In order to introduce a sentimental, nostalgic  poem, I asked my literature class the question, “What do you remember of childhood?”  Of the 17 students, only one could give a happy memory of childhood.  These students are only about 16 years old.  They said they couldn’t remember being young.  I said “How about 5 years old?”   This is when they started school.  Two boys said they hadn’t wanted to go to school, and one cried about going to school,  This was his memory of young childhood. The other said that his English grade was low and that this was bad for him, at age 5!   One girl said something about dancing when she was very young, and one boy said, “Playing in the dirt with my friends.”  So much for getting into the mood of the poem.

I have so many memories I can barely keep track of them.  Perhaps my students aren’t able to comprehend the question in English, or to answer it in English.  But for the most articulate in the class to give only these stories of sorrow made me sad.

One of my very best memories came to mind several days ago, as we were riding the bus, and Dear Husband said, “I’m trying to fix the route in my mind with landmarks.”  “Just like my brother, ” I said.  On a day near Christmas, maybe the year 1953 or ’54, we lived in Houston, Texas. We attended a Lutheran school and we rode the city bus to go to school.  The route involved a transfer—a little pink piece of paper that said we could get on the next bus without paying again.  What my brother and I liked to do while waiting for that transfer bus was to go inside Foley’s department store and ride the escalator up to about the fourth floor to the toy department and Santa Claus. We stood and watched as little kids went and sat on Santa’s lap.  We looked and looked at the amazing toys and talked about what we’d like to have for Christmas.  Then we went back down and got on our bus and went home.  On one such day, we missed our bus, but waited for the next one.  When we got on and gave our little pink slips, the driver said, “Sorry, these are expired.  You’re too late.”  We didn’t have any extra coins for the fare, and he insisted we get off his bus.

My brother said, “We’ll have to walk home,” and off we went.  It took us hours, I’m sure.  I well remember sitting down on some sidewalk steps to rest.  My brother stood over me, waiting until I could go on.  It never occurred to me to be scared, or to cry, because my brother was so confident.  He knew the way home, all six miles,  because he had memorized the bus route as we rode every day.   We were in first and second grade, he about seven and I, about six years old.

Meanwhile our parents were frantic with worry, calling the school, other families, and the police.  When we arrived home, well after dark, everyone was so grateful to see us.  When my brother told the story, our parents called the bus authorities.  What did daddy say? you ask.  I don’t know.  I was so tired and happy to be home.  My brother was my hero that day, and to this day I look up to him.  Thanks, bro.

In the past week, I have been asked three times, “Why did you come to China?”  I have answered two students with the short answer, “I love people, I love teaching, and I love English.”  I have added another sentence for one student, “China wants English, I have English.”

Last weekend we had a visitor from a place we taught before.  She is not associated with the school there, but we met her through a mutual friend.  We have been in touch for a few years, so she came to visit.  She asked this question also.  I said that we expect to live another twenty years at least, possibly thirty, and it is too soon to sit down.  I spoke of being useful.  I spoke of loving people and loving teaching.  Dear husband spoke of loving the people of China.   Our friend said “We are not so lovely a people.”  Then she said her husband wondered, “Is it possible they are spies?”   We laughed out loud.  Then I said, “If we were, would we tell you?” More laughter.  We asked how could we possibly learn anything not already known through electronic surveillance, being as we are, illiterate and ignorant of Mandarin language.

A cab driver asked the same question, stating that in China, older people expect to enjoy life and to take care of grandchildren.  He also wanted to know our salaries, and was surprised.  He said it isn’t enough, we should have much more.  Then he went on to tell us, through our friend how much he makes per month, which is as much as both of us make.  He owns his own cab.  We spoke of the fact that our apartment is provided with utilities.  I said that he risks his life every day, driving a cab in China.  In fact, he did not run his meter for the trip from the train station to our apartment, but asked for  a set amount for the trip.  We agreed, even as we knew it was more than required, because we just wanted to get home with our guest who was travel weary.  The following day, another taxi took us to the train station and back again, and the round trip fare was less than the one way the previous day.  It does make me wonder anew, “Why did I come to China?”

