One of the most difficult things to get used to here is the food. Overall, the food is fine and meals tend to consist of rice or noodles with some kind of vegetable, meat and sauce. In their homes, people use a hot plate and a microwave for cooking. There are no ovens as Chinese people do not bake. That being said, I am missing baked goods from home like the treats my mom used to cook for me: muffins, breads, bars, cookies, brownies, pies, cakes etc. If you know me, you know that I have a huge sweet tooth and love anything with sugar so almost completely cutting out desserts here has been a bit impossible. I have turned to Oreos and the occasional Dove or Snickers bar (some of a few foreign items available but expensive).


Today Sean and I attempted to make brownies in my toaster oven. Sean found a brownie mix in the city in a large supermarket that carries a few imported goods. We were excited to try them but for a long time could not find a small pan for baking. You cannot buy measuring cups, cookie sheets, spatulas, vanilla extract, non-stick spray, muffin tins and brownie pans here. We had reached a dead-end and had no more ideas. Fortunately one day while searching for a broom at an odd supermarket close to school we found a small circle plate/pan. If Sean remembers correctly I squealed and jumped up and down in the aisle. After acquiring some measuring cups from another foreign teacher and doing some conversions to see how much mix we should use, we were ready to bake.


I mixed up all of the ingredients in our microwave rice cooker which is now doubling as a mixing bowl. I was especially careful not to spill anything as this was precious brownie mix. We popped the pan into the toaster oven and the next 35 minutes were filled with anxious waiting, fork testing and doubtful peering into the steamy appliance. Though I think we overcooked them a bit (apparently brownie-baking using circle pans in foreign toaster ovens is not an exact science), they turned out great and after testing them, sharing them with some neighbors and "testing" them again they were gone.


It was a great day for brownies =)

So far teaching is going great. Overall, the students are eager to learn, their English skills are good and they pay attention in class. It is fun having the freedom to teach whatever I want and to design the class however I please. Here's a taste of what we have covered so far:

Week 1: Greetings, Introductions, Getting to Know you, Explanation of class etc.
Week 2: How to make "Small Talk" in the U.S. When, where, with who and topics to avoid
Week 3: How would you describe yourself? Personality tests and fortune telling with the Zodiac
Week 4: Active listening as an English speaker - How to say the right things to keep the conversation moving
Week 5: (rough draft) Professions and Careers - Acing an interview at a mock job fair

If you have any ideas for class that would spark conversation, provoke problem-solving and critical thinking and shed some light on popular U.S. culture I am all ears!


However, there are some things that surprise me about teaching at Jiangsu Teachers University of Technology such as:

1. Most of my students are girls because careers like education and interpretation are considered jobs for women. Most men study science, math and engineering.

2. Sometimes the students get up and erase the board for me during a break in the class. The first time I literally watched open-mouthed (never has an OSU student erased the board for me on his own volition) as the student carefully cleared the chalkboard of my English scratchings.

3. The students giggle and laugh hysterically if anything is mentioned about relationships, the opposite sex, dating, marriage or having children. Other teachers here have calculated their emotional maturity to be that of students in high school (and I agree).

4. It is a constant struggle to get students to volunteer in class, ask questions and think for themselves rather than simply side with the group or spit out an answer that they have been trained to repeat instead of critically thinking. Thus, lesson planning often involves new ways to "trick" them into thinking about things in new ways or force some imagination or creativity.

5. The students study and work a lot. Most of them are in class for over 24 hours a week and do loads of homework on top of that. That being said, there is not much to do on campus besides study, play a few sports, eat at the cafeteria and maybe obtain a part-time job.

6. The students all have the same classes together for all four years and are usually roommates to boot. This means that they move as a cohort all the time and know each other very well. Thus, my go-to stack of ice-breakers and get-to-know-you activities are rather pointless.

7. Some students randomly give me gifts. Yesterday I received some moon cake from a student named Edison and today a student gave me some traditional candy from her hometown of Suzhou.

8. Most of my students study an additional foreign language like French, Japanese or German. Since they can already speak Mandarin (the national dialect), the dialect of their own city and English, by the end of their four years many will be proficiently multilingual.

9. In every class there is a class monitor who takes attendance and gives announcements to the class. If I ever assign homework, the class monitor always has it collected in a pile for me before class.

