goodbyes

I am sitting at a computer with a broken screen, exhausted from trying to wind my way through red-tape, in sultry Kashgar, at the far end of Northwest China. Having officially closed my Peace Corps service last Friday at midnight, I want to wrap this blog up properly before more time passes by.

My final months in Lanzhou flew by. My students did really well on their final exams, making me one very happy laoshi. Once we entered the exam period, leaving my aparmtent each day became emotionally exhausting, saying goodbyes each time I passed a student. It was incredibly rewarding too, though -- each day my time was equally balanced between the paperwork and packing that I needed to do, and the time spent with students and friends and co-workers who I care so much for. And their affection in turn became a real affirmation of what I've accomplished in the last two years. There were moments that I really regretted not putting some of my big plans into action, but in the end, I made a lot of friends, I worked hard and learned how to teach, and I know that my impact on my department and students has been real. Some photos from my last month at site can be found here.

Last week I spent 5 days in Chengdu "mentoring" the new group of trainees, the China 14s, as they had their first stab at teaching in China with their training Model School. It was fun to meet the newbies, but even more so to see how far my group, the China 12s, have come. In the last days of the week, nine more China 12s trickled in to complete their medical and administrative check-out process. Most of the other PCVs had already wrapped up their service several weeks earlier. There were some long sweaty days as we bustled around the city taking care of business, but on Friday night we all gathered, tired, to ring in the rest of our lives. We joked, and remembered, and at midnight stood silent. "Two years in China and none of us can manage a toast?" In the end it was simply "to Peace Corps China" -- and then, fittingly, the power went out.

If you want to follow along with Ben and my journey home, here's the link: http://chinatohome.blogspot.com

Earthquake

Here in Lanzhou we felt the earthquake yesterday afternoon, as well as several aftershocks later in the evening. Where I live, towards the north of China, the quake was fairly small and resulted in nothing more than scared folks and a few broken cups. We do have many Peace Corps volunteers in Sichuan and Chongqing, though, living in areas much closer to the epicenter. Luckily, as of 2am last night they have all been accounted for and are safe. Many of the students at my school did not sleep last night because they were afraid of the aftershocks (I found this out in my 8am literature class this morning when I was confronted with 35 drooping heads). In more southern areas of my province, as well as in Sichuan province, many students and townsfolk camped out all night, frightened or not allowed to go back into their dormitories or homes.

As is being reported, the death toll in western Sichuan has continued to rise (almost 10,000 already) and I believe it will continue to do so for a while yet... most of the deaths came from collapsed buildings, many of which are still being excavated. The most mind-numbing tragedy of the moment is that at least 1 large school collapsed completely and they don't think any more students can possibly be alive inside. Some of our students and friends have have had trouble getting in touch with friends and family. So far as I can tell the government has acted quickly and with some transparency in getting rescue and aid teams to the worst-hit areas, but with 80% of buildings collapsed in some towns near the epicenter, and thousands of people still buried alive, it's an enormous task.

"No more Che, I'm on Sexican time!"

The above is only one of the gazillion startling slogans which appear on our students' apparel from time to time. A few other choice ones reference a "chunkily penis," the wearer's status as a virgin (or not), the "MOB (it ain't nothing to fuck with)", and so many others that make you stop and stare. I call them startling most especially because the clothing is invariably worn by our sweetest and most shy students. Keeps class fun. The English department gave me a tracksuit with rhinestones on it so that I could match the rest of the department on Sports Day. It doesn't have anything inappropriate written on it, but it is bedazzled. That's fun too :)

Last weekend the China 12s all went down to Chengdu for our COS conference (COS = close of service). We received lots of good info about paperwork, final obligations, $, saying our goodbyes, etc., and ate ridiculous amounts of great western food. It was a really low-key weekend, and fun, though bitter-sweet with many goodbyes at the end. Sweating through a long train-ride home was made much easier by a big hunk of lusciously rich chocolate birthday cake -- thanks, Ben!

My sister finishes her first year of college on Tuesday and has not only excelled but generally kicked butt all around. So proud of you, kiddo.

