We made it back from Hong Kong safely last week. (Someday we will give an update on our winter break…) And now we are in Week Two of the semester already! Yikes!

So far, neither one of us has been asked to teach any extra classes this semester, so we are both down to only 12 teaching hours. After last semester, of teaching 16 and 18 hours, it feels like a very light schedule.

BUT…

Matt is kicking it into overdrive to study Mandarin this semester, so he’s formally spending at least 6 hours a week studying, and many more “informal” hours reading textbooks, completing “homework” and chatting with people in Mandarin.

And even though I’m teaching two fewer classes this semester, I ended up with the same number of students. Go figure.

That happened because the two graduate-level oral English classes they gave me this semester are comprised of about 60 students each. (Our typical class is only about 23 students.)

Unfortunately, I didn’t know these two oral English classes would be so huge when I planned the assignments, etc. for the semester. I taught two graduate oral English classes last semester, so I just picked the best of the assignments I had given those classes and figured I could recycle a lot for this semester. But the classes last semester only had 20 students. 20 < 60 = EVERYTHING TAKES 3x LONGER. Oh no.

Okay, so that math probably made no sense, but whatevs, I’m an English teacher for a reason.

Anyway, the point is, those graduate classes are kicking my tail right now. Not only do I have to recalculate how and when I’m going to give/grade assignments this semester, these classes are also a huge drain on my energy.

Which brings me (finally) to my title.

When we were students at Wheaton, we had to take personality-type profile tests at least once a year for various clubs and activities.

Over the years, some things changed in my personality profile, but what always, always stayed the same was “I” (introvert). Basically, this means that I gain energy from being alone, and I expel a lot of energy when I’m with people. (As opposed to extroverts, who, you guessed it, are the opposite – gaining energy from being with people, but losing energy when they are alone.)

Honestly, my introverted nature is what always kept me from wanting to be a teacher. I didn’t think I could handle the stress of standing in front of people interacting with them for hours every day.

But I’ve been able to cope with it a lot better than I expected…until now.

I’ve gotten used to standing in front of 20-25 people, making jokes, keeping their attention…performing, if you will. I kind of turn into a different person when I’m in the front of my classroom.

But with these huge oral English classes, I have to talk into a microphone. And not just any microphone. A non-hand-held microphone that is attached to a very short cord on the podium/humongous desk that contains a computer and other electronic things that connect to the projector in the room. (I’ll try and take a photo this week so you can visualize it.)

Basically, I’m stuck in one spot, one position the whole class time. And these two class periods (with 60 students each)…they’re back to back. From 2 to 6 p.m. every Thursday. So I get to spend about 4 hours in a row talking into a microphone.

It pretty much sucks. The energy out of me, that is.

To make matters more complicated, I decided to try out this amazing website called Prezi to make my powerpoint presentation for the first week. Prezi’s awesome, but unfortunately, it’s not as simple to change things in it as it would be to delete a few slides in Powerpoint on the spot. I really had no idea this class would have so many students until I showed up to class. (The English department sent me incomplete class lists before the semester started.) So a few of the grades I told them I would give them (attendance, participation) that would be awesome in a class of 20 are a bit more challenging in a class of 60. Unfortunately, I already had those grades built into my presentation, and there was no way to skip over them or change the criteria. Thus, I will be attempting to figure out how to take attendance of 60 people every week, and how to make sure everyone even has time to participate once during the semester. I have some ideas, but this whole thing is requiring a lot more thought than I expected.

And since these students are graduate students, they’re much more eager to practice English (as opposed to our undergraduate students, who are usually too shy or unmotivated).

In the 2:00 class last Thursday, when I opened it up for questions, one girl asked if I was going to plan any field trips this semester. Um, no, not for 60 students, thank you. I told her if she wants to plan outings for the class, I’m more than happy to join them, but I will not be organizing anything myself.

When I walked around the classroom taking their pictures (so that perhaps one day I can learn their names…we’ll see how that goes), two girls in the front row said, “Teacher, we like you very much! Can we come visit you at your apartment?” How could I say no to that?

A girl in the 4:00 class came up to me after class. “You know, we had a foreign teacher last semester, and he never took attendance. He didn’t care if we participated or slept during class…” (I had told them, like I tell all of my classes, that if they sleep in class, I will call on them and embarrass them. Little did I know, I wouldn’t be able to see the back half of the classroom well enough to know if they were sleeping. Oh well, hopefully they don’t realize that.)

