Back to School at 8:24 PM

These are all pictures of my school some are class room buildings, the one with a big open square in front of it is the school office building.We do have a lake. Man made, but it comes with fish and some really cool paths over the water.Across the lake, depending on where you stand, you can see student dorms and the track field. There's one picture of a building with loads of clothes hanging on every level. Those are the student dorms. Those students are totally packed like sardines. They don't really have closets, I think that's why there are so many clothes outside. Just beds and a bathroom shared among 12 kids each. I also took some pictures just of random stuff across campus. Keep in mind that even though this is a school there are like 10 apartment buildings on campus where teachers, other school staff, and their families live. I live about a 2 minute walk from all of my classes. I have to say, I like it a lot and during the school year this place is pretty clean (that's cause they make the students clean it). There's also a big silver structure that looks like hands and some wierd orb floating on spikes. That's our hands upholding the sun, or the students, our future.

The last picture I want to point out is the basketball courts that also have cement ping pong tables. This is where we do Tai Chi in the mornings, followed by ping pong. I love this place.
Sometimes going back to school isn't that bad.

Let me finish with one story.
When I first got to Lingling (My current town of residence) I was brought to a hotel for an awesome dinner. There I met a guy named Luke Liu. He said he was(is) an english teacher at my school and that we would be colleagues. His English is actually really good, and since he was the only chinese person there who spoke english, we talked for quite a while. It didn't take him very long to start bragging about our school though. I think that's pretty normal here. One of the things he said was, "We have very beautiful school. Maybe even #3 most beautiful school in Hunan, maybe #2! Maybe even #1 most beautiful school in ALL of Hunan!" He was pretty excited about it. Now when ever I talk with the other teachers about our school I can't help but do the countdown from "maybe #3 to maybe #1." And it's twice as funny in  Chinese Accent, but I do have to say, he was right. This is a really beautiful place.

Great Wall, Great Adventure at 6:14 AM

So, I finally got my camera up to speed. I'm sorry it took me so long, but I'll make a lot of posts within the next two-three weeks with pictures. It's exciting for me. The bad news is that the Chinese National Holiday starts on the first, which means I don't have any classes after tomorrow. This sounds like good news, but I think this coin has two sides. I'm going to Kunming in Yunnan for the Holiday till the 8th and I may not have time or access to the internet to put up any more posts, so I'll try to put up as many as possible before I leave. Putting up pictures is a little time consuming, and considering the other things I set goals to do (Like learn Chinese and practice guitar) are suffering, I may not get much done. So bear with me.

Anyways, here's the great wall. I have to say, it was awesome, and I mean that in the literal sense. It's huge, and the views are beautiful. I took a lot of pictures, there aren't really any good ones of me (surprise) So most of these are scenic shots.

First, let me clear up a couple misconceptions I had. The great wall isn't a single wall, It branches off like crazy and goes in all sorts of directions. I'm pretty sure it's continuous though. So whenever it branches I think at least one direction goes on for a long while. Second, It's big, but It's not as big as I thought it would be. I kind of thought it would be this 50 foot wide parade route thing, but it's really what it says it is, a giant wall. Although, I must say, It's an awesome wall.

Breakdown
Picture One
The great wall really flows with the landscape. Some parts are flat, but only because the mountain ridge it's built on is flat. Usually it's up and down, and sometimes it's ridiculously steep. During the steep times, I kind of feel like I'm climbing a ladder.

Picture Two
For those of you who forgot what I look like, that's me. (This is silly, because there's a picture of my on the side of this page, but for those of you who ignored that, this will come in handy.)

Picture Three
Every 100-200 meters there would be a gaurd tower of sorts. Inside each one were sweet doorways and sweet windows. I felt like a kid wandering ruins of some ancient civilization. (Which I was)

Picture Four
This is one of those steep parts I was telling you about. You'll notice a boy standing at the top of those stairs. His name is Shane and he's my hero.

Picture Five and Seven
This gives an idea of how the great wall snakes across ridges. It's actually kind of breath taking.