I have eight classes of Junior 2 students, totaling about 200 students, for Oral English.  You may ask why I don’t know the exact number.  I haven’t wanted to count, and the number seems to fluctuate week by week.  Each of the eight classes has 50 students, but they divide for Oral English class.  So half leave the room, but then sometimes I have 31 instead of 25, so I truly don’t know.   We have a text book with CD’s, but we don’t have equipment to play the CD in the classroom.  I think it is an excellent text, but neither age appropriate, nor geared for 40 minutes once a week.  So, I use the topics as a guide and do my best to get the kids to talk in English for a few minutes per week.  These students are about 14 years old and in USA would be in 7th or 8th grade.    In most of the classes, the students are reluctant to speak at all, and do not seem to understand me when I speak.   I’ve used a lot of songs, such as B-I-N-G-O, and Little Cabin in the Wood, which they seem to enjoy.   Purpose: loosen up, laugh, and make some sounds in English.

In the first week I asked the classes, “What is your goal for this class?”  Then as I looked at the blank faces, I had to ask “Do you know what a goal is?”  and then I had to tell them.  However, in one class, a boy answered, “There are two meanings for this word, goal.  The first we can say is in a game such as soccer, we score a point by kicking the ball into the net.  This is called a goal.  The other meaning is something we want to do.”   I was astonished.   I learned that the boy spent six months in USA, attending school.   I have assigned him the task of giving “report” every week.  He tells wonderful stories and is poised and excellent in his delivery.  After a few weeks, other students asked, “Could I give a report?”  And now, I have about four students regularly “giving report” in that class.  Yesterday, a girl came and asked if she could give hers next week.  I have asked the first boy to pretend to be a tv interviewer and to interview other students, giving them questions he knows they can answer to build confidence.   This is my best, most enjoyable oral class.

I also have Senior 1 Class 13 for both writing in English, and literature.  For the literature class, I was given McGuffey’s Eclectic Reader, book 4.  This book was originally published in about 1836, but some selections refer to the Civil War, so I’m sure it was updated.  The purpose of the selections seems to be to form the American Character.  Although I am “doing the best I can with what I have” as mother always counseled, it is difficult.  For writing, I find that these students working in their second language, aren’t aware of the basics of writing in English.  So we are working very slowly, step by step, to construct sentences and working toward paragraphs and finally an essay.   One of the delights of this class is that two foreign students, one from Italy and the other from Sweden, attend as auditors, solely because they enjoy it.

And my last class is Senior 2 Class 13 for writing in English.  These students hope to go abroad for college and are preparing to take exams for this purpose.  They are far from fluent, and far from being able to write a paragraph in English, much less a whole essay.

I use the same materials and plan for both writing classes, since they are at roughly the same level.  The difference is that in Senior 1, I have used some of what we have read in literature to form the topic for writing.   This week, I have prepared a puzzle for the writing classes.  I printed on cardstock a paragraph I wrote for my class in 2011, titled “I Love English.”  I then cut it up into small pieces containing a word, a phrase, or a clause, and two sentences.  Each group of three or four students has a bag of words, a roll of tape, and a big piece of paper.  The directions say to find the TOPIC SENTENCE, the restatement sentence, the title, and then put the paragraph together.  Everyone seems to be enjoying the task.  The Swedish girl said almost right away, “So this could have many possible outcomes?” and I agreed, except that there is only one topic sentence.  The order in which the other sentences fall may vary.  The Italian girl in another group selected all the pieces that said, “I love” and arranged them in lines on the paper.  It is fun to see how the groups proceed to set up the puzzle.  Everyone has found the title, easy since it is in bigger type.  Most have found the topic sentence and put it first.   Some groups are putting together small segments before they arrange the sentences.   For example one sentence says, “It is strong and powerful, the language of kings and conquerors.” and the dividing point is after the comma.    I heard a boy explain to another boy, that kings and conquerors are powerful, so these two parts must go together.

My dear husband has a similar schedule, except he has those same senior students for Oral English.  We try to have some connection between what he is doing and what I am doing.  I hope this gives you some feel for what we are doing here day by day.

