Miscellany

Before I post on some of our more recent events, I wanted to give a quick update on what we've been up to the last month or so. 

New Class

For the last 3 weeks I have been teaching a new class because one of the other foreign teachers had a "disagreement" with his class. The class is an oral class and I guess all the previous teacher did was have one student per class give an oral presentation and then a few students would ask questions. The students had complained that they were only getting to practice their oral English one time in the semester, and the rest of the time they spent sitting and listening. Also, the class has a textbook the students had to pay for, but the teacher refused to use it.

After many complaints from students and many requests by the administration to change his teaching practices, the teacher still refused to make any changes. So, the class was given to me. It kind of bums me out that a foreign teacher can be so stubborn and the school can't really do anything about it. The teacher is still getting paid as much as he was before, and he has one less class. His stubbornness and refusal to cooperate actually benefitted him. Unfortunately I see many foreign teachers taking advantage of their "foreigness" in this way. Oftentimes the school will do anything to please the foreigners, even if we're being total jerks.

The students are undergraduate English majors which is quite a contrast to my post-graduate students from various majors. The English majors are significantly better at English and much more enthusiastic. It makes teaching the class a ton of fun and also much easier than my post-grad students. With the post-grad students I feel like I have to struggle to get any sort of response from them, but the English majors happily volunteer answers to questions. I'm hoping next semester I'll be able to teach some more English majors. 

CUBA Game

Since it's founding in 1998, all major Chinese universities have competed in the Chinese University Basketball Association (CUBA). The CUBA is the equivalent the NCAA, but only for basketball, and Shandong University of Science and Technology is the CUBA equivalent of Kansas or Duke. Our school won a CUBA National Championship in either 2001, 2002, or 2004.  When I've asked various students or other teachers I have heard all three answers.  I've even had the opportunity to see the CUBA National Championship trophy, which is an awesome golden backboard and rim (think slightly larger Nerf hoop, but pure gold), but it doesn't even say the year on it.  The CUBA wikipedia site says 2002, for what it's worth.

Regardless of what year they've won, SUST has won one national title (out of only 10 so far) and nearly every year they make it to at least the Elite 8 of the CUBA Tournament, usually the Final Four. They are a powerhouse. I have told my students that if they ever know of a game that I could watch they should let me know.

One evening I received an email that SUST would be playing Hunan Normal University at our school's gymnasium the following afternoon at 2:30 pm.  He said that finding tickets would be difficult but he wanted to let me know anyway.  Fortunately, Megan and I were able to land tickets from our well connected friends Kerstan and Karen, and we headed to the game. When we arrived, we learned from some other spectators that this game was the Quarterfinals for the national tournament, so SUST was in the Elite 8.

The gym was packed with students when we arrived and we found our seats which were in the very front row behind the visiting team's bench. Apparently the tournament is set up in a home and home format, where a game is played at each team's campus and the team with the highest aggregate score continues to the next round.

The game was a blast. The pregame and halftime festivities were half of the show. There were "Basketball Babies" (what they call cheerleaders here), mascots (a panda, a pig, and an inflated basketball-headed creature), drum and singing performances, giant flags, and traditional dancers. Also, the student section was arranged to spell "CUBA" with the colors of their shirts. While the students clearly cheered for our school to win, everything official was completely unbiased. The cheerleaders did not openly support one team or the other, the student section was comprised of students wearing both schools' colors and spelled "CUBA" rather than "SUST" and each team had an equally large flag.

The actual game was a blowout. SUST dominated the game from start to finish, winning 99-71. This was the first leg of the match, so aggregate score counted, and they had incentive to run up the score. The level of play was pretty high. The players rivaled NCAA Division 3 athletes in both physicality and skill, but the coaching left a lot to be desired. With the exception of a few inbounds plays, the game was basically unorganized streetball. There were times that some players did not even pretend to get back on defense, but their coaches did not seem to care. A well coached Division 3 team like Calvin would probably run all over these teams.

Since the game they have had the second game of the match at the other school's campus and SUST is successfully into the Final Four, so there will be another game on campus so I hope to watch it too.

