In the interest of honesty and transperency, I have included my letter from July 10th. It's a bleak letter, and things have gotten slightly better, so don't let it alarm you too much.
July 10th
Hey everyone! As you're aware, we are not exacty where we had expected to be, pr in the kind of conditions that we would have wanted, and things just kinda keep getting worse. All of the teachers that we are teaching know even less English than we thought they would, and that's cause everyone to more or less scrap their lesson plans for the trip, and we're more or less improvising everything that we're teaching. I haven't showered for three days now, and the roof of the shower caved in overnight. This means that my lack of showering is no longer a personal choice, and may become a health concern before the trip is over. There is't potable water, and bottled water is hard to find. There's no store to go to anywhere near here, and even if there was, we wouldn't be able to go. Why? Well, the police came last night and said that we should do everything we can to not make our presence known. The school generally isn't open in summer, and if the locas found out that there were foreigners here, they would probably try to rob/murder us, which is a huge bummer. None of the staff members from CSETC knew it was going to be like this, and Bonnie, the woman who is on our trip, cried yesterday because of how bad/unexpected things are. Want to know what the real kicker is? I was talking to my TA yesterday, and she's under the impression that the camp in Inner Mongolia is going to be even worse, a concept that none of us can even begin to fathom. We're holding a meeting tonight to figure out what to do about this, and there's talk of some kind of mutiny in the air in the dorms. I'm pretty certain that they're completely in violation of their contract right now, so that's an option. My major worry is that if they didn't know and sent us into this, what will happen when I get my teaching assignment? Nobody knows anything, and that only makes it worse. I feel bad for Bonnie. She means so wel in everything that she does, and she's trying herdamndest to make things better. We have two nice watermellons sitting in our room thanks to her, but nothing to cut them with. We'll figure that out tonight. I pooped into a hole today, and it went better than I expected. Expect similarily depressing e-mails until the situation improves. I drempt about home last night lying on a bamboo mat, and I woke up wishing I could contract malaria to give myself a way out of Hebei provience. I've spend much of today trying to think of ways to get a discharge from the program, so it's kind of like I'm in the army. I miss all of you so much.
-Cooper
July 11th
Happy birthday, Bea! I wish I could be there to celebrate. Eat more cake for me! We're back at camp, and I'm currently on my overly long lunch break. Being able to stay at the hotel for a night was nice, but all it really did for me was miss not being here even more. I contacted Julie at the internship office, and she responded quite quickly, I'm going to work with her via e-mail to see what our options are. At the very least I've decided that I'm going to switch to a one semester contract no matter what, as it will keep me from having to go do summer camps again, and apparently they're just fine with switching, so I'm going to be home sooner than a year. It's been a hard choice for me to make, as it feels like I'm kind of failing at what I came here to do, but it's a good example of how much things suck around here. We're going to hold off on making any other decisions until we see how things are in Inner Mongolia. We always say that it can't get worse, and yet it always seems to. It's not that any of us are not enjoying the experence, every point of my trip outside of our bizarre imprisonment in The Compound as we've been calling it, has been amazing, and I wouldn't trade it for the world. I just don't trust the program anymore, and I'd rather not have to go through something like this again. Logan had an interesting observation yesterday: we're here as status symbols, not as teachers. We're their sports cars. Everyone at the school loves to take their photos with us, and they kind of parade us around like trophies, it's really strange. Teaching keeps getting easier, although I'm teaching nothing of what I wanted to. I taught them how to ask questions today, that's the level they're at. We have three more days, and then it's off to Inner Mongolia, where they haven't told us what city we're going to, which makes me pretty nervous. There was more gunfire this morning, or at least it richochets around the empty buildings like gunfire, I doubt I'll even know what it is, but I also don't really want to know. We'll see how Inner Mongolia is. I love you guys.
-Cooper
July 12th
Hey everyone! Morale around here has improved significantly, and classes are going better than I had expected. The improvement in morale can be attributed to the slow effects of time wearing down our defenses to the absurd, and the fact that the gatekeeper has decided that selling ice cream and cold water out of his house would be a great business decision. He was completely right. I taught my students about American music today, and they were very responsive. I played Down in the Flood by the Derek Trucks Band, Midnight Moonlight by Old and In the Way, Giant Steps by John Coltrane, Let it Ride by Ryan Adams, and Rocks Off by The Rolling Stones. Every song was enjoyed, although the most popular was Ryan Adams by a wide margin. One middle aged teacher said that it was sweet and beautiful, which is a compliment that I wish I could send him. The schedule for this camp keeps changing. Now we're doing the closing ceremony in the morning of the 14th, which means I have to teach less. A plus! The bad part is that it's all for a bunch of local Communist Party officials, which means there's going to be photos of me with them, so I can no longer run for president. Teaching continues to get easier, and Bonnie's doing her best to keep spirits up. The food here is way better than in Beijing, and I think I might actually be gaining weight, which is odd. There were flashlights in the trees last night, and everyone got a little freaked out, but nothing bad happened. My students asked a lot of questions about family yesterday, and I almost cried thinking about missing Bea's birthday more than once. I was also asked repeatedly if I have a girlfriend, I think I may start lying about that one. We got word last night from the head of CSETC that this camp should be as bad as it gets, but because of the word should, I'm skeptical. Got an e-mail back from the Internship office telling us to suck it up. I'm not sure they know how bad it once was here. Oh well, we just have three more days, and then it's off on another train adventure! I figured out how to get my laptop up on the Internet, so expect more photos from here tomorrow, when I'll grab my camera cable out of my bag. Things seem to be better, so worry less! We'll see how Inner Mongolia is when we get there.
-Cooper
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