you can get poultry to kill and cook for dinner.  Ducks, chickens, geese, quail, and…pigeons? 

I saw this and said, “Hmm I wonder how times I’ve unknowingly eaten pigeon in the last month.” 

Krit:  Weren’t you with us when we went into that restaurant by Jing’an Temple that served all pigeon meat?

Me: No!  How did you know it was pigeon?

Krit: Because it said it on the menu.  Pigeon dumplings, noodles with pigeon…

 Little girl, sitting on the street corner doing her homework

 Krit told Tanya's boys that there was a pet store in Qibao that she's take them to.  A pet store??  I've seen lots of people with pet cats and dogs, but I haven't seen a pet store in Shanghai.  I laughed when we got there and it was more of a pet kiosk.  Turtles, mice, salamanders, fish, and canaries for sale.

Baked quail eggs

"Latte Embryo Tea"  I don't even know...let's hope it's a translation error

There are cricket fighting matches here and I've read that Qibao is know for breeding the fiercest crickets :)  I'd like to return and see a match.

 China can be breathtaking or it can be revolting.  I feel like there's something astounding to see every 10 steps.  And it's hard to comprehend how ancient lifestyles can exist within an ultra modern city like Shanghai.  When I'm on the subway I gawk at the super trendy clothing everyone wears, and then when I step onto the street I'm startled by a woman carrying a goose in her backpack.  At first I felt like I was experiencing what it might be like to move to Mars, and now I feel more like I'm the alien.  I love it here, it's endlessly exciting.  But I wonder if it can ever feel like home.            

Happy Birthday, Krit!