1. Do you speak Chinese much?
Not as much as when I was a student. I speak
Chinese on a daily basis, mostly to get around; I’m the only expat at my school
who speaks enough to carry on a decent conversation. When I use Chinese at
work, I’m mostly instant messaging (QQ-ing) my colleagues at work. Their
English is good, but they tend to prefer when I answer in Chinese or help
translate, so I usually type Chinese to them.
2. How is your Chinese coming along?
Intellectually, my Chinese sucks. I really haven’t
had time to study Chinese like I did in school, so I haven’t really picked up
much vocabulary and have definitely forgotten some. On the upside, I’m really good at getting by in daily life now
and my listening comprehension isn’t bad.
3. How well do your students speak English?
It varies depending on the student. A couple of
students really struggle to understand me even when I keep the English pretty
basic, but those students are the ones who struggle in class, too. Some
students are pretty fluent, to the point where I keep forgetting that they don’t
know metaphors or slang and have to explain myself. Most of the time, the
students understand me best when I use basic English mixed with SAT words.
4. Did any get accepted by early action?
We don’t find out until early December. Don’t
worry, if we have any students accepted early action, I will be REALLY excited
and post it here.
5. Is it competitive to get into your
school?
Extremely. Most of my students have to get into
Tianyi High School first. Tianyi High School is one of the top schools in Wuxi
and a prominent school in Jiangsu Province. Tianyi usually only accepts students
with the highest Zhongkao (high school entrance exam) scores in Wuxi. After entering the school, I’m not sure about
the process for entering the AP program, but I do know that most of our
students score pretty well on the English exams in the regular Chinese
curriculum.
6. Are the kids there from prominent
families?
Most of them are children of wealthy or
influential people. Some of the parents are government cadres; others are
wealthy businessmen. Our AP program is very expensive, but we still have a few
students who are not from wealthy or prominent families.
7. Are any of your friends Chinese, or are they
all ex-pats?
I hang out mostly with expats like Claire, but I’m
friendly with some of the office staff and like to go out with them sometimes.
Phoebe and Sarah, our center coordinators, are really great people. Western
bars tend to have pretty high prices that often shut out the Chinese staff,
unfortunately.
8. Do you miss anything from home?
Yes! Mexican food. Lactaid milk. Bagels. Good bread.
The ocean. The mountains. Being able to speak English and be understood by
service people. Being able to find something in grocery stores. Knowing about
the quality of items…Let’s just say I’m a mite homesick right now. I miss the
US, but I really seriously miss California right now. I would be so happy to be
in LA or San Francisco for a couple of months.
9. What do you like best about being there?
I love being able to go shopping and find good
clothes for rather inexpensive prices. I get a good mix of Western and Chinese
food – yay xiaolongbao (soup dumplings)! I live across the street from where I
work, which means I need to leave about 10 minutes before work starts. I love
the view from my balcony, too! On clear days I can see for miles.
10. What is your daily routine?
7:05 am – turn on the heater because it’s cold!
7:15 am – scramble out of bed and into clothes,
snarf down some breakfast, out the door usually around 8 am
8:15-8:30 am – arrive at work
8:30-11:35 am – read essays, catch up on work,
organize work life
11:35 am – lunch (free at the school canteen!)
1:15 pm-5:15 pm – meet with students, read more
essays
5:15 pm – get off work (unless work is crazy,
which means I could say until 10 pm)
5:15-??? – go home, hang out, whatever is
happening that evening
11. Weekly routine?
Monday and Wednesday are random plans or “in”
nights, when we just all return home, maybe do a local dinner. On Tuesday we
(usually me, Dominique, Shaun, Claire, and Tim) go to Havana, an expat bar
downtown. Thursday is dumpling and maybe a movie night. Friday night we all go
out to [insert bar here]. On Saturday I usually hang out with Claire, go
shopping, or watch a movie during the day. Saturday nights are mostly
easygoing. Sundays are my “catch up on life” days. I do laundry and grocery
shopping most of the time.
12. What things about China make you laugh?
Most of you know that in LA I had some kind of
road rage. I have that here, too…because cars like to drive down the sidewalk
and ignore pedestrians and ridiculous stuff like that. Watching a car on the
sidewalk try to get down a curb is hilarious, especially if it’s something like
a Smart car.
There are a lot of small kids in China, especially
in my complex. A lot of them are completely adorable, though some of them are
shy. They nearly always put a smile on my face.
Sometimes the expat stories are hilarious, too.
One of the Dipont people I met at the very beginning, a counseling quality
manager who works in Ningbo, told us a story about how he gets stared at a lot
because he’s black. He said that one time he walked out of a restaurant to see
a small child peeing in the street (they do it all the time) and she just
stared at him like he was the weirdest thing she’d ever seen. His response? “You’re
staring at me like I’M weird…YOU’RE PEEING IN THE STREET!”
13. Are the bathrooms clean?
That really depends on the bathroom. The ones at
work aren’t bad; mine at home is as clean as I want it to be, except for the
sewage smell that never leaves. Public bathrooms should never be entered if you
dislike the smell of urine. Most bathrooms at restaurants and establishments
are at least bearable most of the time.