A few holiday days of laying low in Lanzhou have been lovely, but it's time for grading and I have to get to work. Miss you guys at home. Still savoring the little things at home here in China too.

a few of my neighbors

There is an old man who has 4 teeth to his smile and is 82 years old and never remembers that we've met, but speaks beautiful English. He began to learn English in 1940, and he visited the US in 1997. He was a mechanics professor at my university, and though he retired 21 years ago, he still loves to talk about machine oscillations. I can't imagine all the things he's witnessed.

There is a lady who runs a snack shop in the market across from my neighborhood. You can point to whichever skewered veggies or meats you want, and she deep fries them right up for you. Her seasoned chicken skewers are my most favorite snack, and I pick a few up several times a week. I can always count on her to tell me whether I'm looking great or tired out that day, and she usually sneaks me some of her home-made spicy potato chips for free. When I told her that I'd be leaving this summer, and how much I'd miss her chicken sticks, she immediately told me she'd wrap some up for me for the trip.

Down the street is a man and his wife and little girl who run a small store that sells a bit of everything you might need. They work incredibly hard -- open something like 7am to 11pm most days -- and I have seen their shop expand and improve every few months. They deserve their success. The man delivers tanks of water on his bike all day long, carrying the 5 gallon jugs up to each apartment, but never fails, when I say hello, to have on his face the sweetest smile I've ever seen. Running into him riding around campus or my neighborhood was one of the first things that made me feel at home here.

There is a man who lives in my building who waits or runs to catch me if he is heading to work and I am heading to class at the same time. He wants to practice his English with an intensity that I've rarely run into. He works in one of the labs where the engineering students go to do their experiments. He is in his late 30s I think, married with a little girl, has a decent job and an apartment and everything seems okay but inside he is profoundly dissatisfied -- in his eloquent gestures: stuck. The other day he told me he doesn't visit his parents much anymore because they don't understand him. They will never understand, he says, that he must study English, must study new machine designs, must do everything he can to be prepared to take a RISK. I think he must have looked up the word 'risk' in a dictionary, because he stuck to that word with an unnerving passion and diction, spitting out the 'k' with great determination no matter how many other words I offered in interpretation. Quite a brave word that he seized upon; I get the impression that to feel the way he does is indeed of certain risk. Because should an opportunity for something more ever come, he is determined to be ready to throw himself at it with everything he has. He is enormously frustrated with the standstill of moderate achievement, and the utter lack of dynamic opportunities now that he has been slotted into a job. He tells me weekly that he thinks China is just a cheap place to be trained and turn out products and copies of things thought up elsewhere. That what the country needs is for people to come up with their own new ideas. His speeches to me are stilted for lack of vocabulary, but oddly expressive as he still manages to ram his thoughts out through the not-so-wide opening he has in English. I find myself in the strange position of defending China to him, more often than not, and our conversations always leave me sad.

hello from SUNNY Lanzhou!

Well, here I am again, woefully behind in reporting on my life and times in China. A full update on what I've been up to since December is just too daunting, so all I can offer is this wee recap...

** Roughest winter in 50 years in China -- caught bits of it in Lanzhou and then in Chengdu for our in-service training (very good times with very wonderful people), but escaped the worst of it in beautiful Thailand. Met Ben's folks, whose generosity and company made Thailand a blast. We snorkeled a lot, and did other beach-y things. Some photos can be found here. When we got back from Thailand we met up with Henry, Ben's good friend from A-town, USA, and went to Yunnan where we met lots of cool people from around the world and did some sweet hiking. A few photos here. Got back to Lanzhou just in time to sort things out for the semester and bundle Henry off to T!b*t just in time for the protests (whoops). Overall an amazing holiday shared with amazing people. **

The semester is flying by. Next week I give mid-terms, which is 100% nuts because that means that I have just 8 more weeks of teaching here in China. I teach British Literature to the juniors and I have to say that these students are so wonderful -- I teared up on the first day of class just telling them this would be my last semester here. I am so sorry that I won't be here to see them graduate. The class has been a pure pleasure to teach. Last year I busted my ass to get on top of all the literature, create lesson plans and materials and lectures... this semester it's all ready to go, and the students, for the most part, really seem to be digging it all much more than last year's classes did. I also teach a huge survey course of the UK and the US to the sophomores. Those kids are pretty fun too, though trying to keep 86 of them interested for 3 hours is exhausting. Still, it's really been coming together lately, and after the exam we'll move to the US, on which I'm a bit more of an authority, relatively speaking.