Anyway, so I thought this girl was going to start complaining about how I was so strict, and I should relax and let them have more freedom like their last foreign teacher.

But no, she went on to say, “I’m so glad we have a teacher like you now, who wants us to come to class and participate! I think that’s so great! Maybe during the next class we can move all of the desks into a U-shape, so that the people in the back don’t have to be so far away from you. I got here a little late today, so there were no empty seats, except in the back, and I wish I could see you better while you’re talking.”

It’s super encouraging (one one level) to hear these things. I’m really glad that I can give them exposure to a native English speaker and help them have a fun, engaging class. But it’s also (on my introverted level) incredibly draining.

By the time the 4:00 class was over, I was literally reeling. My hands were shaking, and my mind was going a million miles a minute. Matt thought I had gone a bit crazy, which is partially true.

So needless to say, Thursday nights will now be veg nights for me. I will need to detoxify from so much time with so many people. Maybe one day I will get used to speaking to groups of 60 people in a microphone, just like I’ve gotten used to speaking naturally to 25 people. But the true miracle will be if  this experience can make my “I” change to an “E” in those personality tests.

After watching, what are your thoughts?

Clearly, I was convinced (if you haven’t noticed the black protest banner at the top of our site

Living in a place where internet censorship is a daily reality makes me definitely NOT want anything that remotely resembles that in my own country. Enterprise is DEFINITELY hindered by the official censorship here, and it would be a shame for the US to follow suit.

I can’t put a lot of details publicly (so that the methods we use aren’t shut down), but basically 99% of our communication with all of you back home (including these blog posts) wouldn’t be able to happen if we were living in China using internet like the normal population here. WordPress is blocked, FB is blocked, Youtube is blocked, sometimes even Wikipedia and Google are completely blocked.

It really scares me that the US government wants to be handed over permission to censor internet as they see fit. Not only enterprise, but daily relationships have become so intertwined with these websites. If Congress showed up at our dinner table and said we weren’t allowed to talk about x, y, and z, I think we’d all be screaming “1984″ right?

Whether you agree or disagree with the ethics of FB having become a replacement/supplement to conversation over the dinner table, the fact is it probably has taken that role in your life.

I find FB invaluable for maintaining daily contact with friends and family with whom I can’t enjoy that daily connection in real life right now, so using FB and WordPress definitely takes an intimate role in my life.

Sorry, Congress, but I don’t want you messing with that.

If you also find this disturbing enough to do something about, visit americancensorship.org.

West Point’s not just a military academy…it’s a food section. Full of “Western” snacks, which mostly hail from Korea and Japan.

Got your instant noodles on the left, and “business” on the right.

What’s in the “business” section?

A “Hot and Sour Family” soup or “Refined Soup Chop Flavor”.

“Puffing food” is exactly what it sounds like: foods that make you puff up.

Last but not least, come to China if you need to buy “stereotypes”. They have a whooooole aisle of “stereotypes”. Just gettin’ some milk, bread, and stereotypes.

Every now and then those days come along, perfectly orchestrated to have everything that can go wrong and irritate/frustrate/sadden you happen one after another.

When I first started planning my lesson content before we arrived, I had the mindset that I would teach things that only a foreigner could teach. So for example, in writing classes Chinese English teachers can easily teach students about grammar and paragraph structures. But they probably don’t know as much about the types of assignments that are typical in an American university setting, so I wanted to teach things like writing a resume, writing a research paper, and writing an analytical book report.

I figured if any of my students wanted to study abroad for their master’s degree, it would be useful for them to have at least an introduction to the types of writing an American undergrad student would know about.

I had all these great plans, but within two weeks, I realized that teaching those kinds of advanced assignments was going to be a challenge. The students’ grammar level is high, but definitely still needs work. I hate teaching them things that they could learn from a Chinese teacher (it makes me feel like my “native” English quality is not being put to use at all), but it’s really kind of a joke to work on advanced things when some of them don’t even know how to correct a run-on sentence or use consistent tense in their writing.

So as frustrating as it is, I decided to cancel most of the assignments I had planned, at least for my freshmen students, and go back to the basics. The whole semester, we’re spending about 70% of the time focusing on basic grammar rules. To make that slightly less boring, I put the classes into groups of 3 to 4 students. The groups are each assigned two units of grammar from a grammar book I borrowed from a former teacher, and the group has to spend 20 – 45 minutes presenting the units to the rest of the class on an assigned date. They have to teach/present the units and write and perform a drama that incorporates the grammar in their units.

