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Published: August 28th 2009
This has been a pretty calm week so far. Teachers didn't really come back until yesterday. We got the pleasure of sitting in a meeting in the auditorium for an hour and a half listening to speeches and presentations all in Chinese.
First, Joe is leaving us to become the Principal at another school in the city. He gave a tearful speech that made me happy I couldn't understand him for fear that I might sniffle as well. Iris got quite teary-eyed as well. The school gave him a huge bouquet of pink roses and a large photo album of 8 x 10 photos of him over his years here at the school. It was very nicely done.
Then we got a short speech from the new Vice Principal who was given an equally large bouquet of pink roses. In China, pink is not a feminine color.
Then they gave pink rose bouquets and wrapped presents to the 5 teachers and staff who were on duty this summer. Since they were on duty they were unable to leave the city and were often at school.
One last bouquet of pink roses was given to the gardener, I presume for all his hard work making our school so beautiful. The whole campus has a garden feel to it. There are window boxes on every floor, new trees, more potted plants (including a new one for my room!), and the field looks like students have never trampled on it. It's hard to believe that one mad does all of it by himself.
Both the gardener and the caretaker (one of the on-duty staff for the summer) looked a bit shy and unsure of what to do with all the attention and the huge flower bouquets. It was really cute.
Then I got to watch a few power point presentations I couldn't understand. One was about the coming research for the year (I know the man who gave the presentation is in charge of research). Another was about the academic year, including a section concerning inappropriate attire for teachers. The woman had mouse-drawn pictures of skimpy dresses, too much make-up, and hairy-chested men with shirts open to their navels. (I didn't know Chinese men had hairy chests.) Another presentation had cute cartoon pictures ... with the bubbles filled with Chinese so I have no idea what the point was.
At the end of it all was an intermission. Roy and I escaped while everyone milled around. I found out that I will be teaching 7th and 9th grades this year. I am excited because I really wanted to teach 9th grade. I taught them as 8th graders last year and it will be nice to know half of my students. 7th grade is no surprise, since there are ten 8th grade classes and my max allowed is 17. (There are usually 8 classes per year.) I'm excited and nervous. I don't know their capabilities, but they've never seen any of my photos, so I can re-use a lot of my powerpoints from last year. Roy said last year's 7th graders (this year's 8th graders) were some of the best with excellent English. If the trend continues, this new batch may prove to be even better than some of my 9th graders. Only time will tell.
In other exciting news, the birthday celebrations have begun! (Really, when's the last time I only had one party? Age 3?) We turned game night (with me winning at mah jong) into a mini-party since I'm friends with many of the people there. A lot of newbies came and got drunk and acted like idiots, too, but I ignored them. Well, unless they were dropping yet another beer bottle... those get louder and more obnoxious with each one. This could prove to be an interesting year.
My friends bought me a slice of fantastic chocolate cake. Good cake is hard to come by in China. This was really rich and I had to bring some home with me to eat for breakfast this morning. Such a difficult way to start my newest year!
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Sally Arner
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Birthday greetings
Happy belated birthday to you Kris. Hope your year of teaching will be wonderful over there. I love reading your blogs, highlight of my day.... Sally, your mom's friend