Although we have become, over time, somewhat cynical about our election process, we still value our privilege of voting.  Accordingly, we applied before we left home, for absentee ballots for this important mid term election.  Because we have often had trouble with the internet in China, we selected the option “paper ballot mailed to address given” instead of “internet ballot.”   In late September,  we received some ballots in the mail and were quite pleased.  However, when we opened them, we saw that they were for a school issue, and that the date was long past.  I contacted by e-mail the person in charge of absentee ballots, and she said that the paper ballots for the congressional election had been mailed September 15, but that we could change our preference to internet ballots if we wanted to.  I suggested we wait just a bit to see if the paper ones arrived, and I told her that beginning October 1, we were having a week of holiday in which no mail would be delivered.  October 8, everyone came back to school, and no mail for us.   The election lady was right on top of things and emailed me before I emailed her.  She sent the e-mail version of the ballots, but we could not vote by email, we had to print them out and send them in.  Good thing we brought our printer.

On Saturday morning, we printed out each ballot, keeping mine separate from Dear Husband’s, as directed.  The email included nine pages of instructions and two pages of the ballot itself.  In those nine pages were two that had to accompany the ballot.  We spent some time sorting through all this and setting the printer correctly for the ballots.  We had brought some envelopes from home so we put each ballot in an envelope and pasted the appropriate page onto the envelope.

Election lady had suggested we use Fed Ex to deliver the ballots.   I went online to find out if Fed Ex is in our city, and where?   After some frustration with the Chinese sites, I found the English site and saw the main cities listed, and ours was not among them.  However, I kept looking and found Fed EX in our city!   DH went over to school and asked our official to write out in Chinese what we had in English for an address.

We found a cab and showed the driver the address, and he agreed to go, so off we went into the gray haze of pollution, wearing our masks, clutching our envelope with the ballots.  We were in the cab a long time, but our official had said it would take at least half an hour, so we weren’t worried.  Looking out the window at all the traffic around us, I suddenly realized that the white truck ahead of us in the next lane had English letters on it, and they said, “FED EX.”  I mentioned this and Husband in the front seat pointed it out to the driver.  The driver grasped the idea and quickly pulled behind that truck and followed it to the FED EX building which is in an industrial park.  We were all delighted and the driver got out and talked with the Fed Ex driver to tell the tale while we went inside to mail the package.  It occurred to us that the FedEx truck might have been on a delivery and not going to the home base, but that was not the case.  In all our visits to China, we have never seen a Fed Ex truck on the road.

The young man in Fed Ex said he spoke “a little” English, which to our ears meant “enough.”  Still within the context, we had something to send and he was the sender so it wasn’t too difficult. We said, “FAST.”   I filled out the forms, got everything together into the mailer and paid the money, 283 rmb, which is $46.16.   The cab driver had enjoyed a break with the guys on the lot waiting for us to finish the business, realizing that we would need to go back, and that he would not likely find another fare from that place.  He started the meter again, and took us home.  Our total of the two fares was about $13.00.   Our total time to do all this was about four hours.  Today, Wednesday,  I received an e-mail from Election Lady that she had received the ballots, and that the package was sealed when she received it.  The paper ballots still have not arrived.

How about you, dear American reader?  Will you get in your car and go to the nearby election place to cast your ballot?

October 1 is National Day in China. It is the anniversary of the founding of The People’s Republic of China in 1949. The red and gold flag is everywhere and school is out, but the stores are open and busier than ever. We were sent as representatives of our school to a celebratory event on Monday
afternoon.

About 200 people were there, and we were two of five English teachers. I saw military people in full regalia, and I saw one man wearing what I would identify as a clerical collar, and another wearing a cap popular among Muslims, and still another wearing another kind of cap which seemed vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place it. Most of the men, though, were wearing western style business suits, and the women wore business clothes on the dressy side. The governor gave a longish speech in which he said, according to the interpreter seated next to me, that we can all work together for a bright future, and he said something about the revolution. Then there was a show including singers, acrobats, and people playing traditional instruments, all very loud and festive.
We were in a palatial building, with high (at least 30 feet) ceilings and ornate chandeliers which appeared to be fiber optic lights, although designed to look like classic crystal. I studied them as the governor was speaking, since I could not understand a word he said. I noticed as I looked around the room, that more than one person was looking at a phone, and texting, even though they could understand what was being said. I noted also that all the doors were closed, and standing by the doors, encircling the room, were various guards including army people. The whole event was filmed and photographed with intense lighting such as needed for television. Although we had been told it would include dinner, in fact there were only some snacks and a cup of tea. I remembered a student I had in Fuling who in class always wore an expression of intense interest and attention, even though his mind was far away. I saw the usefulness of such an expression, especially while being filmed, and I hope I carried it off.