November sped past like a high speed train to Guangzhou. I had been looking forward to having more time in November since my Friday morning classes were ending; however, the opposite happened. Towards the end of the month, there are entire days I don’t even remember. I was so stressed, I made copies of the wrong handout, forgot to respond to some messages, and forgot about the homework I had assigned.
Why oh why was November so frickin’ busy?
It wasn’t just one thing, and that’s what makes staying balanced difficult for me. My students had three big assessments that I got behind in correcting. A good friend of mine left China, so a slew of goodbye parties were held. A grad school assignment was due this month. Just when all this was happening, I took on teaching a new class.
Teaching Vocabulary I Don’t Know
At first, I was not interested in teaching this new class. In fact, I was already so busy I barely paid any attention to my boss’s message asking me if I would take it on. But teaching English for Specific Purposes to highly motivated professionals for 300% more than my usual hourly wage was too good to pass up.
The new class is not at my Polytechnic, but instead it’s at the local hospital. A handful of foreign orthopedic doctors are coming to the hospital to visit at the end of December. The orthopedic team of doctors, nurses, surgical assistants, and anesthesiologists need to learn medical terminology to assist the visiting experts in providing care to the local patients.
Yes. I was hired to teach orthopedic vocabulary.
Yes, I had to look up what orthopedic meant.
Naturally, I was a quite worried about being able to teach them a massive amount of medical vocabulary that I didn’t know in just six weeks (one 2-hour class a week). Then I realized that it was an impossible task, so I had to approach it another way.
“Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime.”
Lao Tzu
While I’ve learned some orthopedic vocabulary and I expect to learn more in December, I’ve been focusing more on teaching the students how to prioritize vocabulary, learn new English words, improve pronunciation, and increase confidence and communicative abilities. My grad school studies have helped immensely since I’m studying pronunciation in detail this block. I’m so thankful for this opportunity which, even though it is stressful and outside my comfort zone, it has already made me a better teacher and inspired me to try some new things in all my classrooms.
Fringe Festival Comes to Shenzhen
One of the things I love about living abroad are the strange events that I get to experience. Martin and I got to attend Edinburgh’s infamous Fringe Festival in the summer of 2018. It’s filled with a wide array of performances from musicians to acrobats to magicians to actors and everything in between.
Martin noticed that Shenzhen was having a Fringe Festival this year, and suddenly we found ourselves wandering around Houhai’s Coastal City shopping district looking for a parade. A foreign guy who appeared to be in charge of the festival saw us looking lost and helped us find the parade.
It was a strange parade. It started simultaneously from two opposite ends of the 4-block long plaza and ended with both ends converging into the middle. Then each act in the parade had a small moment on a stage to show off their talents. The stage was set up facing a screen…so the audience was on the side and behind the performers. It seemed like it was catering to video recording and not live interaction. Nevertheless, the parade was amazing with a wide assortment of acts.
The drummers stood at the convergence point and each of the acts were able to dance to their ear shattering beat. I loved the random assortment of acts. I especially liked the pizza tossing hip hop dancers with the dancing durian behind it. (Yes, durian pizza is really a thing here.)
Another favorite act – and by far the most spectacular act – were these dinosaur birds. They were huge and fast! With the tails whipping around behind them, I’m still flummoxed how the people were able to keep their balance on those stilts!
Happy Thanksgiving
Despite being so busy I barely had time to eat let alone cook, I some how managed to pull together a Thanksgiving feast that I shared with Martin and our good friend Jacky. Pumpkin puree had to be ordered from an online store a week before. Along with mini pumpkin pies, we also had mashed potatoes and gravy, poached chicken breast (turkey was too difficult and expensive to get), tossed salad, fresh fruit and hawthorn sauce that tasted just like cranberry sauce!
I am so thankful for the friends I have in China and around the world, for a career that makes me feel fulfilled and inspired, for my health and the health of my family, and for yoga and meditation that keep me sane during extraordinarily busy months.
Day Trip to Guangzhou
I needed a new passport. Not because it was expiring, but because I ran out of pages (thanks China). The nearest consulate is in Guangzhou, so on a newly-teaching-free Friday I hopped onto the high speed train and spent the day in this historic mega city.
Living in a foreign country means most of the time I have no idea what’s going on.
Last school year, everyday I rode my bike to school and locked it to a bench on the north side of the building. Every. Single. Day. This year, I still ride my bike to school, but I found a new route so I’ve been parking my bike on the south side of the building instead of the north side. One day I decided to park my bike on the north side again. When I finished classes that day I found my bike had campus security tape on it and a new U lock preventing me from taking my bike home.
I sent some messages and eventually campus security came and explained I couldn’t park my bike here. No signs had been posted about this. I’m not sure how I was supposed to know that this spot that I had been using for the past year was suddenly not OK to use anymore.
I could have asked some questions, but I wouldn’t have been able to understand his answers.
The spot I was then told to park my bike also didn’t have any signs indicating it was bike parking, nor was there anything to lock my bike to, nor were there any other bikes parking there. I’ve since stuck to parking on the south side of the building (not the place they told me to park) and so far so good. But really, I have no idea what is going on. This is what it’s like to live in a foreign country.
November by the numbers
I forgot I used to write some numbers about the months in my earlier reflecting posts…Let’s start it again!
- 70 hours of English classes taught
- 35 English lessons planned and prepped
- 358,000 steps taken (about 12,000 steps a day on average)
Looking forward to December, I expect a similarly busy month since my classes at the Polytechnic end the third week and the hospital class ends the fourth week. I also need to get started writing my final papers for this block’s grad school classes.
Martin and I have made our travel plans for the Chinese New Year in January: two island adventures! I’ll share more about these plans later as one is especially serendipitous.