A Day In The Life...

I thought I would share what a typical day is like for me here at DaJing.  Of course, this isn't counting the fun excursions I take when I sneak off campus!  I just mean the daily life of the school here.  About 100 students are boarders here, but they all go home on weekends, which means right now the dorm is very quiet.

Every day, the alarm goes off in the dorm at 6 AM.  It's a long military marching song that goes on and on, with bugles and drums.  It cracks me up every time.  The kids all stumble out of bed, have a quick wash, and run down to breakfast so they can start studying by 7.  I take a little bit longer because I have to have my "quiet time" with meditation and often some yoga (yes, Suzanne, I even brought my yoga mat with me to Shanghai!) before going down to breakfast.

Here is my typical breakfast.  Hard boiled egg, sometimes some soup, hot soy milk (not shown), rice porridge which I put those pickled carrots and peppers in and then eat with chopsticks (mmm so delicious), usually some kind of bun with meat or vegetables in it, and that container of milk, which sometimes people save for later in the morning.  I really like the porridge.  I think it's just rice that you add extra water to and boil a lot (that's what some of the teachers said).  With that, I walk over to the school and check out the morning exercises.

This is one of my favorite things to watch - hundreds of kids, all doing synchronized calisthenics to music coming over the loudspeaker. The students do a lot of exercise in between all the studying and cramming for exams, and I guess they need it!  I wish we could do something like this at Northwest, but I don't think we are as co-ordinated as they are.  They also have these really cool eye exercises they do at 10 AM every day.

The morning is spent either teaching or observing classes.  I like to work in my office, high on the 14th floor.  

 I like the way it says, "Foreign Teacher's Office." DaJing is a very internationally flavored school, and they love to have foreign visitors, both teachers and students.  Shanghai itself has a history of being open to foreign ways - of course, at first it was by force, because of the Opium Wars, but they made the best of it and there were several schools founded at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries by Chinese teachers who wanted to incorporate some western methods and materials.

I spend time here making up my lesson plans, grading papers and reading the textbooks (which are pretty dumb, just between you and me).  I usually get my own materials instead of using the textbooks because I can't stand them.  I did use one story for one lesson - it's about this girl named Katie who is about to offer an old man her seat on the bus, when this other girl jumps up and offers the man her seat instead.  But then, when the bus screeches to a stop to avoid a cyclist, the girl (who has been standing up) falls over and Katie sees that she has A WOODEN LEG!  Not a prosthetic limb, an artificial leg, but a wooden leg, like a pirate!  Arrr!  Katie is amazed and murmurs, "But...your leg!  You gave your seat up and you have a ... a wooden leg!"  The girl cheerfully replies that the wooden leg has been a part of her for a long time and she doesn't mind.  Katie spends the rest of the bus ride thinking about how brave and selfless the girl with the wooden leg is.  That is the kind of story you have to read if you are learning English at DaJing.

There are all sorts of bells that go off in between classes, but they are not bells, exactly.  They are different songs to indicate that class is about to be over, and then class is about to begin.  Some of the musical selections are the Triumphal March from Aida, the William Tell Overture and some nondescript Mozart.  Students have a 15 minute break between classes, but they don't switch classrooms.  Instead, the teachers come to them.  The kids even stay in their classrooms to have lunch. I guess this is so that they won't miss a minute of studying.  Meanwhile, the teachers go and have lunch in the dorm lunchroom, where we have nondescript meat, rice, soup and vegetables.  It's pretty tasty, although when you ask what it is, a lot of times they say, "meat."

After lunch, there's more studying, and also some PE classes.  My favorite group to work with is, of course, the kids who came over to Northwest for the Oedipus at Shanghai project. We have started reading Antigone now!  They only have one period a week when they can do this, however, and it's sort of an "optional activity" period for them, since we can't take time away from their exam prep.  Everything depends on this one college entrance exam.

As you can see, Mrs. Guo and I are kind of like twins

That's pretty much it.  I go back to my dorm room and usually see my pal, Mrs. Guo.She is my go- to person for everything I need in the dorm, from coffee to laundry.   I think I already mentioned that neither of us speaks the other person's language, but that doesn't stop us from having conversations! After just one week, I have gotten used to the routine and can spend some time relaxing and sightseeing, which will be the subject of my next post.