Picture Six
Nice clear picture of a guard tower.

Super Mime Strikes Again at 10:29 PM

I was once friends with this awesome, but slightly crazy (in a healthy way) Chinese kid named Eric Chao in high school. Great guy, really smart, really nice. At some point for a Spanish project he filmed a video (in Spanish) of him in his evil lair plotting to take over the world. At that point he took on the nick name - "ChaoDoom." Every villain needs to fight a hero right? At some point later (keep in mind most of my friends had nick names) my friend Mark (who we called Ace) coined the name "Super Mime." It was fun at the time, and the name actually kind of stuck through the rest of high school. I even had a license plate that said, 'SPRMIME'. Little did I know it would be prophetic.

I seriously pantamime everything for these kids. There's no way to exaggerate this. They all know just enough english that between my charades and my english, teaching vocab is not only easy, it's really fun. This week I taught my kids most the words they would need to talk about being sick and how they feel. Here's a few words we covered-
Sneeze - I taught them to say "Bless you"
Cough
Cold
Flu
Fever
head ache and migraine (This one was fun because I would make the same motions as a head ache 'rub temples' and then for migraine, I'd just yell a lot so they knew it hurt worse)
Throw up - that one was way fun
Pass out
Sprain
Amnesia
Broken Bone
One of the ways we'd review is I'd say, "Show me...." and then one of the words and they would all act it out. It's pretty fun to watch an entire class pass out.

A lot of my teaching is just trying to expand their vocabulary and help them to know how to use the words.
So most of my lessons will go like this.

Introduction - Today I told my class that if they were good we'd watch a music video on my laptop and I'd hook it up to the speakers and we voted on which music video to watch

Core - We dig into the daily vocab hard and fast. I write words on the board and if they understand them we move one, if not, I explain them

Practice - I make all the kids write a few sentences with some of the words I listed and I walk around the class and help with grammar

Fun conclusion - Usually we play some sort of a game where they use the sentences they wrote. Last week we split the class into sides and played tic tac toe. Each team had to have a player read a sentence with good grammar and a vocab word of the day to be able to write on the board. Today, I just let them watch a music video. =)

Spare time - Last but not least, some times we have a few minutes left before the bell rings.
During this time, I try and hit on conversation basics. I usually talk about the difference between things that are polite and slang. Like, "How are you?" vs "What's up", or "me too" vs "ditto."

It's funny, I feel like I'm giving a show, or more like I'm giving them part of myself, but I don't feel like a clown or a performer or anything. I really do feel like a teacher. I have to say, it's awesome. I really like it. Part of that reason may be because I teach the 'smart classes,' but even if I didn't, it's not like the other kids aren't smart, and I think even if they had really bad English, it's amazing what charades can do. I really do feel like 'Super Mime.' and I really do feel like I'm helping these kids.

Until next time, ChaoDoom.

Power of Love at 1:14 AM

So I wanted to right about love after reading this morning, and I thought to myself, 'Self, this is why you have a blog.' So here is a long winded entry about what the power of love means to me.

Huey Louis once sang,
"The power of love is a curious thing
Make a one man weep, make another man sing...
You don't need money, don't take fame,
Don't need to credit card to ride this train"
(Power of Love)

I remember listening to that song a lot on our jukebox when I was a little kid. I think that's part of the reason I saw love as this mysterious thing, that could be a blessing and a curse, but either way was something powerful and worth respecting. To this day I still hold to that opinion mostly, it's just that my understanding of it has deepened a bit since my childhood. Now I still see it the same way, love can make a man cry or sing, heck it's done both to me more than once. But I see it in a variety of different lights. One man cries because of a break up. Another cries because of loss of a loved one. Another because he never had one. I think now that love is less mysterious, and more just plain uplifting.

At some point about 10 years ago I had a revelation one day. I realized that one of the things people want more than anything is to be loved. It had come at a point when a couple people had been calling me and I couldn't figure out why they wanted to talk to me all the time. This was Junior High, probably one of the clearest points in life where it's easy to see that people need love (Usually in the form of approval and acceptance). It sort of hit me that that's what these kids had wanted. Part of the reason I could realize this was because that was what I wanted too. I was kind of a class clown in my band class, and I knew I loved the attention. Why would anyone else be different. This is still a belief/theory that I hold to strongly. People want and desperately need to be loved.

