Brave new world

This website is currently blocked in China. It's not the first to receive this treatment, nor will it be the last, but it's somewhat annoying, to say the least. Not because of this, but partly driven by the on-off random(?) blocking of other websites here, we decided to shell out for a proxy server. There are free ones available, but as far as I understand it, they're slower and less reliable. Plus, I particularly wanted one which would give us s UK IP address, thus enabling us to watch British TV. Yippee!!!

In other news this week... Pingixang College has been subject to an inspection by... erm... some inspectors, to decide if it's good enough to become a university. Obviously, this would be a great thing for the college - more money(?), better facilities and certainly higher enrollment figures and probably higher standards among the students enrolled. We've yet to find out whether or not the college was successful, but I can't really see it happening just yet.

Anyway, the curious thing about the whole inspection period was the preparation. All of a sudden, things that had needed doing for weeks, months and even in many cases years, suddenly got done. My multi-media classroom this week was in the best condition I've ever seen it: there was a full compliment of curtains at the windows, the projector screen which had had some writing on it had been cleaned / replaced and the projector was working properly. Fantastic. Many cosmetic changes took place around campus as well - painting and particularly a big clean-up operation. The students were drafted in to clean classrooms instead of their usual evening reading. They were also told to clean their dormitories, which were later inspected by teachers / other students. They were exhausted, poor things... Even the chickens that live on campus seemed to have been hidden away somewhere.

There's a small street out the back of the campus which we have dubbed 'filth street' (for obvious reasons!!) which is usually full of small shops and stalls selling all sorts of things, but particularly food and snacks. This was completely closed last weekend and many of the signs, explaining what was sold in each, were removed. The reasoning behind this was probably partly to reduce rubbish, but I have to wonder if there was something more behind it. Who gets the rent from such shops and stalls? Anyway...

The campus was much cleaner for a couple of days, including the classrooms, which was nice, but it won't last, I'm sure. Excuse my cynicism, but the dirt and the filth is already creeping back, just days later. It would be nice if things were done all the time, not just because there was an inspection about to happen.

Oh, the chickens are back as well...

Exploring in the countryside

It's amazing where you can get to when you have your own transport. Here are some photos from last weekend's adventures.

Me and my moto

So, having gone through the tortuous process of getting a Chinese driving licence, buying a motorbike was relatively easy. (Of course it still took me about ten times as long as anyone else in this city - except my boyfriend!)

I went for a similar one to Rick's, but Haojue, a Chinese brand, rather than a Suzuki. I suspect things might drop off more easily than with his bike. I've taken it out to practise on a couple of weekends now. The first weekend we did two day trips, the second one quite long. I was absolutely exhausted!!! All went well except for dropping the bike a couple of times...

The first was in a small town / village where we'd stopped for lunch. I'd come to a halt behind Rick's bike and he was busy ordering some lunch. I went to put my stand down and thought that I'd been successful, so I let go of the weight of the bike. Sadly, the stand had obviously flipped back up again and so of course the bike started falling over. I hadn't expected this in the slightest and certainly couldn't support the weight of the bike myself!!! Rick was otherwise engaged and didn't realise at first what had happened, so it was actually some random Chinese man that helped me.

I was OK, apart from a developing bruise and lump on one ankle. My strongest feeling was one of embarrassment, but this also quickly gave way to pain and a bit of shock!!! Poor me.

Then, we took a short-cut which involved me doing my first bit of off-roading, something that I hadn't even thought about doing. It was fine, but at one point I had to go through a muddy bit, got a bit scared and suddenly the bike was on its side in the mud. Fortunately I was ready for it that time and got out of the way.

So, after that baptism of fire, I felt a bit more confident as we set off last weekend for Jinggangshan, home of revolutionary action. It was the May 1st holiday, so we took three days for the trip - one to go, one staying there and then another to come back. It was pretty successful, I think, though again I felt very tired. One reason is simply getting used to driving again and also getting used to riding a motorbike. Another is a feature of the roads here. Physically, lots of the roads are in bad repair - potholes etc. In addition, there are always hazards - people and / or animals drifting into the road, other drivers doing crazy and just plain dangerous things. It is certainly not for the faint-hearted.

This time I only dropped my bike once - going through a muddy puddle, skidding out the other side and drifting periliously close to a bushy hillside!! But I did refuse to go on the same short-cut on the way back...

Jinggangshan was nice, though much busier than last time. We didn't do that much while we were there, though we did visit the revolutionary museum, which had some captions in English. We also heard 'laowai' and 'waiguoren' [both words for 'foreigner'] about a million times. Lucky us! Not many foreigners make it to Jinggangshan - though we did spot a couple. Amazement on both sides there.

Last week I took my bike into the garage for its first service and oil-change. The people there were quite curious and (I like to think) impressed by where we'd been.

Teaching

I looked at my class as I tend to do just before I start teaching, and noticed a few faces that shouldn't be there. Not unfamiliar faces, but definitely not in the class they were normally in.

One student piped up, "Oh, we didn't have a class so we came to yours."

Yep, that's right. They voluntarily came to my class when they didn't have to be in class at all! It's things like that make me feel all warm inside...

Now I should really point out that what had happened was that students whot normally come to my Friday class had simply come to the Thursday class instead. They're all part of the same group, but split in half for my classes this semester. But still, they didn't have to come and they know they have a repeat class to look forward to this week (they didn't have class with me on Friday due to National Holiday - more of that later), but they still came.

I'm glad things like that happen. They remind that I do like teaching and that generally the students here are nice to teach. It's easy sometimes to get bogged down in the futility of teying to teach a class of 50-odd students (which some of mine are), dealing with dirty classrooms and faulty equipment and trying to motivate the many that simply don't want to be studying English. But at the same time I'm sure I can see improvement and I'm being asked questions more and more these days, which makes me very happy. So what if they laughed uproariously when I recounted tales of dropping my motorbike? (more of that later too!!) At least they were engaged, interesting and listening.

However, students feeling comfortable enough with me to ask questions also has its downsides. After nearly four years of English, I feel that my grasp of grammar is OK, but it's still often a case of knowing what's right but not knowing why. My students often bring exercises from horrendous multiple-choice grammar books asking why one answer is better than another. Sometimes it's even because they disagree with their other teacher's answer... Oh dear. I do my best, but I'm not sure how helpful I am.

The photos are from a talent contest thingy that some of my first year students held the other weekend.