Last week was the first week they presented, and I was terrified that it would go horribly – that the group wouldn’t do a good job presenting, the rest of the class would be bored and confused, etc. But to my pleasant surprise, both of the groups did an amazing job. (I even gave one of the groups a perfect score because they really earned it. I think they taught better than I do, haha)

So I feel like things are starting to go well with my two freshmen classes. And my two graduate level speaking classes are going well. The students are more mature and have a higher English level that my undergraduate classes, and it is SO much easier preparing, teaching, and grading speaking assignments! But really, the age and the improved level of English makes the biggest difference. I think that if I had to teach writing to the graduate students, I would enjoy it a lot more, and I could easily focus on teaching them the more advanced things I’m trying to muddle my way through with the undergraduate students.

So that leaves four sophomore writing classes that I’m trying to figure out. I had two of them today, and things went pretty terribly. I started working on the entire semester’s schedule earlier on with my sophomores, and so I already gave them a printed copy of the semester’s schedule of assignments shortly before I realized how difficult it would be to do those complicated assignments with them. I was a little behind on planning for my freshman classes, but that turned out to be great because now they still don’t have a semester-long schedule, and it’s so easy for me to change and cancel assignments from week to week without any hesitation because the students don’t know what to expect anyway! Unfortunately, the sophomores already have expectations, and I feel kind of stupid canceling and moving things around too much. Plus, how do you explain to the class that you’re canceling an assignment because it’s too complicated for them without making them feel stupid? I’m sure some of them would welcome less work, but the students who are overachievers (which comprises more than half of each class, I’d say) would think either that they’re so terrible they can’t handle the assignments or that I’m a bad teacher who doesn’t know what she’s doing and can’t manage the time of the class effectively. (Partially true, but I’m trying hard not to let them in on that!) It’s definitely a tricky dynamic, attempting to maintain this image of a competent, in-control teacher who deserves their respect when I feel like I’m hanging on by the seat of my pants trying to figure out how to/if I can actually teach them something useful.

So right now we’re finishing up working on an assignment about writing a cover letter and resume. It went okay, but I wish I would have spent more time on it. About half of the students understood and did decently well on their first drafts. But there are a few that are definitely struggling to figure it out. And also a few that still don’t get the concept of telling about their true experiences in a positive light instead of inventing things that look good but are complete lies.

One girl today was trying to argue with me that it doesn’t matter if the information is truthful or not because this is just an assignment, so what’s the big deal if the whole thing is an invention? They don’t need to practice content, just formatting. This girl is really antagonistic about all of the assignments I give. She tells me every time I give them an assignment that she wants to do it her own way and not be forced to do it any certain way. I have no idea what she thinks she’s going to do some day when she does get a job and her boss tells her to do something in a certain way. In her mind, when I give her a low mark because she does things her own way, I am punishing her. Frustrating and very stressful to my conflict-averse soul. But I guess teachers aren’t always meant to be liked, at least when they have to start giving out grades

So after today, I cried a bit and felt like I was letting down these classes and not teaching them anything valuable. I hope things like this will get better next semester as I figure out more what works with this particular demographic of students. It’s a lot more difficult than I realized it would be to teach students who have an intermediate level of English.

So today, I’ll post a random thought on why I’m not on Google+ (yet).

If you haven’t heard, there’s been some buzz on the internet (mainly Facebook, ironically enough) about a new feature Google is offering called “Google+”

Like many Google initiatives, this one is starting out by invitation only. I suppose this is intended to make techies feel elite and cool when they get in. Or maybe it’s intended to limit the traffic while Google works any bugs in the new feature. At any rate, the coolness factor is part of it, whether intentional by Google or not.

I received one of these coveted Google+ invites five days ago. I opened the email, read the advertising about why Google+ is going to be so cool, and promptly decided NOT to join.

All my techie friends are baffled and angry.

Okay, so here’s my reasoning (flawed though it may be).

Point One: I never join a new techie fad until I’m sure that it’s caught on and it will be worth my time to join. I don’t have the time or patience to be hip on everything that’s currently internet-news-worthy. The nature of the web is that something can be outrageously popular one day and completely forgotten about the next. That’s exciting and fun for a lot of people. For me, it’s tiring and time-consuming. So I wait for the best of the best to push through and change non-internet culture before I really get on board.

