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Suddenly I am just days from leaving China. How did this happen? Did I really spend a school year in Asia? Have I really been out of college for a year? How on earth do I try to come to a conclusion about my experience here?
Self-reflection. I make no promises, but I will try I guess. I just spent a year in a place I never felt completely at home, and I survived. I did not just survive, I have thrived. My daily activities are no longer confined to just the things I need to do. It is an exciting adventure to get someplace new and try something different, even though some of the daily things still do not make sense or are not easy.
School
There are aspects of attempting to teach in this environment that I just gave up on. Homework that I expect my students to do outside of class is one of those things. When so many of my students just do not DO the homework, it becomes more tedious for me to track down and demand from them than the effort is worth, so I instituted a practice of assigning projects or writing assignments in class and grading those as homework. Even that was not foolproof, but it generally worked better than last semester's frustratingly never-ending cycle of homework assignment and attempted collection. Plus, I think that the students appreciated not having more homework added to their already heavy workloads.
I also tried a new approach to noise and behavior management. Rather than attempting to yell over my students or tell them to be quiet ten times in forty-five minutes, I adopted a Look, which most of them learned very quickly. By simply standing back, crossing my arms, and looking at the class, I was fairly successful at getting my students to quiet down on their own or with the help of their classmates, rather than by yelling at them. I like to think of it as some bastardized version of self-governance. Well, not really.
I also worked on watching more than talking. I let the students move the direction of class more than I did last semester, and I found myself generally being less frustrated at the end of the day. With a few exceptions, this generally worked well. In the end, it meant more talking while the students were working on projects and assignments, but things got done and I managed to maintain a higher level of overall sanity in the classroom.
At the beginning of this year, I would stand in the middle of a class of Junior Is and feel revered. I would stand in the middle of a class of Junior IIs and feel angry and helpless. I couldn't imagine how a Junior I class, so excited to talk to me and learn English, could possibly turn into a Junior II class that never gave me the chance to get to know them and have fun in class. It was not until the last couple of months that I have understood how that is possible. Unfortunately, the Junior Is I have enjoyed so much this year are well on their way to becoming the Junior IIs that will frustrate next year's fellows, and I see the metamorphosis. The Junior Is are more hyper, less cooperative, listen with less frequency, and respond less positively to me and my lessons. My sincerest apologies to next year's fellows - the only advice I can offer at this point is take a little bit of comfort in the fact that your Junior II students USED to be adorable Junior I students.
Lara and I tried something a little different this semester. Once it got nice outside, it became increasingly difficult to keep control of a classroom, so we decided to try class outside of a classroom. We took our students outside, and played games with the Junior Is, and tried something else with the rest of our students - a sort of 'forced' English corner. We were not sure how well that strategy would work, but once they were given a topic (What are you going to do over summer holiday?), students I have barely heard talk before opened right up. Plus, we all got to enjoy the nice weather, and the students got to burn some of their energy off without disrupting English class.
Regular English corner is still one of the best moments of my week. Even though sometimes conversations are limited due to the language capabilities of the students, it is really wonderful to get to talk to the students outside of class. Every week it reminds me that I have some really amazing students, and that they still teach me things, even at the end of the year. I can always count on them to teach me something about China or Chinese culture that I never knew before, whether it is by explicating the celebrations of Dragon Boat Festival, or writing down the name of that SONG I hear EVERYWHERE.
The end of the school year was quite anticlimactic. Our schedule was changed twice at the last minute, and what was supposed to be our last class ever never showed up. In the end, we never got to say goodbye to five of our eight classes. It was particularly disappointing because we just sort of disappeared and I know some of our students will be particularly disappointed that they never got to say goodbye to us, just like I am disappointed I never got to say goodbye to them. I know this is just the way things work in China, and that the school does its best to let us know what is going on, but sometimes it is frustrating to operate within a system where they suddenly tell you that you are not going to have much closure on your year as a teacher.
Travel
Getting from place to place in China is an adventure in itself. In April, Lara and I headed to Xian for a few days, to do one of the things I refused to leave China without doing - see the Terracotta Warriors. Xian is so different from Nanjing, and also very different from all the other cities I've been to while living here, and the experience was great. We wandered all over the city (or at least it felt that way) and just took it all in. The sizable Muslim Quarter, including a beautiful mosque, was particularly interesting. I have never seen the organs of such large animals out on display in the streets. In Nanjing, I mostly just see ducks and chickens and other relatively small animals. In Xian, I was looking at (and smelling) sheep and cow brains, livers, lungs, and hearts. Not a particularly pleasant experience, but an experience nonetheless.
Since traveling in China can be an ordeal even when you are doing it in the off-season, I decided to stay put for May holiday. Lara went off to Chengdu and Sichuan, and I stayed home and lived life at my own pace. It was an incredibly relaxing week, quite possibly the quietest on the 17th floor since I moved into Xi Yuan. It gave me a chance to plan lessons for the rest of the year, catch up on my sleep, and do a lot of whatever I felt like doing.
I also went on a Foreign Experts tour of Yangzhou, organized by the Jiangsu Provincial Government. It is always nice to have an all-expenses paid trip, especially when you are living on a relatively tight budget, so I jumped at the chance to see another city. Unfortunately it was rainy and cold the first day (when we did most of the touring), but the trip was still worth it. We got to see another school, sit in on classes, watch student performances, and tour the school. We also got to visit another school, which was particularly interesting, because it was a special school for students with hearing and mental disabilities. I have wondered since coming to China how the educational system accommodated students with these disabilities, and I got a bit of an idea while visiting this school. The number of students was very low by Chinese school standards, but it is encouraging that there are some students getting the additional attention they need, and it indicates progress within the educational system.
In the end
I love China, and my experiences here have been priceless, but I am ready to blend in again. I find myself becoming jealous of the Chinese people around me when I realize that biking down the busy street, sitting in this café, using squat toilets, and any number of other daily experiences are normal, comfortable, and ordinary for them. None of that is ordinary to me, even after this long. I am used to all of it, of course, but it is not normal or familiar.
My life has become a rotating series of 'I love China' and 'I am ready to leave China' moments. In the course of a single day, I feel very ready to leave and very NOT ready many times in a day. I cannot even begin to imagine how that will change when I get back to the U.S., and I do not think I am ready to worry about that right now. Life will be very foreign and very familiar in a place where things never felt foreign before. I look forward to experiencing everyday things in the U.S. with a new point of view, but the excitement of returning home will wear off much more quickly than the excitement of coming to China did. Life will return to a normal, much less exhilarating pace, and suddenly I will want another adventure. I have no idea how long it will be before I get the opportunity for another journey like this one, but I know that this experience will set me searching for more for the rest of my life.
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