Hello Everyone,

Many of you have expressed interest in knowing a bit more about my actual work here, so I will share with you a few notes about teaching English in Gao'An.

My first payday is fast approaching, and serves as a good reminder that such a thing exists.  I can't believe they are actually giving me money to do this.  Usually, when you are having this much fun, you have to pay somebody else.

The University where I teach is home to about 2,700 students.  They can follow a few different courses of study; There is a technical machining department, but mostly people study liberal arts.  When the students decide to study English, that is pretty much the end of their decision making, as all the classes required to receive an English degree are pre-determined, and there are no electives.  (Nobody will receive credits towards their English degree for completing a jogging or fencing class.)

Every week I teach twenty-two forty-minute classes.  My youngest students are 16, and the oldest are 20.  (There are no students in my classes who are back in school after a five year sabbatical.)  As you can imagine, there is a great deal of difference between the English language abilities of my students.  With the youngest, the classes consist of me reading from a book, and them repeating after me.  This is way more fun than you might expect.  There are a few sounds in English that are difficult for people whose mother tongue is Mandarin to reproduce. Some other sounds are difficult to distinguish from one another; "V","R","L", and "TH" all represent a difficulty for my students.  "Everywhere" "ehbrywahr".  I often ask my students if they have any questions, or if they know the meaning of all the words they have just repeated.  If they do not, then I do my best to explain the meaning using other English words, pictures, and facial expressions and short acting bits.  Some of you will understand just exactly how much fun this is for me and the students.  "To pronounce the letter "V", you must bite your teeth down on your lower lip like this (and I wrinkle my nose, and squint my eyes, and furrow my brow and expose my incisors biting sharply into my in-curled lower lip and contort my face so it looks as though I am about to spit the word "Venom!" at those unfortunate pupils whose desks happen to be in the front row) and they do their best to recreate my disfigured visage, and I am looking at 30-40 young Chinese girls (maybe a handful of boys in the back) making some pretty fierce angry rodent faces while they attempt to eradicate the "B" sound from their "V" words.

Very good, any questions? This occasionally returns some really good ones.  During the first few weeks of class, when I was still making introductions, and inviting people to ask me questions about the United States, or about myself, I frequently answered the following questions; "Do you like Chinese food?" "Can you use chopsticks?" "What do you think of our University?" "Are you accustomed to life in China?" "Can you tell us something about your hometown?" and in the midst of these, one student asked, "How do you move your face so much?" Maybe you can imagine how it moved in response to that inquiry.  When I finished laughing, "I don't know... mm...practice?"

With the older students, there is a bit more back and forth, and we are able to talk about interesting things like "rabbit, rabbit, rabbit" on the first of the month, and Chinese good luck symbols.  In one class, this brought us around to lucky animals, like dragons, pandas, fish, and cats.  And from here, we also discussed pets.  What animals are kept as pets?  A great question friends, and one I am glad you asked, because it is also one that I asked.  My students responded with the following list; dogs, cats, chickens, ducks, sheep, pigs, and oxen.  Wow.  Maybe they misunderstood the question.  Many of them come from rural regions of JiangXi province, and I thought perhaps they had not fully grasped my question.

 "Some of these animal are kept for food, right?"

"Yes." 

"Which ones do you keep as pets, and which ones do you keep to eat?"

"All of them."

"Uhm...okay...but isn't an ox useful to have around?"

"Yes, but when it is old and no longer useful, we eat it."

"So, you eat all of these animals?"

"Yes, all of them

                                  -except cats"

"Except cats?  Why not cats, is it bad luck to eat them?"

And then came the priceless response which confirmed a suspicion I have long held

"Maybe it is because they are not delicious."

Yes, a fine reason to not consume them when they are no longer useful; cats are not delicious.  This has been confirmed by further inquiry and surprisingly with the exact same verbiage; "cats are not delicious."  I can't wait to put that bumper sticker on the plastic bins that trundle along in my super-terrific built by Kevin bicycle trailer.  But that moment will have to wait, because my "Forever" bicycle has no such appendage.

Until then, I am enjoying myself and my classes immensely, and hope that you are all doing the same.  Also, I hope you are doing something to make yourself useful, or if you are not, I hope it is widely known that you are not toothsome. 

 Be well. -Tyler

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