Here are some photos of the game:

Cameraman for CCTV 5 (China's ESPN). This dude was texting on his cellphone before he saw me about to take a picture and pretended to be filming.

Karen, Kerstan, and Megan in our seats before the game.

The student section spelling out "CUBA"

The players from the teams threw some mini-basketballs into the crowd and I caught one!

Halftime drummers.

The inflated basketball-headed mascot with a guy inside it walking around.

Halftime dancers.

Game action from our seats. Our seats were right behind the opponent's bench.

Most of the gym.

Final score: SUST 99 - Hunan Normal University 71

Basketball Team Dinner

My weekend basketball team, Team Bangbang, recently had a team dinner after one of our games a week or so ago. We ate at an outdoor barbeque restaurant in Huangdao and it was great chance to do something social with both the American and Chinese members of the team. Almost every player on the team has a wife or girlfriend too, so all in all our group was about 12 or 14 people. 

The conversation was held half in English and half in Mandarin, with the bilingual among us translating for the less lingually inclined. Those of us who knew very little English or Mandarin tried our best to keep up and pitch in with a few words of our own. Many toasts were attempted in toaster's foreign language with laughter usually following. My Mandarin toast was the embarssingly simple "我们是朋友!” (Women shi pengyou!/We are friends!).

These truly cross-cultural moments are some of my favorites in China, and make me extremely thankful that Megan and I decided to come here.

Here are a few photos:

Our table outdoors at the barbeque. A great evening.

Good food and drink.

Three of our Chinese teammates showing their strength: Jack, Li, and Gao.

An interesting insight into male/female relationships in China: Jack (left) ran home after our game to change and told us not to tell his wife that he was playing basketball because she doesn't want him to play so much. There are things that I do or don't do at Megan's request, but something healthy like basketball isn't one of them.

Team Bangbang: (top L-R) Gao, Hunter, Roland, Li (bottom L-R) Jack, Me, Kyle, Kerstan

The wives and girlfriends.

Drama Salon

Megan and I were invited to an event on Saturday night called "Drama Salon" put on by the Foreign Languages Club at the university. While there was a distinct absence of hair cutting or styling of any kind, the event turned out to be a good time. A few groups of students put on some skits in English and Japanese, but the show could be more accurately described as a multi-lingual talent/variety/game show.

The Salon was held in a large classroom with a bit of a stage at the front, and when we arrived we found that a few seats in the front row had been saved for us. As always Megan and I, along with a Japanese professor, were the guests of honor. On this occasion, that meant that on the desk in front of our seats sat a banana, 2 oranges, a pile of sunflower seeds, a few candies and a bottle of water. Megan and I are happily growing accustomed to this this kind of hospitality everywhere we go now.

Our seats stocked with sunflower seeds and fruit!

Waiting for the show to start.

The show started with one of the emcees of the event crooning a popular Chinese ballad. The guy was an absolute lady killer. His voice was good and he had the moves to pull it off, complete with the mic cocked vertically and the classic "eyes-closed-arm-outstretched" move that R&B singers have been perfecting for decades. Years of karaoke have clearly paid off for this gentleman. There were several more songs performed throughout the drama salon and none lived up to this first song.

The star singer. This photo does not do him justice.

Two other singers who were not quite as charismatic as the first singer.

After the opening song there was a performance of a famous Japanese folk story that I'm pretty sure I read in Japanese class in college. I didn't understand it then and I didn't understand it now, but it involved a girl who has a horrible deformity on her face, which was displayed in the skit by sticking a ping pong ball to a girls face.

The girl with the ping pong ball on her face.

The Japanese skit was followed by an English skit about a guy and girl who lament to their friends that they need a significant other. Coincidentally, one of the guy's friends is the brother of one of the girl's friends, and the siblings decide to set the lonely pair up on a blind date. When the time for the date comes the boy introduces himself to the girl and declares her the most beautiful girl he's ever seen. Unfortunately, the girl was revolted by the boy and ran out on the date. The moral of the story, as recited by the entire cast at the end of the skit, was "Love should be expected, not made."