This semester I have been especially pleased with the feeling in my classrooms. I have been consciously stricter in some ways, but more careful than ever before to make the purpose clear in everything that we do. (Most days) I love the tone and mood that we've managed to capture.: comfortable, but very respectful, and always -- always -- lots of laughter. I know this is as much a testament to my students this year as to what I've learned over the last two years. I feel like they really trust me to get us all where we need to go, and are more willing to do what I ask of them than classes I've sometimes had in the past.

Worth mentioning from the last two months is:
-- a fabulous hike (and lovely weekend!) that Ben and I and Niffy did with the Rosses in southern Gansu a few weeks ago. Photos here.
-- the tortuous process of registering for the GREs in China: writing portion done, back to Xi'an in June for the math/verbal sections.
-- the weekly gorging of myself on hotpot; oh the food I'll miss when I leave!
-- getting to know the freshman who I'll never get to teach but who include some of the liveliest, most fun students I've met yet!
-- thesis advising; it is what it is
-- savoring weekends of doing and eating my favorite things, trying to store up the long lazy days for when I don't have as much time to just be

In two weeks all of the China 12s will be gathering in Chengdu -- all together for the last time -- for a conference to prepare for leaving Peace Corps. Most of the volunteers will be leaving on July 11th, but I won't be finishing service until July 25th. Except for those that live near me, I won't be seeing some of these people again, a sad thought for me because let me tell you that the China 12s are an amazing group of people. I've applied to help with the training for the China 14s, and really hope to be spending a week in July getting to know them and helping them prepare for Chinese classrooms and Chinese life.

I'd like to say a brief word about the globally escalating protests towards China. I can't speak to whether they are right or wrong; that's personal to those choosing to protest. But I CAN say that after living here for this while, I can all too easily put myself into the shoes of the Chinese, almost as easily as into those of protesters. China does not work like the United States; most Chinese would not want it too. A more collective culture remains here, despite the rapid growth and globalization that has been taking place, and the vast majority of Chinese have poured their hearts and efforts into the Olympics. It is seen as their true global debut, their shining moment of pride and accomplishment. The vast majority of Chinese that I've met are nationalistic beyond anything I've seen before, and most support their government. Lacking the protest culture of the West, for those Chinese that are aware of the international protests against China's human rights record, dealings with T!b*t, etc., these protests are seen as a direct attack on China and the Chinese people. An attack being pushed forward by the very western nations who, just 100 years ago, essentially shat upon China, committing outrageous acts of imperial aggression which are still a point of extreme shame to most Chinese. This does not mean that China deserves a pass by any means, but I do want to say that while I have grave doubts over the ability of the protesters to succeed in changing Chinese policies, I have few doubts that escalation of these protests, particularly at the Olympics themselves, will damage the relationships between China and other leading nations -- relationships that need to be strong as we face possible global financial crises and food shortages. To be honest, my brain flip flops on these issues constantly, but this is one side of the issue that I felt I needed to speak up about. For an interesting explanation of how things stand among (ethnically) Chinese youth: check this out.

Holidays in China, redux

The holidays began properly for me this year on the winter solstice, a day when, my students tell me, you must eat dumplings or YOUR EARS WILL OFF. Needless to say I went with the dumplings, and several students took over my kitchen for the morning to turn out a jiaozi feast. In the pictures students are stuffing the dumplings, and I enjoy them with my site-mate and a few of the cooks!

As soon as the feast was over, though, we had to hurry them out and start preparing for our second feast of the day: a Mexican Christmas with some other Gansu volunteers. Ben and I brought salsa and chips and beans, but there was also a full range of burrito fixings, and even homemade tamales (note: if you want to make masa from scratch, you will have to render down a really big hunk of fat). It was fabulous.

