Puberty: Even Worse in China

I said to Scott today that nothing has made me want to get a desk job more than teaching here, and it's something I stand by, at least right now. I'm teaching a group of 14 Chinese middle school students, and it seems to be nearly impossible to get through to them. At some points I just feel like I'm talking to a bunch of small, fleshy walls, with no real goals or direction, and I can't imagine doing this for a whole year. It might just be the camps that we're doing, where I get to spend no more than nine days with any given group of kids, and am given no real instruction other than to teach, and no way to gauge progress or how much attention the kids are paying. Stability and grades might be a big help. But even then, I think that I really need to have a concrete way to measure progress in the work that I do. If things continue the way that they do, I might switch from trying to teach to simply trying to amuse the kids and count down the days until the camp is over. I hope it doesn't come to that, but we're already planning for it.

We're with some different people from CSETC on this trip, folks that have been in China for 6 months, and it's been really interesting to get their view on things. Turns out the program is kind of a front for all kinds of government graft, and there's a restaurant on campus that is more or less a money laundering front. We get paid what we do in cash because it's the maximum amount they can pay us without reporting it for taxes, which I'd be completely fine with if foreigners didn't need a pay stub to change RMB into dollars. This may be a problem later. There's all kinds of other stuff that makes me trust the program even less, but it's all minor. If anything big comes out, you'll know about it.

Other than that, it's been raining here all day, so we get to do the Price is Right for the afternoon activity, and I get to be Bob Barker again. The internet's up in my room, so if anyone wants to Skype, I can do it in the morning.

Remember to spay or neuter your pets,

-Cooper