Next came the game show portion of the evening, in which volunteers from the crowd were made to play musical chairs on the stage. If a contestant was eliminated, they had to perform some sort of punishment in front of the crowd. The punishments included popping a balloon between the back of another person, making the noise of 5 different animals, or singing a song in front of the group. The winner of the game, who was quite a ham, decided he wanted to sing in front of the group as well, even though he didn't have to. He wasn't a great singer, but his song was redeemed when about 1/3 of the way through two of the hosts and the runner-up decided the urge to sing was too strong and joined the winner on stage for a spontaneous quartet. It was awesome.

Musical chairs!

One of the punishments. They're popping a balloon between them.

The spontaneous quartet. The winner of musical chairs is far right, and very into the song.

There were a few more skits and songs, but those were definitely the highlights of the night. We hope to be invited to more similar events in the future.

Hoops

I've found that if I only play basketball when I am invited, I will still play at least 3 times a week. After perhaps only ping pong, basketball is the most popular sport in China. Based on the huge number of hoops on our campus that are almost always filled with students playing, I would say that that is true. So naturally my students frequently ask me to play with them and typically I accept.

I must admit that I do not have as much fun playing basketball here as I do in the US. The main reason for this is the considerably low level of competition , which results from that fact that none of the students have ever been formally coached. Instead, the students try to imitate their favorite NBA players' moves, resulting in varying levels of hilarity. Also, no one ever tries to shoot from outside the key. Generally, there are just 10 people standing in the key at one time, and no one has any space to do much of anything. Adding to the lack of space is that everyone just plays half court games. A few weeks ago I played a 6 on 6 game, half court.

Due to my height, I basically just stand under the hoop, collect missed shots, and make layups. This is a pretty boring way to play, so I try to play like Chris Webber in his heyday with the Sacramento Kings. I stand at the high post, get the ball, hold it as high as I can, and make passes to cutting teammates.

One of the most disappointing things about playing basketball here is that people rarely keep score. They just play until they don't feel like playing anymore. Today the students I played with actually kept score, and I enjoyed the game a ton more. Players were more competitive, especially when it got close to game point. Maybe it is just my capitalistic American nature, but I think sports are way more fun when you're actually, you know, competing. 

Here they are asking me if "Rebound" is a verb or a noun.

English Corner

Last Wednesday a few of my students invited me to attend their English Corner on Friday afternoon at 4PM.   I of course accepted without hesitation because I have started to realize that every event Jordan and I are invited to seem to end up being pretty entertaining.  

Jordan and  I both finish classes on Friday afternoons at 4, so our usual Friday afternoon routine is to take a bus into the city after class, buy some movies, get Pizza Hut, go home, binge.  Last Friday we decided to postpone our ritual and I forced Jordan to come with me to this English Corner.  There were two classrooms packed with English students, and Jordan and I both entered a room full of cheering undergrads (which is basically what we have come to expect upon entering a room, so everyone prepare yourself to treat us with that kind of respect when we get home).  The students had already arranged the desks into groups of about ten, so Jordan and I were both ushered to different groups.  On the board, the students leading the English Corner had already written our discussion questions:

1. What is your opinion on the clone?

2. Where do you think the women should stay?  At the home or at the company?

3. What do you think about the gays' marriage?

Let me tell you, it was an interesting 2 hours.  I tried to correct any grammatical errors I saw in the questions, but mainly I was just interested to hear what they thought about these topics since I doubt they have many opportunities to speak freely on such "taboo" topics here.  We basically touched on each question and then started talking about life in America.  How do Americans feel about the clone?  Jordan was apparently asked if he "was a gay marriage" (I guess they didn't realize that we were married, or perhaps they still were struggling with what exactly it meant to be gay).

I saw a bunch of my students and I was impressed with how dedicated they are to their studies.  If only I had made an effort to start some sort of Chinese Corner at CU, and then actually attend it on Friday afternoon!

We have already been invited back to English Corner this Friday afternoon, and we're looking forward to seeing what questions they'll have this time.

Impromptu Life

In my classes I have organized an activity to improve the students' oral English by having them give impromptu speeches. I spent a lesson teaching tips and strategies for the speeches and then gave an example impromptu speech of my own by selecting a topic out of a hat and delivering a short speech for the class. Now each class 5 students give impromptu speeches of their own. I told the students that this activity will help their confidence to use their English when they do not have a lot of time to prepare; to think on their feet.

Similarly, everything in life here seems impromptu and I had a good example of that today.

Last night one of Megan's students texted her to ask if she could give a speech at the opening ceremony of a Foreign Languages Festival today. Unfortunately (or fortunately), Megan had a class at the time of the event so she had to decline. I mentioned that if they could not find anyone else, I'd offer to speak. I have Wednesdays off so I figured I should do something. The students immediately texted back and said it would be great if I could do it (they sure spent a long time looking for a replacement for Megan). They did not give much information other than that I would have to give some opening remarks for about 5 minutes to students who are interested in participating in the events of the Foreign Languages Festival. The students suggested we meet at 4:15 for the ceremony which started at 4:30.

I did not think much about the event today and I went about my normal business of lesson planning. At 4:15 I met the students and they led me over to where the opening ceremony for this festival was held. As we walked, I was told the festival held English speaking and debate contests, drama contests, and showed some English movies. Anyone could sign up for these events and my job was to encourage the students to do this and join their "English Corner" clubs.

I expected this would be a casual event, like a club fair at an American college, so I didn't really plan my speech. However, like most things since I've arrived in China my expectation did not meet reality. We walked into an auditorium with roughly 500 students sitting in the audience and a panel of ten "distinguished guests" on the stage. To the left of the panel was a podium with the university crest on it and flowers surrounding it. I saw several photographers and one guy filming the event with a large camera. The students who brought me to the event sat me down in the front row of the audience, nearest the podium, and said that two people would say some things in Chinese and then I would be the third person to speak. A REAL LIFE IMPROMPTU SPEECH!

Next to me sat an older Japanese man in a suit (thank goodness I threw on some khakis!) who was reviewing his prepared speech for the students who were studying Japanese. I said a brief "konnichiwa" and "hajimemashite" (hooray 4 years of Japanese study!) and then starting thinking about what I would say. At that time the event started and a few of the panel members spoke for about 5 minutes each and towards the end of the second speech I heard "....Jordan..." and the speaker was motioning me to the stage. 

I got up there and spoke for a few minutes about the importance of learning foreign languages and how this Festival is such a good opportunity to practice and everyone who can should sign up for the events. It was a poor speech, definitely not my best.

After me the Japanese guy got up and spoke for about 10 minutes, pausing for translation to Chinese. I've rarely seen a 5'2", 120 pound Japanese man so animated. His speech reminded me of one of my favorite episodes of "The Office" where Dwight gives a speech at a sales conference and, following Jim's advice, speaks very passionately: shouting and hitting the podium in the style of history's greatest dictators. It was very intense. Of what little Japanese I could understand he was repeatedly emphasizing the importance of studying.

Once the Japanese guy was done, a few more speeches were given in Chinese for the next 15 or 20 minutes and then everyone got up to leave. On the way out I asked the students who brought me there if what I said was appropriate and if they thought everyone understood. They said that the students understood and that my speech was perfect. I'm sure they were just being polite, but I suppose an ESL audience is very forgiving.

Weekend Update

A combination of factors have affected my ability to post here over the last week or so. First, the internet in our apartment went down last week Saturday and did not start working again until Tuesday. Then, Megan and I became busy with lesson planning for our classes and doing the actual teaching. Finally, I have on 3 occasions tried to post a 2-minute video of our apartment here but even after waiting 15-20 hours for it to upload it has not worked. Unless I figure out a solution to that problem I probably won't be putting up video here anytime soon.

But now I have some time so I thought I'd update. Last week Saturday Megan and I received our schedules and they were lighter than we expected. I am teaching 12 hours and Megan is teaching 10. We both have Wednesdays off, so we can lesson plan and grade for the second half of the week at that time. So far it has gone pretty well, but it is difficult to come up with enough activities to fill 2 hours, especially when students are hesitant to participate.