The next night the festivities continued with my English Department’s very own Christmas “Party”. Now, I know I’ve explained these parties before, but if you missed that, think of it more as a slightly bizarre revue with a whole line-up of student performances. I do love watching my students perform, and the skinny Santa who came out throwing candy, narrowly missing the English teachers’ heads I should add, and was subsequently MOBBED by the Chinese kiddies, was a highlight. His maneuvers, as he raced into the crowd, ducking and spinning away from the grasping little hands, were brilliant. The stage had fun decorations, the performers looked great, the microphones worked from time to time, and the 1800 or so students in the audience happily waved their glow-sticks the whole time. A total success! The picture is with some of the night’s performers. The guy in the corner who looks like the REAL Santa is Randy, another teacher here at the school.

The NEXT night was Christmas Eve and it was my turn to throw a party! After about 24 hours of baking and cleaning, my place was sparkling, the tree glowing, and the table set with a pumpkin pie, gingerbread cookies, apple turnovers, peanut butter-honey cookies, and pumpkin-oatmeal-chocolate chip cookies. As people began to trickle in, the other foreign teachers at my school contributed some delicious breads and cookies, and the Chinese teachers brought bags and bags of fruit, chips, and drinks. We were soon overflowing with about 30 people – my coworkers, their children, and a few of the English Association kids and graduate students that are my friends. ::whew:: It was a packed house, but the Christmas tree was the focal point (Chinese folks love a good photo op and it fit the bill as a back-drop), the kids were loud and messy and having a great time, people were mingling, and it was just plain wonderful.

On Christmas morning we tore open the packages I’d placed strictly under the tree (no peeking!), and had a lovely Christmas breakfast of noodles. That night a few of us took advantage of a free banquet dinner. A local airline was hosting a fabulous buffet (with turkey! And lamb! And sushi!), and offered free tickets to bring our foreign faces to the affair. Well the food was delicious, the company good, the ambiance very Christmas-y with candles and music…. when all of a sudden the lights went down, red lights and a bubble machine came on in the middle of the room, and out strutted four Kazakh exotic dancers. Wearing teeny bikini tops. Because, you know, Christmas is a foreign holiday, so naturally foreign performers will make it a perfect Christmas celebration. We stayed until the girls came out again in little shepherdess outfits that ended at the crotch, and 2.5 foot tall Marie-Antoinette wigs… on our way out we were told that a local night-club manager had been put in charge of the (3 hour-long!!) entertainment. That actually didn’t come as much of a surprise.

I gave my literature exam two days after Christmas, and caught a few cheaters which put a really lovely cap on a difficult semester with the seniors. I am so looking forward to going back to British Literature this upcoming semester with juniors. The students are just so completely checked out of their academics in their senior year, and not just garden-variety senioritis, but literally absent all the time, plagiarizing, cheating… ah well. It’s over. They only have their theses to write next semester and they’ll be out of here. I’ll be advising 4 of them on their final papers this year.

For New Year’s several of us went out for a big dinner in honor of our friend Lu Wei’s 30^th birthday, and then met up with most of the other Lanzhou volunteers at a laid-back club to ring in the New Year with some dancing. It was a great night, one of my favorite New Year’s Eves ever. New Year’s is always a funny moment among volunteers because for half of us it signals a year where we most likely will not be in the States at all, and for the other half of us, it marks the year in which we’ll return home. Exciting stuff in both cases I think.

Since the New Year I’ve been on a fairly steady diet of grading, finally wrapping everything up last weekend by turning in mounds of paperwork. To celebrate finishing our semesters, Ben and I and Simon (another volunteer in LZ) went… skiing! Now, those of you who know me might say, “But Kristen! You don’t ski! And also you are a big klutz! And… there’s skiing in China?” Never fear, I didn’t venture more than half way up the slope. In my jumpsuit (see photo, and please know that it doesn’t belong to me). We all had a great time though, and the boys owned the top of the slope, wowing everyone with some spectacular tumbles (mostly courtesy of the impetuous Simon) and smooth moves.