Oddly enough, even though we know we need it, we (I and other people I've noticed) often find more reasons to with hold it than to give it. But I think my situation is different,I say, I broke up with her because she's crazy. It's ok for me to talk bad about her because she's psyco. Or maybe so and so is trying to take something from me that is rightfully mine. Or maybe John said something offensive in church. I don't know why, but it's so easy for us to become the victim, which entitles us to with hold our love, even though often, that's the one thing that would make something better. Even in severe criminal cases I would argue that most are evil because they either chose to with hold love or too often in their lives, they experienced everything but love. I'm not trying to rob justice, but often we take an act of sin and use it to label a person, sometimes a good person. And I think a lot more of us do this than we would like to know. At least I think I do it more than I would like to admit. Sophocles wrote, "One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life: That word is love." One of the beautiful things about love is that it is given even though rarely deserved. Even though we know we make mistakes and that many of us do not deserve it, we still hope for it more than anything.

Love for me is usually the answer to issues in life, mine and others. Do you love someone enough to let them go? Enough to watch over them? Enough to sit and console? Enough to sit and listen? Enough to drop what you're doing and go help? Enough to take criticism? Enough to be wrong? Enough to let someone else be wrong? =)

Here's the motivation for this post. I read this talk by Elder Wirthlin on Charity this morning (the awesome one in the Nov. 2007 Conference) and it's funny how every time I go back to it, that talk rocks my world. Anyways, he said a few things that made me want to write this for my own records. One of which is this quote:
"The greater the measure of our love, the greater is our joy. In the end, the development of such love is the true measure of success in life. "
Hmm, the true measure of success. At the end of the day, what else really matters. Love is what I remember, of all my friends I've had in college or on my mission or in highschool. I remember and revere the one's who really loved me. Heck, even girls I dated. I hated breaking up, but it was so much easier when I knew they genuinely cared about me. I think that is why I'm still friends with many of the girls I dated, because they had developed an ability to love, regardless of circumstance.

Now, what would happen if love for our fellow man ran a bit more rampant among us?

Here's the other quote I love- (same talk)
"consider your sacred duty to teach others to love the Lord and their fellowman. This is the central object of our existence. Without charity—or the pure love of Christ—whatever else we accomplish matters little. With it, all else becomes vibrant and alive. "
Yep, this is true. I want to have more concern for the people around me. I want to love the Lord a little more, because I know if I can, my life will switch from black and white to vibrant color. One thing I am amazed about is how happy I am in China and I think one of the main reasons for that is that I can feel the Lord's love for me. I just have to get better at passing it on.

What's in a name? at 4:55 AM

Last week I assigned all my classes homework,
1. Pick an English name
2. Make a name tag
From what I can tell most kids did alright. There are the kids whose English isn't so good and they just didn't do it, but once they saw the rest of the class pull out name tags they usually got to business pretty quickly, but even though most kids did the homework, I still had to go check all the names, just in case someone picked something they shouldn't. Like the kid who named himself Lucifer in one of my classes. I made him change that one.  I will say that I was pretty excited when I met a kid who had named himself Tank. I thought that was cool enough i let him keep it. I did let one kid keep the name Obama too. So here are some of the stats for the week.

• I think I had 3 guys who had named themselves Chloe. I made them change their names.
• I had one guy named Misty. (When I told him to change his name, he asked if he could be Diamond, I sighed and tried not to slap my fore head, ... and then said yes)
  
• I had I think 10-15 guys overall who picked girls names.(I actually made all the guys with Girls names change their names)
• I think I've only had one or two girls in my classes who had boys names, but I've still met a few girls who chose boys names, (Peter and several Allens at least)

Now here is the fun part. I think I helped at least 200 kids pick new names, maybe even up into the 500's. Now I really tried to stick to normal names, but once I had worked through the names of my last room mates, pretty much all my friends, my ex-girlfriends and their family, My family, kids I knew in grade school, all my old pets, and all the normal names I could think of, a thought hit me. There's probably a good chance these kids might not leave China, and if their English gets that good that they do go to America one day, they'll know to change it. So I loosened up and picked a few more interesting names. Here's a list of some of the names I gave out.

