When I bought my plane ticket a couple
of weeks ago things changed for me a bit more than I thought they
were going to. It's a really strange thing, as soon as I knew that I
was leaving, my attitude toward this place shifted almost overnight.
Before I knew I was taking a United flight out of Shanghai at 4:30 PM
on January 11th, I thought that I had finally found an odd
contentedness here that could sustain me through the end of the year.
We had met a bunch of new people, and things seemed pretty alright.
However, today... China annoys the hell out of me.
I'm going to start my story with this
morning, but it goes earlier than that. You see, my morning started
out with a twist. As I got out of the shower around 9 AM, I heard a
knock at my door. I yelled to wait while I put pants on, thinking it
was one of us, but it was a student. He opened the door, catching me
halfway through putting my underwear on. This left him oddly unfazed.
He came back later and talked at me in a language that sounded like
English, but I'm not sure. The thing is, this isn't the first odd
run-in I've had with him. Last week he tried to drag me out to lunch
with him, which I had to turn down because I had a meeting. Then he
barged in while we were watching The Last Waltz and told, not asked,
Miles and me that we were going to Beijing with him in three days,
and then to Wenzhou, where his father owns a sofa factory. We
refused. Now he just shows up at my door, talks at me, and then
leaves. I kinda want to strangle him. He wants us to help him to go
to USA, so that he could live in New York and be the next Steve Jobs,
and he thinks that we somehow have significant pull at higher
learning institutions. I can't tell if his pushy optimism was him
being a teenager, or what I should expect from the new generation of
Chinese kids. Time will tell, I guess. Other random encounters have
been frustrating, but they're scattered at best.
Time with the ex-pats has been great,
and thanksgiving was as wonderful of a time as any of us could have
hoped for. Nic cooked from 6 AM until 4 PM, making almost every
thanksgiving staple you could think of. I made my mom's potato salad,
and it was beloved by all, despite the awful Chinese mayo. Every
American in the area came out, including the Mormon high school
graduates on a mission trip that are teaching in a school way further
out there than ours. They were as goony as you'd expect 18 year old
Mormons to be, but they were good company, and the usual ex-pat
suspects were there, along with a smattering of Chinese students, and
we ate and drank, and spent the evening teaching the Chinese girls
American drinking games. They were awful at Categories.
The next morning I woke up, vomited,
and chalked it up to drinking shitty Chinese beer all day. However, I
soon discovered that beer was not the issue, as my fever spiked after
puking. I tried to keep down a vitamin water, but I wound up puking
up a little blood. After that, I slept most of the day, and most of
the next, although by Monday I was able to keep things down. The
blood only happened once, and I didn't do anything about it, because
there is no place I want to be less than a Chinese hospital. Ish's
adventures are living proof of that. By Tuesday I was fine. Let's
hope that's the last time that happens.
I'd like to close by getting angry
about CSETC again. Annie came for a meeting last Wednesday, and Irene
was here on Monday. I missed the Monday meeting because I was dying
at the time, but if it was like the meeting with Annie, it was
unproductive at best. We rattled off our laundry list of complaints
and problems, and were met with the same side-stepping and buck
passing as always. Sometimes they say they're going to fix things,
but they don't seem to understand that trust is something that you
have to earn from us, and they have failed at earning any during our
time here. I've seen no actual changes from the organization, and I
doubt I will. They're trying desperately hard to get Miles to go to
Beijing, and the other three teachers found out why on Monday. CSETC
used to be a government organization, but they've had their funding
cut, so they're teachers running a business on our white faces, and
calling it something else. They also seem to be having cash flow
problems, and so they're getting desperate. Two other CSB/SJU
students decided not to come next semester, and CSETC sent them and
email two days ago saying that everything was fixed, and that “we
really need you help”. Our experience suffers because of it, and I
can't imagine what's going to happen next semester, when all but
three of the current teachers go home.
I'll get to writing about Guangzhou
when I feel like it, ok?
36 days until my contract is up, 41
until I'm home,
-Cooper
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