All of the above brings me to this week, in which I prepare to go traveling. Everyone around me is also preparing – for Chun Jie (Spring Festival), the Chinese New Year. It much resembles the lead up to Christmas, but actually holds meaning for the Chinese population unlike the December proliferation of Santa Clauses and arches made out of things like red cardboard beer advertisements and Winnie-the-pooh teddy bears. Everyone is buying beautiful red knots and strips of paper with blessings on them, and the whole city is filling up with gorgeous red lanterns, hung from trees, lamp-posts, bridges, and even in small strings lining the windows of buses. This is my favorite look for the city: still with all the winter time smells and sounds of the hot nut and corn and potato vendors, but with the fruit sticks dipped in glaze which signal the closer-to-springtime part of the winter, all lorded over by the brilliantly red lanterns. The holiday itself is on Feb 7, but the entire month surrounding that date involves mass-migration as nearly everyone in the country goes back to their hometowns to celebrate with their family. I love this time of year here but for one thing – the firecrackers. I have always loved fireworks, and can’t wait for the fabulous displays that will happen all over the country on the night of Feb 6, but for weeks now the booms of firecrackers have been echoing through my neighborhood, steadily increasing in frequency, and making me jump out of my skin every 4^th or 5^th unexpected boom. I blame the grandfathers – they are as gleeful setting them off as the kids that they hand them to.

Heading out of town tomorrow for the next 5 weeks or so… stay tuned.

Third Semester, Fall 2007

The biggest thing that happened at the beginning of the semester was the arrival of the Gansu 13s at site! We got a really great group. Down to earth, committed, and fun – I think Gansu will finally be in good hands after the upheavals and sudden departures of the last year. Together the 12s and 13s up here make a really mixed group, personality and background-wise, but despite that (or because of it!) I think we’re solid through and through. My site-mate’s name is Brendon. He just graduated from Georgetown (another history major), and is from New Mexico. We have fairly similar temperaments, so we get along well, though his self-discipline when it comes to studying Chinese and keeping the dust out far outweighs mine! Luckily, I’ve got experience on my side! I was so used to being the only volunteer at my school (with Ben pitching in when I needed help), that it’s nice to have such a self-sufficient site-mate.

I’ve been pretty boring this semester, though never bored. School started September 1, and I spent the first month working to get my classes into a good groove for the semester. For the first time I was able to really plan out 2 of my 3 courses in advance, with a really complete set of syllabi and planned assessments – it felt good, and definitely paid off over the semester. My American Literature class I couldn’t plan in it’s entirely; never having taught the class and not having much to work off of, I wasn’t sure how fast we’d be able to move, and how much material we’d be able to cover. I didn’t travel during the October Holiday, taking the time to clean and finish settling myself into the semester.

My Poetry course has been the academic highlight of the semester for me. There was no textbook, and the elective course-taught once every two years-has never really been taught successfully before as far as I can tell. So I was given a completely free hand in designing the class. Even with a class twice as big as I’d been told to expect (65 students altogether), I think we managed to pull it off, if with less discussion than I’d hoped for. We moved through basic tools for reading poetry, some of the most important poetic forms, and into reading and analysis by topic: poetry of identity, of childhood, of love, of gender, of loss… and finally poetry as performance. There was no final exam – I have 65 portfolios sitting in my living room, and I’m keeping my fingers crossed that when I start grading them, my feelings about the class are upheld by the students’ work and their reflections.

A ragged second to the Poetry class is American Literature – not because I didn’t love teaching the subject (I did), but because this course is for seniors, and passing it is a requirement for them to be able to graduate. This in a semester when seniors are gone for weeks at a time looking for jobs, and when teachers are asked to essentially forgive failure when it comes to their academic work. I’m working my ass off to get these kids to pass, because I refuse to change their grades. You might be saying: duh, of course you wouldn’t change grades, this is the real world. But the students had every expectation that they could not fail this class – they told me so point blank. I had to burst that bubble, because while my department would certainly ask me to consider being lenient after grades are totaled, they will (they say) back me up if I a student well and truly fails. Of course, getting in the way of a student graduating is the last thing I’m here to do, hence the stress.

Hand in hand with the difficulties of keeping everyone in the game when seniors are absent every time a company that is hiring comes to town, is the cheating. Well, cheating by my standards. Students are literally told by some of their teachers just not to make copying and pasting from the internet obvious… they take bits and pieces from 8 websites, slap them together, and hand it in. Even those that have put together their own argument (ish. The idea of a thesis is somehow still elusive to many) have huge sections of their papers lifted directly from their textbook or the web. What I discovered, belatedly, was that my senior English majors have never learned how to use citations properly. In their first drafts, 1 out of the 60 odd papers had 1 citation. Weeks, several mini-lessons, and a lot of editing later, it’s still a problem.