10. The students have all chosen English names which is a huge help considering remembering and pronouncing their Chinese names seems impossible. The funny thing is their names are often very creative, unusual and just plain amusing. Have a look at a few:

Cabbage, Dandelion, Monkey, Simple, Doris, Cookie, Scollop, Miley, Avril, Eunice, Penny, Trina, Fiona, Angelina, Jefferson, Edison, Vivian, Sunny, Season, Daisy, Apple, Moon, Sky, Dolphin, Candy, Sheep, Blue, Rabbit, Lucky Lou, Lanky, Eagle, Twinkle Star (male), Sunjolly, Happy and Rainy

After walking around in the neighborhood we toured the cotton and rice fields. Zhao Min showed us how to pick cotton as she used to do it as a little girl. Her aunt (pictured above) still works in the fields now whereas Zhao Min works as a translator in a packaging business. One of their latest projects was making the bags for Abercrombie and Fitch.













Here are some shots of Zhao Min's house: the roof, a bedroom, the kitchen and the bathroom.








Before we ate dinner, Zhao Min and her mom picked some Chinese cabbage and scallions to be used in some of the dishes. Then we dined on a feast of food like chicken, pork, rice, potatoes, wax gourd, beans, edamame, pea pods and several other things that I didn't know the name of. Sean and I filled up very quickly but to show hospitality and to help us with our pathetic chopstick skills the family kept piling up several new heaps of food on our plate. As Ken says, Chinese hospitality can be exhausting because after a weekend of being treated like royalty your face hurts from smiling and saying thank you and you are so full you can barely move.










We also made a new friend who we found dozing in the cotton, can you find him?

Noshing on chicken feet. Moon cake. Karaoke. Throngs of impatient people. Shaved rabbits. Cotton plants. Unlimited amounts of cousins. Eel traps. An industrial park. Incessant fireworks.

What do the former have in common? They can all be experienced during Autumn Festival weekend in rural China.



Thursday: Lunch out with family, visit to Zhao Min's neighborhood in the country, walking tour of rice and cotton fields, dinner with extended family at Zhao Min's house (traditional National Day meal)

Friday: Traditional Autumn Festival lunch with family, billiards with family, basketball with family and friends, dinner at a fancy restaurant, karaoke in a private room

Saturday: Lunch at KFC, excursion to Da Feng's industrial park/port on the ocean, shopping/walking around town, street food and beer for dinner, hanging out at a tea house in the evening

Sunday: Lunch with Zhao Min, her sister and her brother-in-law, bus ride home to Changzhou

The two things that were most memorable about this trip were the incredible hospitality of the Chinese people - they seemed like they wanted to feed us until couldn't walk anymore and the culture/environment of a rural lifestyle compared to how the people live in a bigger city like Changzhou. It was a really fun vacation and Sean and I are already talking about what types of western food we can cook for Zhao Min (pancakes, french toast, grilled cheese....).

These are pictures of the celebration at our school - there was music, singing, dancing and speeches (none of which we understood)

All of the students are excited because there are no classes this Thursday and Friday in honor of National Day. National Day of the People's Republic of China (PRC) is celebrated every year on October 1 and is considered one of the most important public holidays (the other big holiday is Spring Festival or the Chinese New Year in January or Februray).

The PRC was founded on October 1, 1949 so this year the festivities will be especially grandiose as it will be the 60th anniversary. The busiest and most crazy part of the country will be in Beijing in Tienanmen Square as this is where the original ceremony took place in 1949. This year there will be parades, speeches, concerts, fireworks and many other government-sponsored activities and festivities. Beijing will be decked out in full patriotic display with portraits of many leaders shown around town.

I asked my students today what they were planning on doing for the holiday and most of them are going home to spend time with their families. Sean and I are excited because a recent graduate of the university invited us home with her to stay with her and her family for the holiday. Her home is in a more rural part of the province and it will be interesting to be able to stay with an actual Chinese family and hang out with a student for the weekend.

I don't think I will have access to the internet for the next couple of days so I'll see you again on Sunday or Monday!

Many new English teachers come to China with the hopes of learning some Mandarin and I am no different. One of the most common ways to learn the language here is to find students willing to help you learn Chinese. This has been an interesting process because of the cultural differences that have surfaced. Chinese students have been taught from a young age to respect and value their teachers and their English teachers are no exception. To them it is an honor to have the opportunity to help a foreign teacher and they don't even expect to receive payment. During my first week of classes I put my email on the board and asked students interested in tutoring me to send me an email. Here are some of the responses I received: