Also, here's a PODCAST
Tuesday I had my first REAL altercation with a student as a teacher. After telling a student politely to close a book she wasn't supposed to be reading in class 3 times, and then again two more times after she took it out again a couple minutes later, I told her she would be getting a yellow card. A yellow card is similar to what you would get in a soccer match. It's a strong warning and isn't handled lightly. I think I've given out one yellow card besides this one all year. There is also an orange card, which is the same asa red card, but we changed it to orange because someone decided that the negative connotations that went along with a "red" card might not be appreciated in a communist country. Later this student started cursing about me in Chinese under her breath and I told her she was working her way towards a yellow card if she kept it up. Finally, as I was giving the rest of the class their assigment I said the sentence "what do you want to do?" to which she said under her breath in english "Kill teacher." At this point I told her to leave the classroom. When she didn't move I moved her backpack into the hall for her. Still no movement, just glaring. Now, this is an emotional girl. She is very bright, and very passionate about learning, and some of us think she may be bi-polar. At any rate, this was not the first time we've had a disagreement. We usually get along well enough, but for some reason, tuesday was not a good day for either of us. Eventually class ended with her not moving. The rest of the students got up to leave and she didn't move. Then she started yelling about how it was unfair for me to give her a card for swearing in Chinese when other students do it all the time. She yelled about a lot of other things too. She flung her books off the table and almost took out my keyboard and the school's amplifier. In short, she threw one hell of a tantrum. Crying and all. While of course this wasn't fun at all, my favorite moment of the situation was when she yelled "SO JUST BECAUSE YOU ARE TEACHER I HAVE TO LISTEN TO YOU??!??!?!?" and I said, "Well, yes. That's exactly how it works." It all ended with her glaring at me and breathing really heavily, much like a small child would do, and telling me that she hated me and so did all of the students. So that was tuesday.
Sunday, I played basketball outside since it was about 78 degrees and sunny. It was great. I played with my friends from Cornell (side note: I realized recently that my core group of friends almost all went to Ivy league schools. There are 4 from Cornell, two from Brown, and one from Yale. Then there's a Korean American dude who went to some UC school. Anyways, I every once in a while I think about it and it strikes me as odd. Also, I'm the only one of us that hasn't studied any Chinese at all). Highlights from basketball were playing against an all Chinese team who were pretty decent and had a guy on their team who was taller than me and at least 40 pounds heavier of all muscle. This may be the biggest Chinese person I've ever seen. Also, his Chinese name translates to english as Sea Breeze, so that's what we call him. Anyways, the dude can post up like no bodies business, but I did manage to block the hell out of him a couple times, and it felt amazing. Anyways, after playing, there was a really nerdy guy who had tried to join who honestly had no business being there. I'm usually not one to judge to hard, and as a teacher part of me always wants to allow everyone to participate, but this guy was way out of his league. He was terrible. I felt bad for him......until we tried to leave. As we were trying to leave he was holding my friend Hamm's ball and wouldn't give it back. Apparently this other guy who had been playing with us took this Chinese guys ball, which of course had nothing to do with us because we hardly know the other guy, but since he's white like us this Chinese guy assumed we were in this theft together. So, a conversation ensued along the lines of this:
Hamm: Give me my ball
Nerdy Chinese Dude: No, he took my ball
Hamm: I don't care, I did not steal your ball. Give me MY ball.
NCD: No, he stole my ball
Hamm: Look, I'll give you Doug's number so you can call him and sort this out, but I havenothing to do with this so give me my ball
NCD: No, he took my ball
Hamm: Give me my f****ng ball!
It went on like this for a while. At some point Hamm took his ball from NCD and as we started to leave NCD threatened to call the police on us, so we told him to go right ahead. He did. As he was talking to the police and we kept walking her realized this wasn't going to turn out the way he wanted, so he finally had a rational thought and decided to take Doug's number. In the end, he ended up going to Doug's apartment with a police officer to get his basketball back. Fucking China.
Ok, those were my couple hilarious/ridiculous/infuriating moments in China as of late. I just loaded up some pictures taken over the last couple months from my sweet new camera. So here's a few to give you an idea of what life is kind of like for me here in Beijing.
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