I’ve written about this before, but there is a widely-held belief among the students (those whom I’ve encountered at least), that what is printed in books or on the internet is more correct than anything they could come up with (in terms of grammar, vocabulary, and ideas), and therefore not to use those materials simply makes no sense to many. Even gentle suggestions of cheating or plagiarism sometimes cause tears; students are horrified that we would think of him/her as a cheater (despite the fact that they tell me all the time about how other classmates cheated more…). ::sigh:: Truly, despite my attempts at commitment to academic integrity, and the innumerable talks I’ve had with students about this, in the end it seems to me that it is simply their bad luck that they have a teacher from 'outside the system' for a class they need to pass in order to graduate. Anyway, I’ve said far more than enough on this topic, it’s just something that I’ve really wrestled with this semester.

Advanced Practical Skills Oral English has been generally fun, and ridiculously laid-back, since that was a class of only 17 seniors, met in the evenings, and was usually decimated by the job hunt for most of the semester. I have been especially proud, though, of the improvement in two of the men in this class.

Other than classes, let’s see. Ben’s heat/water/sewage has been broken for months so he’s been spending lots of weekends at my place. I can’t complain :) It’s just been fixed, though, thus ending a prolonged period of few showers and shitting in plastic bags.

I’ve been working on a few secondary projects in the last few months, culminating in a BUSY weekend towards the end of the semester. For World AIDS Day on December 1, I went on a student’s radio show to do a talk with her on HIV/AIDS, and gave a big presentation on the West Campus at Friday Night English Corner that week. The presentation was a total teaching high for me – 80-100 kids from the lowest to highest levels of English, and I think they were all really engaged. Brendon and I had both been talking to our classes all weeks about HIV/AIDS awareness, and on December 1, about 90 students came out to show their understanding and stand together in saying that AIDS must be stopped. They formed a human-AIDS ribbon on the steps of our main teaching building. Several other universities did the same thing, at the same time, on the same day. I think the moment of it made a real impact on the students.

That same weekend my department held an experimental teaching workshop for a self-selected group of the seniors. I worked with my dean, Daisy, to create a 2-day format and select session topics that we believed would be most useful. Then we held a meeting of the foreign and Chinese English teachers in our department and had one foreign and one Chinese teacher sign up for each topic (something I thought crucial after our experiences at summer project). Unfortunately, the weekend of the workshop a big job fair opened in town, and only about half the students who’d signed up to come actually showed up for the training. Still, those 13 included a few who want to be teachers, and the rest were good students who knew this was a great professional training opportunity. They presented lessons and received feedback the second day, and most did a really great job. I’m hoping that we’ll be able to expand this in the Spring semester for the juniors, changing the format slightly to allow more time for workshop sessions and for more students to be able to participate. A good start, for sure, and a great peer-development exercise among department teachers. Peace Corps has been really supportive of this, and is currently stamping certificates for the students who took part in the workshop.

Thanksgiving was delicious and well-attended, with 30 people of 4 nationalities present. And Christmas is (truly) around the corner. My tree is up, my living room is red-and-green ribbon-lined, and I’ve been experimenting with cookie recipes in preparation for next week. On the 22^nd, I have students coming over to make dumplings (apparently on the winter solstice, as at all other dates of import it seems, it’s traditional to eat dumplings), and that night Lanzhou PCVs will gather for a Mexican potluck Christmas. The next night the Foreign Languages Dept. at my school will be throwing the big Christmas shindig, and on Christmas Eve I have invited all the teachers in my department and their families to come by my place for cookies and music and Christmas cheer (wine). The province is holding a big dinner for all Gansu foreigners on the 28^th, so we’ll be able to look forward to the further-flung of the Gansu PCVs as well.

Tomorrow I will hold a big review session for literature, and that is officially my last class of the semester. I have huge stacks of essays and portfolios to keep me busy until the lit kids take their exam a few days after Christmas – but I should be free and clear by the second week of January. And after that? Islands in Thailand, and hiking in Yunnan province. Oh, and my last semester as a Peace Corps China volunteer, and teacher at Gong Da. Crazy.