Apollo,
Creed,
Rocky, (go Rocky)
Locke, (As in John)
Guile, (Street fighter)
Laser, (I even made the sound and motion of a laser so he knew what it was, He loves it)
Destiny,
Victor,
Hugo,
Luke,
Umaro, (FF3)
Jade,
Dutchess,
Winny, (as in "The Pooh")
Clam,
Plato,
Trigger, (That's one of my favorites)
Sissy, (I figure Girls can be Sissy)
Fire,
Ice,
Dakota,
Lance, (If Lance was only a pretty boy name and not a weapon, I probably wouldn't have used it)
and Saber.

Here are a few names my friend Jason gave out,
Han,
Chewy,
Leia, (I actually gave out one of those too)
Vader,
and Luke

And for those of you who may think that I shouldn't have given a kid the name Trigger, I quote Juliet from Shakespeare.

"What's in a name? that which we call a rose
      By any other name would smell as sweet;
      So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call'd,
      Retain that dear perfection which he owes
      Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name,
      And for that name which is no part of thee
      Take all myself."

(I'm pretty sure she wanted Romeo to change his name to Trigger too. That name is way cooler than Romeo)
(Also, I apologize for calling boys named Lance "Pretty")

Learning Curves at 4:02 AM

So, I got an email from a guy at China Horizons (the group that set me up at my school) and he wanted to make a newsletter and asked me to write about something significant that had happened to me in China. So I wrote this.


So the first day I taught an English class in China things had worked out in such a way that I only had to teach one class (That'll never happen again). So I head for my class and I'm feeling pretty confident, I mean, how hard can it be to teach my native language right? Wrong. I got to class and got started and for the most part, those kids caught maybe 20 or 30% percent of my lesson. I figured I had landed somewhere between "These kids don't understand enough English to learn" and "I have zero English teaching skills". I consider that first lesson to be a dismal failure. Probably one of the bigger failures in the last few years.  I went home and sat on my couch and zoned into what I call "Sam mode," where there is no interaction, only deep thought and all I could think about was how if my teaching level was where I thought it was (Level 0), and if all my classes are like this one, then my time in China is going to be pretty rough. So I decided it was time to ramp up my learning curve. I started plowing into this book I bought about how to teach english as a second language and was surprised at how much I could learn in a short amount of time. Now most of my classes have actually been amazing. I love these kids and am impressed with how much English they know, but that first day really spurred me into a different mindset while I'm here. I want to improve myself now and give these kids everything I can in the little time I have with them, and now that I feel that way I can recognize significant development in myself even in the last few days.
Now during the first week at Yongzhou #1 middleschool, I gave each class I taught some class rules and one of the rules I gave to them was, "It is good to make mistakes." I made them all repeat it and explain it to me to make sure they understood. About my third day I asked why it is important to make mistakes (ask this every class).  One of my students gave me an answer that dropped my jaw. He said, "Failure is the mother of success" (in English). I have no idea where that proverb comes from, but the more I thought about it the more I realized that this was true for my students AND for me.
To make a long story short (too late I know), China has been a paradigm shift for me. I'm usually the kind of kid who won't try until he knows he can kick butt. But, failure is the mother of success. So just like I want my kids to try english and make mistakes, I will study and then do the same. I will try, and I will make mistakes and learn. I'll do this when I teach, and when I speak Chinese, and in a lot of other areas of my life. Needless to say, I'm pretty happy here.

I'm going to try to put up another post tomorrow. Hopefully I can pull off adding pictures
Thanks again for the emails. You guys are great.
If the last two sentences make you feel guilty, here is my email address.
Gadiandi@gmail.com
=)