My first class I decided to introduce myself to the students by playing a game. I broke the classes up into four teams and then I would show a question about myself on the powerpoint. After each team gave an answer to the question I would click to the next slide which would reveal the answer. I do not think I have ever seen such pure joy from students in a classroom than when I would reveal an answer. They loved the competition of it and also liked to learn about me (where I've lived, my family, my hobbies, etc). It was a success. 

The second class I decided I should actually start teaching something. I referenced a textbook that Megan and I had bought to come up with some activities and a grammar point to teach. The activities went fairly well. I had the students prepare a dialogue using the grammar pattern I taught and then asked some of them to share their dialogues. They did pretty well, although their spoken English is still very weak and they basically had to read what they had written on their sheets verbatim.

I suspected the grammar I taught them was too easy since grammar is the one thing the students do have a very strong grasp of, yet it was impossible to tell because the students are so unresponsive to questions that I don't know if they do not understand or if they are just shy. Well, I guess they are just shy because I did get an email from a student (Subject line: "hello,my dear teacher") that said the grammar was too easy and that they needed practice speaking.

I was glad someone was brave enough to tell me this because I would have continued to do the same things I had been doing. Now I just need to figure out how to get them to speak in English.

Here are some of my students responses when I asked them to write what they liked and disliked about their English class last semester and what they think might be the most useful activities to teach them English:

• "I dislike examination. It give me strain."
• "The most useful activities is gives us more free time."
• "The most useful activities, I think, is more choice to speak in english and debate in english. The reason is so simple that everyone knows it."
• "Playing game is the most useful activities. Because I can learn English with a happy way."
• "Activities: talking about something wonderful in English."
• "Useful activity: Interactive teaching, because it can move our positiveness."
• "I dislike exams, I think exams have no sense."

So, About This Teaching Thing...

The internet at Megan and my apartment building has been down for about 48 hours, leaving all the foreign teachers who live in this building in somewhat of a panic. With class starting in about 3 days, teachers are realizing how difficult it is to lesson plan without the internet. Oh well, it is working now so everyone should be calmed down a bit.

We have learned a few things about our teaching responsibilities. Megan will be teaching undergraduates in the College of Foreign Languages and I will be teaching graduate students. From what we hear from other teachers, the students Megan will be teaching will be English majors so they will be at a higher level and will also have more interest in the subject, whereas my students will be taking English because they have to and will have a wider range of abilities. We will be teaching at most 16 hours a week, however with roughly 72 hours until we'll start teaching we do not yet have a class schedule. We were assured that we would get our schedule by Saturday, because we "need time to plan our lessons." Apparently one day will be sufficient for that. Just go with the flow.

Some other things of note since the internet broke down:

• We met the other 2 teachers who are here from CIEE, Kerstan and Karen. They are a couple who are probably a year or two older than us and they are very eager to help with our teaching and show us around. They took us out to dinner and have shared a lot of teaching tips. It'll be good to have them around.
• We played Scrabble at our neighbor Courtlandt's apartment and learned that "sluice" is a word. It has something to do with gold mining.
• We got cell phones. 250 RMB each, which is about $35, and then we just pay for what we use. We were hesitant at first but I think they'll come in handy.
• We got our Foreign Experts certification. I'm not sure what we're experts at, except maybe being foreign.

That's about it. Things have been slow but they'll pick up once we start teaching. Also, I will put up a little video of our apartment before we start teaching.

I looked out the window and two things were apparent: the students are returning and they're doing laundry. Good to know. This photo was taken from our balcony.

This Campus is Large

When you have 2 weeks with nothing to do before starting work days tend to seep away with nothing productive coming of them. To combat that, Megan and I have tried to have at least one goal for each day we have free before school starts. Yesterday our goal was to explore the campus of the school we're teaching at. We succeeded.

Shandong University of Science and Technology has 35,000 students, but unlike most American schools that I have visited that are about that size, this school doesn't blend into a city. There isn't a "college town" feel. The entire campus is contained within walls with gates, and there isn't much else within those walls. Roughly half the campus is dedicated to housing and half are for academic buildings. There is a road down the middle that divides these.

