Honestly, dear friends, I wish the Chinese government would make up its bloody mind. Either block WordPress permanently or release it permanently. I don’t think that’s too much to ask, but “this is China”.
Anyway, I just wanted to give you a little update since I haven’t written lately.
This semester has turned out to be really light since I was taken off of the IELTS and put on to the referencing. I’ll be working every day again when my navigation students come back from training, but I will still have a boatload of free time during the week. I picked up another class on Friday afternoons, an oral intensive. I was told it was another navigation group, but I was shocked to find a group of 13 girls when I walked into the room. Girls are supposedly not allowed to be navigation majors! They all had a “Oral English for Navigation Majors” text with them, though. Curious. They are like the boys in one regard: their English is so poor as to be almost nonexistent. The way the system works is that your major is determined by how well you do on the college entrance exam. They’re smart enough to escape vocational school, but get put into navigation because they aren’t good enough overall for any other major. These are the people they’re sending out into international waters, people. They’re graduating soon, so my advice to you is to stay away from the sea. I can only do so much for your safety in the less than 18 weeks I’m given.
The referencing class I taught in April lasted only three days (9 hours), but I needed SO much more!! I discovered that it’s not the “referencing” (I was was told that the students were not doing the bibliographic part of APA format correctly and that’s what I was hired to correct) that the students have a problem with. It’s the whole process. They have no idea how to evaluate resources. They have no idea how to analyze text. They have no idea how to pull out text for proper referencing and no idea what it should look like. They have no idea how to use their own words. No one has taught them any of this, and they are expected to pass in a master’s thesis to an international institution for review by the end of June in order to be awarded a master’s degree. Egad! I’m going to discuss a better plan for next semester and show an outline for a program that I think will solve these multiple problems. I’m also going to try to negotiate NOT having a camera in the room without my signing a release form first. They insisted on filming me the whole time (and y’all know how much I HATE having my picture taken, never mind having a roving eye watching my every move). I have no idea what they are going to do with it. Watch for me on YouTube. Oh, wait. YouTube is blocked by the Chinese government. It’ll end up somewhere on Bai Du maybe…
I did one fun thing since I last wrote. I finally got to the Forest Park Zoo. I will have some pictures up on Flickr. Not as many as I’d hoped, because I accidentally had the wrong picture card in. I could only take 40 pictures. Anyway, I was able to go with Sylvia and a new girl, Mary (Qian Qian). It was a lot of fun! I wasn’t really impressed by the animals so much. In fact there were two injured ones that were not being taken care of, everything looked dirty and there was no water for anyone in the heat. On the flip side, I did get a chance to ride a (dirty, uncombed) pony for 5 kwai. It was interesting navigating with a Chinese style saddle. There was also a dancing elephant show that was cool, with the audience allowed to participate. At one point, three people from the audience lay on the ground while an elephant massaged their stomachs. Something that would never happen at home, and I had to fight down the niggling animal rights thing in the back of my brain a few times because “this is China”. The park is actually split into two parts because there is a small mountain in between. We had to take the sky cable from one end to the other, which I loved. Sky cables are awesome!! I wish that the day was a bit more clear, because then I would have been able to see better views of the city, the sea and Bin Hai Lu. I think the thing that impressed me the most was the landscaping. The people there work really hard to make sure that certain parts of the place look great. I also loved the indoor habitats. There was one building that had different rooms for the tropics, the desert, etc. Really lovely and interesting. We arrived at the zoo just after breakfast and left to go to dinner. By the time we had gone through the whole thing, my Chinese girls were exhausted. I, on the other hand, could have done it all over again!
I am back on E-Harmony after a 2-year hiatus. I don’t know why I’m doing this again, since I only got to open communication with a total of 5 men and only got 1 date out of the entire 2 years I was on it the last time (7 matches a day x 365 days x 2 = do not want to know), other than it’s lowering my stress levels. China is a superb place to find a wife if you are a western male, but not the place to find a husband if you are a western female. This is a society where, if you’re over-30 and female, no one wants to marry you because you’re WAY too old. Chinese or western makes no difference (if you’re over 30 and male, there are no such restrictions). Divorce rates are at 50% and climbing now that it’s legal to do that here, which frees up men my age, but 90% of divorces are being brought by women. Women are generally long-suffering here, and the mood is that one takes what one gets and lives with it regardless. So the first question that comes to mind upon meeting a divorced Chinese man is, “What’s wrong with him?”. Something that would never immediately pop to my mind upon meeting a divorced western man. Also, it’s difficult to tell if a Chinese man is married or not because they don’t generally do the ring or any other sort of thing that indicates that he’s off the market. Chinese men here are also notorious for trying to get a little secret nookie on the side before returning home to their wives and children (only after the child is born. Once a son is born, they completely lose interest in their wives.). Chinese or western nookie makes no difference. Anyway, this is my online, universal Internet love howl: If you know any men looking for love, marriage and babies, send them my info.
