A few weeks ago, the monitor of my Spanish class came to me with a request, and a request with a preamble. When a request has a preamble, you know you have to accede or lose serious face and damage your relationship with that person. The request was to come to an English school a teacher at our school is connected with, to teach the children some English. If I had any foreign friends, could some of them also come too, please. We negotiated the date and time to something manageable for me, and it ended up being this afternoon. My friend Mandy agreed to accompany me on this adventure.
It started off with finding Luis (Spanish class monitor) and his girlfriend Coco (flight attendant major) close to where we meet on Sundays. I love both Luis and Coco, both so sweet, but when I meet them together I don't know what to do since my relationship with Luis is strictly in Spanish, and Coco only knows some English, and my Chinese often isn't up to snuff, so someone is always being left out of the conversation linguistically. Then Mandy (English speaking only) was also along with us, so the conversation ended up being me and Luis speaking Spanish, and me translating to English for Mandy and Luis translating into Chinese for Coco, with a bit of interaction in English between Coco, Mandy, and me.
After a few minutes of waiting, our ride came. A black SUV, very nice. We hopped into this stranger's car (ignoring all the rules we had learned as children) and off we went.
I had prepared some lesson ideas, not knowing what was expected of me, but all that turned out to be needless. When we arrived at the school, it was set up into different game rooms, with the Chinese teachers dressed up in pseudo Santa costumes (one had a scary white beard, others white hair with braids, all red flannel outfits with Santa hats) and a dragon mascot in a Santa costume walking around. Our participation consisted of going into the game rooms and doing a few of the games with the kids. I did a three-legged race with a five year old (poor kid) and both Mandy and I did a sack race (where you jump with your legs in the bag) with some small Chinese children. Then there were some performances (including an acappella rendition of Joy to the World by Mandy and me) and then some food and then we were done.
We were thanked for our participation with a red envelope (containing a bit of money) and a request to see if any of our friends wanted a job at this place. I promised I'd ask--anyone reading this want an obscure English-teaching job in an obscure Chinese city with colleagues who speak almost no English? I can tell you where there are openings, let me know!!! Then after a lot of negotiation we were driven back to school in the same black SUV.
Aside from feeling somewhat used for my appearance and nationality, it was a very interesting view into life, and of course translating Luis' Spanish translations from Chinese into English made for entertainment for us all. Ah, the randomness life can be here in China!
It started off with finding Luis (Spanish class monitor) and his girlfriend Coco (flight attendant major) close to where we meet on Sundays. I love both Luis and Coco, both so sweet, but when I meet them together I don't know what to do since my relationship with Luis is strictly in Spanish, and Coco only knows some English, and my Chinese often isn't up to snuff, so someone is always being left out of the conversation linguistically. Then Mandy (English speaking only) was also along with us, so the conversation ended up being me and Luis speaking Spanish, and me translating to English for Mandy and Luis translating into Chinese for Coco, with a bit of interaction in English between Coco, Mandy, and me.
After a few minutes of waiting, our ride came. A black SUV, very nice. We hopped into this stranger's car (ignoring all the rules we had learned as children) and off we went.
I had prepared some lesson ideas, not knowing what was expected of me, but all that turned out to be needless. When we arrived at the school, it was set up into different game rooms, with the Chinese teachers dressed up in pseudo Santa costumes (one had a scary white beard, others white hair with braids, all red flannel outfits with Santa hats) and a dragon mascot in a Santa costume walking around. Our participation consisted of going into the game rooms and doing a few of the games with the kids. I did a three-legged race with a five year old (poor kid) and both Mandy and I did a sack race (where you jump with your legs in the bag) with some small Chinese children. Then there were some performances (including an acappella rendition of Joy to the World by Mandy and me) and then some food and then we were done.
We were thanked for our participation with a red envelope (containing a bit of money) and a request to see if any of our friends wanted a job at this place. I promised I'd ask--anyone reading this want an obscure English-teaching job in an obscure Chinese city with colleagues who speak almost no English? I can tell you where there are openings, let me know!!! Then after a lot of negotiation we were driven back to school in the same black SUV.
Aside from feeling somewhat used for my appearance and nationality, it was a very interesting view into life, and of course translating Luis' Spanish translations from Chinese into English made for entertainment for us all. Ah, the randomness life can be here in China!