Point Two: Google+ is a direct confrontation to Facebook. Facebook does social media amazingly well. In my opinion (and stats seem to support this), Facebook pretty much has the monopoly on social media in most of the world. And now Facebook has successfully taken online marketing/monetizing social media to an unprecedented level, and I think they’re doing a good job and being decently ethical in the process.

Google does an incredible job of searching. I will never not use Google as my search engine (unless China makes me) because it is simply better than the competitors. I would say Google (and its email system, based on amazing abilities of searching) has the monopoly in its sector of the internet.

So it kind of irritates me that Google is trying to take over the entire online world. I know businesses are supposed to expand, expand, expand. But I don’t really like the idea of all of my most important online activities getting sucked into one giant place. Even if that place is really good at what it does. I feel better knowing there is some healthy competition between two really good, potentially really scary companies that have access to basically all of my personal information.

That being said, if everyone in the world (and more importantly everyone I know) drops Facebook and replaces it with Google+, I will most likely follow suit. After all, the point of social media is connecting with people. And if there’s no one left for me to connect with on Facebook, I’ll have to join Google+.

According to ZDNet, Google+ is predicted to surpass 10 million users by the end of today. Facebook currently has 750 million active users. So we’ll see how the numbers play out in the coming months. Of course, this may all become irrelevant if we don’t get to access Facebook and Google much in China I suppose that’s another reason for me to hold out on Google+!

In
1988
President Reagan
designated the
First Thursday in May of each year as
the National Day of Prayer.

———————————————————————

In June
2007
(then)
Presidential
Candidate Barack Obama
declared that the USA
“Was no longer  a
Christian nation.”
———————————————————————
This year
President Obama
canceled the
21st annual National Day
of Prayer ceremony
at the White
House under the ruse
Of “not wanting to offend anyone”

———————————————————————

BUT… on September 25, 2009
from 4 AM until 7 PM,
a National Day of Prayer
FOR THE MUSLIM RELIGION
was Held on Capitol Hill,
Beside the White House.
There were over 50,000 Muslims
in  D.C. that day.

HE PRAYS WITH THE MUSLIMS!

I guess it Doesn’t matter
if  ”Christians”
Are  offended  by  this  event -
We  obviously
Don’t  count  as
“anyone”  Anymore.

The direction  this country is headed
should strike fear in the heart of every Christian,
especially knowing that the
Muslim religion believes that if Christians cannot be
converted, they should be annihilated.

———————————————————————
Got this email from a relative today. Related link I found after about 3 seconds of Google searching upon receiving the email: http://urbanlegends.about.com/od/barackobama/ss/obama_praying_at_mosque.htm

Thoughts?

Anyway, as I was saying, if we’re going to become serious bloggers, we figured we needed a legit camera to post video and pictures for our adoring fans. After much deliberation and viewing youtube video examples of camera work, we went with the Sanyo Xacti VPC-FH1A.

We’re still figuring out how to use it well, but in the mean time, enjoy our very amateur camera work. Hopefully it will give us the motivating kicks we need to update more often. But comments definitely help too.

Without further ado, here’s our first video. A few weeks ago, we went to Taneka’s apartment to celebrate her birthday (and the birthday of a girl named Tene, who we had never met before but turned out to be pretty cool). This is most of the crew playing “Big Booty” (with comments in the background from the peanut gallery aka Brian).

So I’m still playing around with who I think I’m writing to on this blog.

Ideally, we want to grow our readership and speak to people we don’t even know about super intimate topics (like how I’m terrified of my first married pap smear coming up soon). But for now, our readers mostly consist of close friends who click on our Facebook links and may not want to know about my pap smear fears. Hence, we continue writing glib, simplistic posts. You see the conundrum, right?

To remedy this problem, I will begin categorizing posts based on level of self-disclosure versus topics. That way, those of you who are totally weirded out by TMI about our marriage, our bodily functions, or emotions in general can skip to the more light-hearted posts (like about food and martial arts) or the strictly theological posts.

Matt’s not home right now and I haven’t talked to him about this (communication is very key in a healthy marriage, you know), so we may change this system up. But for now, look for the categories. I’m going to try out the new system by posting two more posts. One highly self-disclosing, one minimally self-disclosing with lots of theological pondering. Read accordingly.