I just finished reading 50 descriptive journal writings from my students. The assignment: describe your dormitory room. Be specific – use descriptive adjectives and nouns. Describe what you see, smell, hear, and feel in the room.

As I was reading, I thought how maybe I should practice what I teach from time to time. And what better place to practice than our blog? So here is a teacher’s descriptive essay of our apartment (post-massive-cleaning at the beginning when we first moved in, of course).

When you approach our building, the first thing you will likely notice is the broken front door. It’s an ugly shade of green and made of metal. Even though there have been many attempts to fix it, the front door does not latch all the way, unless you push it firmly shut. Even though you are not supposed to be able to get into the building without a key or a buzz-in from someone inside, 99% of the time, you can simply walk right in. This makes me feel unsafe sometimes, knowing that someone with bad intent has one less obstacle to face. But other times, I’m grateful for our broken front door (like when I don’t have the keys with me and Matt’s not home to let me in.)

Once you come inside the building, you have to climb three flights of dirty steps. Sometimes the cleaning lady mops, but the floors never stay clean for long. On the third floor, you enter our apartment on the left. We live across from an Arabic teacher from Iraq, who we usually never see. The middle apartment next to us is empty. Since our neighbors are non-existent or quiet, our apartment is fairly quiet. Every now and then we can hear our upstairs neighbor’s cell phone vibrate. (It’s so creepy because it sounds like it’s in the room with us.) Apart from that, and the occasional sound of firecrackers (which Chinese people set off for every wedding…there are some going off right now, in fact), our apartment is quiet.

When you open our door, you see a shoe and coat rack filled with shoes and slippers. When we’re busy, we usually have various pairs of shoes and slippers scattered on the floor near the door, as well as some miscellaneous school items (bags of students’ journals, the cart we use for transporting our class items, etc.) The hall area is dark, since it doesn’t get any direct light, but we have a ceiling light we can turn on when it’s dark and we don’t want to trip over our mess.

Directly across from the front door is our bedroom. There is a small closet built into the room, along with a separate wooden wardrobe that we rescued from the furniture pile outside and a fabric wardrobe that the previous teacher left for us. The fabric wardrobe is printed with a nice pastoral scene of two-story white houses next to an ocean with mountains in the distance. Sailboats sail on the ocean, and horses graze next to the houses. I’m sure the previous teacher bought the wardrobe in China, but the picture looks nothing like China. I think they were trying to include the most beautiful parts of America in one scene, but it really doesn’t even look like something you’d see in America.

We also have two wooden desks in our bedroom and two twin size beds pushed together. The desks are usually covered with schoolwork we are working on. We each have small plastic shelving units to organize our classes’ materials. Mine are always stacked with students’ journals. About a foot behind our desks, we have two twin size beds pushed together. We have mismatching blue/green sheets on them. Next to the beds, there are two small wooden side tables.

To the left of our bedroom, there is a living room. We have a small round table for eating, two red futons, a small coffee table, a tall bookshelf, and a shelf where we keep pictures and paperwork. When we aren’t using it for classes, we keep our projector on top of the bookshelf and project it onto the opposite wall to watch movies or play Kinect. The living room is my favorite room in the apartment because it lets a lot of sun in and feels brighter and happier than the other more gloomy rooms.

Down the hall from the living room, we have a bathroom on the left. The bathroom has a Western toilet and bathtub. The bathroom is the smelliest room in the house because the toilet leaks water out the bottom every time it’s flushed. There is also a drain on the floor next to the toilet that smells rancid, even though we keep it covered with a plunger to try and block the smell. Some days it doesn’t smell as strongly, but other days, like today, it reeks. To block out the smell, we spray floral air freshener in the bathroom.

The Western bathtub is a great luxury in China (most bathroom just have a shower that comes onto the ground near the toilet), so we’re grateful for it. The only bad thing about the bathtub is that the caulk around it is rotten and falling apart, so I’m a little afraid one day the bathtub is going to fall out. I definitely tread lightly whenever I take a shower.

