In Case You Were Wondering ...

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Why did I title my last blog as entry as Black Hawk Nearly Down? Well… China or more in this case Xi’an and the volunteering isn’t quite what I expected. I went through a bit of a crisis of confidence in my first couple of days and I’m still not completely enjoying it. First the thing that is killing me the most is probably the pollution. My school is located near Xi’an’s main power station, an oil refinery/fuel storage place and a railway yard. About every 5 minutes while working at the school I hear the air-horns from the trains going past as they nearly run over pedestrians and people having the odd meal on the tracks. My bus ride home I pop open the window and breathe diesel and coal and miss sailing in Townsville. Most days the pollution is so bad you can hardly see the Sun or not at all. My plan at the present moment is to cut the volunteering short and head for the hills! I want to go hike and do bicycle tours around the rice paddies and mountains of ancient China. Not this pollution filled shabby metropolis.

Secondly my volunteering is a little bit different than I expected. The first couple of days at the dodgy community school was good in one aspect. They had a text book to work with which meant you could wing a lesson on whatever today’s topic was. If you wanted to you could take the textbook home and plan a mini lesson. If the lesson was on colours then go buy a few coloured balls and throw them round the class etc.

Turns out the school I am actually volunteering at for the whole placement is the Dawn Kindergarten! Big boofy Zin gets to deal with 3-5 year olds each day which is akin to herding cats on crack who don’t understand English. The real clincher is that there are no topics, lesson plans or real structure. I was told on the first day to do my entire lesson planning for the month. After I had got that sorted I was told the kids also must not get bored and the lessons are to be exciting. Righto. Ok I thought, I can deal with that, the teacher will do most of the talking then I will help out and do a bit of this and a bit of that when my English skills are needed. No! Stop the press! I have to deliver 3 hours of content each day, which I devise myself with zero previous experience in giving rug rats a well rounded early developmental education in English. So right now I’m pretty much scratching my head trying to figure this all out. I think 7 long weeks of it would send me insane when the average volunteer stay is a mere two weeks at one school. But! The job does come with a few perks apart from the early onset of cancer due to environmental pollution. I have my own office with a brand new computer, internet connection and office chair that I snapped in half on the first day due my extreme weight and rigorous construction standard of Chinese products.

After the first half of the day I am taken to the kitchen where I am offered a choice of 4 dishes and the first pick. After I have eaten my rather large fill and in need of an afternoon nap… I go take one. I go to my own little private sleeping room, where I have my little bed and try to cover myself with a multitude of little kid’s blankets. I hang my feet of the end of the bed, snooze away before I am politely woken after 2 hours and teach some more before being offered more food at 4:30. I have to say I can’t really complain about that. Then on the bus (half an hour) then grab a few dumplings at 20 cents and back to the apartment.

The black hawk is getting fixed and hopefully I should be a bit perkier as time progresses. The best news so far is that a aussie is coming tomorrow! I am sending a silent prayer that he is a decent lad and I will finally have someone to hang with.

Over and out from Xi’an. Look for the next update soon!

Love you all,

Zin

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