The campus is nice and very pretty in spots, but I got the feeling that all the buildings were thrown up in a great rush so that they could get started on the next one. Much of China feels that way in fact. Megan said that she thought that China is so busy building things that they don't have any time to maintain things. This is true of the campus. I counted about 50 basketball hoops around the campus, not one had a net (that always bugs me). That said, everything is still fairly new so nothing is in that bad of shape. Many of the buildings are extremely large and impressive from the exterior, so hopefully they're nice on the inside too.

We took a lot of photos while wandering around, so enjoy. Click on the photos to enlarge.

A pagoda on campus.

The pagoda across part of the pond.

Megan walking by some of the dorms.

Everything is closed for the holiday.

A town near the campus and some gardens.

A hoop (w/o a net!) in the shadow of the mountains outside campus.

They had a little courtyard with a bunch of statues of famous thinkers. This is Einstein. None of the statues were of Chinese people.

Megan with Newton.

Some of the dorms across a field. I think the campus will be nice in the spring.

Megan looking at the ice in the river/pond thingy.

The main gate of the campus.

My favorite building, the first one you see when you enter campus.

The foreign languages building, where we assume we'll be teaching.

A closer view.

The view right when you enter the main gate. We're not sure what the use the big screen for.

Some gate inside the campus.

Qingdao...it's beer! Hooray beer!

This morning Megan and I received an email that we have been assigned to teach at the Shandong University of Science and Technology. We were glad to finally know where we would be placed, but before I became too pleased with our placement I realized I should learn something about the school, it's location and our specific positions. After all, I hadn't even the slightest idea where Shandong Province was.

Let's get started.

LOCATION

I was relieved to discover that Shandong University of Science and Technology is located in a town I had heard a little about over the years: Qingdao. Many readers may be more familiar with the spelling that appears on green beer bottles around the world - "Tsingtao." As well as being China's beer capital, Qingdao is a major seaport and industrial center. Qingdao also has several beaches which are very popular among Chinese tourists. Perhaps most interestingly, Qingdao boasts a strong German influence, hence the beer, as the city was a German colony in the early 20th century.

Resting at the tip of Shandong Penninsula, Qingdao experiences slightly milder winters and slightly cooler summers than inland areas. August is the warmest month average highs of 28 C and January is the coldest month with 3 C average high temperatures. It is nice to know that it won't be as cold as Michigan or Colorado (probably).

Other facts:

• Etymology: "Qing" means green or lush and "dao" means island.
• Qingdao is not an island; hopefully it is lush.
• Qingdao is about 6 hours by high speed train to Beijing and about 10 hours to Shanghai.
• Qingdao was recently named the 9th most livable city in China by China Daily.
• Qingdao has a population of about 2.5 million in the urban area and 7.5 million in the greater Qingdao area.
  
• Qingdao is nicknamed "China's Switzerland" due to the European influence.

SCHOOL & JOB

About 38,000 students attend Shandong University of Science and Technology (SUST) spread between 3 campuses, the main being in Qingdao. The school mentions how it has 8 National Teachers of Excellence, 19 Provincial Teachers of Excellence, and is known for its strength in basic and applied research. The most telling sign of their excellence, however, is the animated .gif fireworks that explode over their logo on the front page of their website.

The top academic programs at SUST are Mining Engineering, Surveying and Mapping Science and Technology, Control Theory and Control Engineering, Geotechnical Engineering, Mechatronic Engineering, and Mechanical Design and Theory. This is particularly well suited for Megan and I as we are both experts in Mechatronc Engineering.

We will be teaching Oral English, Business English, and Literature to primarily 19-22 year old students.  We will teach 16 classroom hours a week and will also participate in the "English Corner" club.

According to the information we have, our on-campus apartment will have heating, air-conditioning, a kitchen with refrigerator, and internet access. Let's hope all that is true.

Also, SUST apparently has a pretty decent basketball team by Chinese collegiate standards.

PHOTOS OF MEGAN'S VISIT TO QINGDAO - FEB. 2007

(Scott Greene & Heather Wigmore also featured)

Posing by the sculpture "May Breeze" near the coast.

Outside the Tsingtao Brewery

After a hike up Mt. Laoshan outside Qingdao

By the beach.