To the left of the bathroom, directly across from the living room, is the kitchen. The kitchen has a small refrigerator and freezer unit, a washing machine, a small toaster oven, a rice cooker, a 2-burner gas stovetop, a sink, a plastic electric kettle, a small portable island, and a tall shelving unit. The kitchen floor gets dirty easily since water splashes out from the sink and the washing machine and then we track dirt all over the place. I used to avoid the kitchen except to help with dishes and laundry, since cooking stresses me out under normal conditions, and cooking in China stresses me out even more. (Precise measurements aren’t entirely possible here, because you have to substitute for a lot of ingredients, and they also aren’t measured out the way we would do it in the US.) But after our Halloween party, I manned up (or womaned up?) and tried out some baking. It went much better than expected, so now I’ve actually organized the kitchen somewhat and felt less afraid to go in it. So far my successful dishes include: Severed Witches Finger Cookies, Newt’s Eyes Deviled Eggs, roasted pumpkin seeds, and mutton and bok choy pizza.

Hope you enjoyed a descriptive essay tour of our apartment

Yikes, we are getting behind in blog updates! Now that the semester is nearing the halfway mark, we’re actually starting to collect assignments and *gulp* grade for real.

Today I realized that even with a rubric, I grade my students differently depending on my emotions that day. I started grading the final drafts of my first class (cover letter and resume assignment) a couple of days ago and finished grading for that class today. When I was going back over the assignments so I could enter the grades in my computer, I realized that I had marked off more points today for the same mistakes I was being much more lenient on the other day. I’m a little more tired and annoyed with grading today, so my generosity is slipping away.

Oops.

So I had to go back and take away a few more points from the earlier people I was being nice to. Since each class has every single class together, and most of them live with each other, I figure there’s ample opportunity for comparing grades. I might as well attempt to be consistent.

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve had multiple puppy sightings. There are two little dogs who seem to run around our campus playing with whoever they can find. I’m not sure if they belong to anyone, but they definitely act domesticated. They’re super cute, and I always worry that they’re going to get hurt when I see them. (No leash, no obvious owner in sight.) But first, we don’t have time or money for a dog, and second, these puppies are SO friendly that I have trouble believing they don’t have owners. I’m afraid that if I pick one up and take it home, the owner will come around the corner and start yelling at me for stealing their puppy. (It’s crazy how many people walk their dogs without leashes here. Also crazy how many people even have dogs. Pet ownership is definitely becoming more popular.)

So with each sighting, I restrain myself from bringing home a puppy to Matthew. Even though he would love to play with them… haha

I haven’t had a chance to take any photos of these tempting puppies, so instead here is a picture of Matt at Pizza Hut. I took him out on Halloween since he loves Halloween in the US and was feeling sad. Pizza Hut and a borrowed hat made it a much more enjoyable Chinese Halloween. Then we went home and watched Zombieland (which even though it’s a comedy, is still too scary for me. I went to the bathroom at many strategic points in the movie. Next year it’s back to the Charlie Brown Halloween special.)

Matt at Pizza Hut

And here are a couple of videos I finally had time to upload – our trip to the Great Wall a few weekends ago and a trip in a motorcycle carriage that we took last month on my birthday (it’s a long video, but it will give you a good idea of what our neighborhood looks like and how uh, interesting, Chinese traffic can be).

A few nights ago, one of the professors at our school wanted us to go out to dinner with him. We thought we were going to his house to make jiaozi (Chinese dumplings) because when we last ate with him, he and his wife told us that we should come over to make jiaozi with them soon.

But to our surprise, after he picked us up, instead of driving to his house, we drove to the fanciest restaurant we’ve been to in China.

We live in an area of Tianjin that is famous for its architecture. This part of the city was occupied by the British and other European countries back in the day when China was being fought over by Western powers. So all of the architecture is old and Western-style.

The restaurant that we went to used to be a residence of some British government officials. Now the center rooms have been turned into elegant waiting rooms, and each of the inner rooms has been turned into a private dining room filled with fancy antiques and decorations (some rooms are Western and some are Chinese).

When we first arrived, we knew it was fancy because the hostesses came out to meet us with umbrellas and walked us from the car to the door. When was the last time a McDonald’s employee walked us in with an umbrella? Um…never.

Then we were escorted to our private dining room where some of the professor’s friends were waiting. (The friends were the ones paying for the meal. We found out later that they want me to tutor their daughter. Smooth move, buying us a fancy dinner first. How could I say no after that? Haha)

When they told the waitress we wanted to order, she brought in an iPad menu. What??? We got to scroll through pictures of the dishes and touch the ones we wanted. Then a green check mark would appear on the screen on the ones we had touched.

At one point, the professor leaned over to us with the iPad and asked if we wanted shark fin. I looked down to see if the price was listed. Yup. 388 kuai. (That’s like an entire week’s worth of meals, including food for both of us.) We had just learned at the Aquarium of the Bay that eating shark fin is a travesty, so I politely told him that maybe we could try something else. He found another fish selection for us that he said would be just as good. (And it was only 255 kuai.) So that was one dish. We don’t know what the other dishes cost, but we’re guessing about the same general price each.

For six people, they ended up ordering 13 dishes, so we’re assuming the total bill came out to over 2500 kuai. Almost a month’s salary for one of us. Dang.

In light of the upscale-ness of the situation, I thought it would be prudent to try everything they ordered, no matter how gross it sounded. Fortunately, most of it didn’t sound too gross. (I think they were being sensitive to my American stomach.) But the puffer fish from the Yangtze river and the iced goose liver cubes wouldn’t usually make my list of things to try.

I’m glad I tried a bit of everything, though, because I did find that I liked it all. (Well, except the puffer fish wasn’t so great. It was too fishy tasting.) But even the other fish dish the professor recommended in lieu of shark fin was really good. And I normally can’t stand seafood in China, so I was pleasantly surprised. Here’s a look at a few of the more visually attractive dishes:

Delicious shrimp (this was one of my favorite dishes) with an incredible carved bird garnish that was, I think, made of carrot?

Tai Ji Soup, half of the soup is spicy and half is not spicy. Shaped like a yinyang symbol

Mashed Chinese yams in a fancy curly shape on top of a carrot slice, topped with a dab of blueberry jam

The most surprising of the dishes because it turned out to taste so good. Goose liver cubes inside a sculpture of ice. Literally, that teardrop sculpture and the plate underneath were carved out of ice. Amazing.

Matt says I should also write when I’m happy so you all don’t think that we hate being in China

It’s true, most of our lives are very happy here, but I tend to just enjoy life when it’s good instead of writing about it. So lest our readers get a skewed perspective, here is a happy Monday night blog post!

After Matt got home from teaching his afternoon classes (which last until 5:40 pm, so late!) we decided we would not talk about or think about teaching all night! It was delightful. I am very grateful for my wonderful, amazing, best husband in the world!

We went to the school cafeteria (canting in Chinese, which actually sounds like tzahn-ting in a high-pitched tone) and ordered some rice dishes that we like to eat often. We had some good conversation and then came home and watched the movie Red on our gigantic projector screen.

The school provided us with a decent-sized TV, but the quality of the picture is really bad. It’s okay for watching the news, but for movies or other TV shows, you can’t see what’s happening when the scene is dark because  the color is so bad. We figured if we ever want to have people over to watch a movie or play Kinect, we should have a screen that they can actually see. We thought about getting a better TV, but the cheapest, smallest one we could find was still over 1000 kuai. So we started looking into the cost for a projector.

Most of our classrooms are not equipped with projectors, just a chalkboard. I haven’t used a chalkboard in about…oh, I don’t know, 15 years maybe? I can’t completely remember if my high school had chalkboards, but I’m pretty sure we already had whiteboards by then. So anyway, chalk is pretty nasty and it’s not easy to write a ton of notes on the board. It’s always possible to print notes and whatnot for our students, but when you have over 150 students, that’s a lot of time printing. We do get to print for free at our school if we use the printing office, but not all of the people who work there speak English, and our Chinese level doesn’t always get the job done like we want.

So we thought investing in a projector could kill two birds with one stone. We’d have a screen to watch things on at our apartment and we can take it to our classes and project powerpoint presentations and other media on the wall for our students instead of printing hundreds of sheets a week or writing tons of stuff on a chalkboard. (I also forgot to mention that I switch classrooms for every class, so I can’t even just write stuff on the board once and use it multiple times. Nope, I have to rewrite it for every single class.)

A couple of weeks ago one of our friends who has lived in Tianjin for a long time hooked us up with some of his friends who sell electronics. The projector ended up being a little bit more expensive than we would have paid in the US, but I feel like it’s been worth it. Teaching is a lot less stressful with the projector, and we get to use it in our free time as well.

Much better!

The original TV, now sitting in a corner behind the bookcase

In case you were wondering, Red was okay. Kind of weird, sort of funny but tried a little too hard. I guess we would give it about 2 stars. Now I’m off to read a little before bed and NOT think about teaching! There will be plenty of time for that tomorrow…

As a perfectionist who hates conflict, today was not my best day.

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.