Tuesday 25 December 2012

Christmas in Weifang

Today and yesterday were definitely highlights of my entire China experience.  This week is the first week of exams for our students, so that means it is also the first week we are officially off the hook for teaching college classes, which therefore means we only need to work on the weekends now until our six weeks off!  So basically, it's all smooth sailing from here, after a very intense last few weeks in December.  We had to deal with a lot of last minute demands from our bosses, most notably of which was a Christmas "promotional activity" we had to prepare for at a middle school in Weifang (which was HUGE GINORMOUS it looked like a university on arrival).  After creating a swanky PowerPoint presentation that tells the kids what Christmas is all about (naughty and nice list, Santa and Mrs Claus living in the North Pole, Santa's Workshop, Rudolph, lump of coal, milk and cookies, blah blah blah) we were driven out into what looked like the middle of nowhere as it was painfully obvious from the new sites and smells: the nuclear powerplants that must supply the city with all the energy it uses were right nearby.  This is China for you.  Anyway, we gave our quick presentations and went door to door to each room, quizzing them on the things we talked about in exchange for prizes to the ones who answered correctly.  The kids loved it and I actually found the experience a reaffirmation of my ability to not only handle a room of 30 or 40 kids but also grab and keep their attention with my planned out presentation.  Being able to see an entire middle school's worth of grade 7 students is not something you get to do every day in Canada, that's for sure.  The kids were really sweet and they really got into the activity.
The downside of the whole excursion was that our bosses actually got lost on the cold, dark roads coming back from the school.  Pity, being it was Christmas eve and all and I had to get home really quick to leave my cookies and milk out for Santa.  To be honest, I wasn't really that bothered by being stuck in the car for about an hour in the traffic.  I mean, come on, it's Christmas eve in China, do you really think people aren't going out places to celebrate with friends or family?  My coworkers, however, were super irritated and I could understand why.  My boss can be a painfully slow driver.  I finally understood the whole picture, though, after we got out of the car.  Turns out there was a Christmas party happening that night.at the vice principal of the Canadian offshore high school.  I had only met him once before but he was a really nice guy and I decided to go out and have some fun for the holidays.  Inevitably, we all had an amazing time.  He ended up marrying a Chinese woman and had 2 kids together in China.  Their apartment was beautiful and their kids were the cutest little things ever.  After playing with the kids for the first half of the night, we sent them to bed and drank and got very merry (so to speak!)  We played and shared some music, made mulled wine, something I don't think I've ever had before but was totally delish, and talked about all things China and teaching related.  Mmmmm mulled wine!
We were going to order KFC when we got hungry but they stopped delivering at ten so instead some of us ended up going to our favourite bar after a while and we stayed up real late and then got McDonald's at like 4 in the morning.  A very western Christmas eve if you ask me!
Today I woke up feeling surprisingly zippy after a late night filled with alcohol and screeching Chinese kids.  Which was important, for I FINALLY administered my English exam to my 3 English listening classes today in the afternoon.  It was really quite a show getting 150 students to sit according to their student numbers, bring their bags to the front of the room, keeping them quiet, and trying to prevent cheating as much as possible (an impossible task, they all cheated but a Chinese woman of very high ranking in the uni caught two students cheating and ripped their papers up in anger!  I'm still not sure what to do with them since it is now up to me but I'm pretty sure I'll give them a zero).  It was really crazy, standing at the front of this huge auditorium, having all of these college students hanging on to my every word and syllable as I explained how the exam would work and proceeded to read the English passages I selected for them to answer questions about.  It's funny to be the big teacher here even though I'm still really a student back home.  It really allows me to understand what it's like for my university professors.
After the exam ended, the students immediately turned to look at each other's papers and copy answers.  Wrenching their papers away was just insane.  I could have reacted by simply tearing up more papers but I did not.  I have marked 1/4 of the exams tonight at Starbucks (because my power went out in my apartment this afternoon!) and most of them passed (so far).  At the college I work at, a 60% is the pass/fail mark, not 50 like it is in the west.  Most students got a mark of 62 or 64 so far so it's very tight but I think it's perfectly fair.  The highest mark I saw so far was 84% and the lowest was perhaps 50 something percent.  I'm feeling really happy knowing that I have a really good mark distribution like this, with most people doing ok and very few outliers.  It means my test was in fact fair and appropriate for their level and I don't think the cheating got too out of hand since I don't see any extremely good marks yet.
Thankfully, the power was back on when I came back from Starbucks so I'm just sitting here writing away before bed.  I wanted to attach some photos to this but their not coming through fast enough so I'll post them later on when they're finished.
Alrighty

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