At First Glance

Taking a break in Labor Park
Dalian, China

Temple at Zhongshan Park
Dalian, China

Modern China meets Ancient China, Labor Park
(They're sure to have several more meetings)
Dalian, China

Xinghai Park
Dalian, China

So word on the street is that I (Corey) am actually in China as well even though this is my first post from the 'DMZ'. Life has been pretty good, and surely never lacking in interesting and different ways of doing things but what I'm here to post about is a too long necessary foray into some photography. So without further ado... pictures!

Whippin' the top, Labor Park
Dalian, China

Skating the rings at Olympic Square
Dalian, China

A helping hand, Olympic Square
Dalian, China

Catch ya soon, Corey :)

Pimp Your Foreigner

I'm signed to a 20 hour a week contract, so when classes of mine are cancelled due to no one showing up, I tend to sit around the teachers room doing nothing. If I'm feeling inspired, I'll write something here... or maybe even do a lesson plan or two.

All that (sort of) changed when last night I was informed by one of the other Foreign Teachers that since I was being paid for hours I wasn't working, I was to be put on promotional detail.

I didn't really know what that meant, but I was up for anything.

Turns out what it means is that I stand outside a competing school with two of the Chinese Teachers, and we all hand out fliers that let parents know that our school has way more English lessons than the more expensive one their tykes are in.

I know... minimal... Chinese, so I couldn't actually talk up the school to any of the parents, but I knew before I even went out that that wasn't why I was there. I was being (and will continue to be) paraded around so the parents could see: LOOK!! WE HAVE REAL LIVE FOREIGNERS!!!

It's actually really funny.

Also funny was running into other solicitors when we changed our location to in front of a heavily trafficked supermarket. The funny part was that he was handing out brochures of some sort for one of the city's hospitals. I never knew that hospitals had to resort to guerrilla marketing like that.

All in all, it was fun being on show I guess. Kinda cold, but... uhh... strangely flattering. Very strangely.

- Shawn

I Want to Be A Model Citizen...

Last week after finishing my classes on Sunday evening, I walked into the teacher's room to see Corey hard at work with one of my students and his parents. After some prying, I found out that the kid was going to be recording a song in English. The song, called "I Want to Be a Modern Citizen", was written by a Chinese composer so there were some English errors.

The parents quickly roped me into the correcting, and before long we butchered up the flow of the song in favor of grammatical correctness.

What'd we know?

This week, the kid came back with his mom in tow. I guess our (really Corey's) corrections made a strong impression. The song's composer wanted a picture of the foreigners that fixed his song with the student that would sing it.

On principle, I refused to take any picture until the kid sang us all the song. And sing he did. I was actually surprised... it sounded really good, and it flowed nicely, even though the words shouldn't have matched up with the melody.

We done good.

And the kid and the composer got their picture.



Here's to making waves in China,

- Shawn

A Hilarious Abuse of Power

Can't believe I forgot to write about this one... I mean, it was the same class that the previous post was about.

See here in China, it's April Fools Day. I mean, not all the Chinese know it... but uhhh... close enough.

Kids that come to our school come on the weekends, and during their free time during the week. We are the closest thing many of them have to a "break".

Louis, my Chinese Teacher for my level C7 class and I decided to pull a small tiny trick on the kids. We walked in, and told them there was no class. Louis said he had to go, and I told him I'll catch up with him after I give the class their homework for next week. I piled on a lot of work, and then peaced out of the classroom. We both waited in the hallway as we heard the confused "nigggaaaas..." inside. They got dressed, and then walked out the door. Where we were waiting telling them that we were just kidding.

They were confused, but one quick explanation of April Fools Day later, class resumed.

Now that I think about it... that was a damn mean thing to do. We just raised and quickly crushed their little hopes of having class and school-free time. Oh so precious freedom was in sight, and then snatched away by the big bad teachers with an evil sense of humor.

But I mean... it was kind of funny, and they got over it anyway. Not like they'd know what to do with the time anyways.

Yes, that was meant to be sad and tragic right there.

Happy April 1st.

- Shawn

A Delicious Abuse of Power

So I broke one of the cardinal rules of teaching at Future School today. But if it works out, it'll be totally worth it.

As part of the immersive English teaching philosophy (TM), we are supposed to discourage our kids from relying on their Chinese, and make them speak in English as much as possible. We're trained to come up with creative "punishments" for Chinese being spoken in class when not necessary for instructions or something of the like.

But I threw all of that out today because the chapter I was covering dealt with recommending food.

I went ahead and told them to recommend me delicious Chinese dishes in Chinese. It wasn't all bad... the English form was there: I recommend/suggest ________ (insert strange Chinese dish).

And I mean, I made them try and translate it for me into English afterwards anyway. I also doubled my no Chinese strictness for the rest of the lesson. Made the little dudes and dudettes sing the class a song if they spoke too much. They hated it. I loved it - especially when one of them broke into Chinese Hip Hop.

Basically, all of the Foreign Teachers have been relying on a tattered piece of paper I have in my wallet that I got on our second day here. I'm sure I've written about it before. Now, we've got two - and some strange new food to try: like celery and lilly. Apparently you eat the lilly and it's delicious. I'll let you know.

Some might call it an abuse of power. I call it a necessary evil.

And probably an abuse of power at that. Ah well, at least I'll be well fed.

On another note, this is the first of many school related stories that you'll be able to find here under the label of "Look Into The Future". Ominous and misleading, I know.

I actually have another great school related story that I'll post real soon, I just need to get home and put a picture on the computer because it's quite necessary for the full effect of the story.

And remember... don't tell anyone about this, or I won't tell you how to order celery and lilly!

- S