SoMuchToSay: A Post From The Wooden Bed

There is a light mist of toxic rain falling outside, and my plans for this Saturday have subsequently been...dampened. There will be no going into town, and the East Coast has succumbed to slumber. It's 4pm here, and there's not much to do but eat some Chinese Ramen and drink State Banquet Beverage Coconut Juice with my iTunes on shuffle. Kanye and Coldplay have done a lot to lighten my mood, and I feel like I might turn this whole day around before it's all said and done. I unfortunately missed the lunch portion of White Weekends, but my anticipation is already mounting for dinner. From Friday evening to Monday morning, our boarding school is devoid of Asians, and the cooks prepare our dishes accordingly. They dispense with the pig's blood soup and fish-with-all-the-bones, and bring out the ham-fried rice, dumplings, and fried chicken. This, of course, is glorious news. Teaching is over for the week too; even Chinese kids don't have school on Saturday. Cleaning my apartment is always a good idea. Daily life in China can dirty up a place pretty quickly. Couple that with my psychologically fascinating laziness, and it's quite a mess. It's just a hideous menagerie of pirated DVDs, H&M bags, and empty Coke cans. I've been pretty prolific lately about keeping in touch with my family and friends. Once I discovered I could text through email, the wifi room has been my second home. I love the technology, but I just hope my friends are as on board with it as I am. Derek Overload is a very real possibility. I came here to travel, and my payment for that opportunity is that I must teach. What's it like for me to teach groups of tiny Asian nuggets? Just as you think it would be: stressful, rewarding, and hilarious. Anyone who knows me well might be alarmed that I'm entrusted with anything, let alone a child. Certainly my legendary impatience, biting sarcasm, and occasional lapses in judgment would be the more negative points on my teaching resume. But anyone who knows me really well knows that I actually like little kids. They're like tiny sources of constant amusement with their crazy worldviews and adorable little faces. And until they reach a certain age, there's really not much they can do that bothers me. Most of the time. It's just really awesome to watch them learn and grow, and to know that they have so many great years ahead of them. As a teacher, I want to make their lives easier and more rewarding. I feel like learning English helps them do that. And if all goes to pot and they end up working at Tesco for the rest of their lives, at least there will be someone who can tell me where the incense is, instead of staring at me until I give up on trying to ask. My desire to help these kids is what gets me out of my terrible wooden bed every weekday. And believe it or not, it's really not all hard work. I'm the Kitchen teacher here for the next few weeks, which means I really just have to come up with things for these nuggets to eat. Every time I pour water into Jell-o or spread peanut butter for Ants On A Log and watch their faces light up and little brown eyes widen with amazement, it really does validate all my efforts. Most of my kids are so great and attentive, and the ones that aren't are easily disciplined. In fact, being a Kitchen teacher is nothing more than a constant exercise in bribery. "Be good or you don't get food!" It works literally every time. Thursday, though, was a ridiculous disaster. I had been sick the day before, and didn't get the chance to buy my supplies for the day's lesson. This meant that as the Kitchen teacher, I had no food. I don't feel like I need to explain to anyone that this lack of preparedness resulted in a colossal failure. I walked into my first class with my palms sweating and my eyes visibly displaying fear. Several of the kids had already voiced their anticipation earlier in the day about what they thought what was their upcoming meal. "Teacha Derek! Eat-a! Nood-ur-les! Jell-o!" I tried to walk away before any commitments were made on my behalf. I knew I had to come up with something to say to these children, and even more importantly, something to do. I wanted to walk in and tell just tell it like it is. "Teacher Derek was shaking with fever last night and could therefore not go into town to buy yogurt and apples for your fruit dip. So instead, he decided to come into class empty handed and is obviously screwed. Now, please allow me to get through this day without anyone falling out of one of my third story classroom windows. And more importantly, without Teacher Derek violating his ILP contract by grabbing you by the shoulders and shaking you until you stop shouting in Chinese and hitting each other. Your cooperation and forgiveness are much appreciated." Unfortunately, their grasp of the English language does not enable them to understand hopeless pleading, so the monologue went more like this. "Today, we're going to play Musical Chairs. Do you know what that is?" Most of the kids were on board. I was patient with the ones that weren't; why pay attention to an unprepared teacher? I asked for song suggestions, as my laziness and fear had effectively jammed my brain's creative center. All of the kids began shouting "LADY GAGA" in unison. They were perplexed when I proceeded to roll with laughter. I was laughing so hard that I was afraid I might have to trot over to the squatter. I told them if we were going to do Lady Gaga, I would need a volunteer singer. Then I stood by and supervised as a half dozen Chinese children sang "Bad Romance" and walked in a circle, fighting over plastic chairs. It was a YouTube quality laugh riot. The next class didn't want to do musical chairs, so we played a game of structured, English-rich catch. This obviously devolved in about 4 seconds, and the class ended with a little boy named Caesar accidentally throwing the ball out of the window just as we were learning how to say "Don't throw the ball so high!" The other kids in the class ran to the windows, and I followed, frantically grabbing at them as they leaned out to see where the ball had gone. And poor Caesar, with all the blame- "Et tu, Teacha Derek?" I quickly lined them up for the next class and cast my eyes upward, thanking Government that the classes were only 25 minutes long. My final class proved to be the most difficult of all. My voice was hoarse from singing, and I was exhausted. Of course, this class contained my worst students. I ushered them in, flustered and spent. I attempted to line them up, and my eyes fell on one girl in particular, blathering away in animated Chinese to the girl standing next to her. "TINA! No Chinese!" It's Rule #1 of ILP. She continued her ceaseless drivel until I had to physically angle her chin skyward to my face. "Tina, no Chinese." She opened her mouth and laughed loudly in mockery, revealing her 8 tiny, rotten teeth. And thus started my lesson. "Okay class, we're going to play musical chairs." My response was a fart sound from one of the boys and another smattering of Chinese from that fool Tina. I instructed them in the rules, and asked them to pick a song. They all looked at me as if I had just asked them to recite the Pirate's Code backwards and continued their previous shenanigans. "How about '5 Little Ducks'?" It was a quick little rhyming song one of the good kids had taught me earlier in the day. I put the chairs in a circle and the kids began to trudge around, unimpressed. Then the boys started sitting in the chairs prematurely, determined not to lose. "No! You only sit down when Teacher Derek stops the song! FIVE LITTLE DUCKS WENT OUT TO PLAY, OVER..." My lesson was rapidly deteriorating into a terrible educational abyss. This was about the exact moment that my head teacher, Sam, walked in to evaluate me for the week. He came in as I was screaming "Five Little Ducks" at the top of my lungs, peppered here and there with "NO CHINESE!" I stuffed Tina into a chair with one hand as I grabbed King by the collar of his sweater with the other, my throat getting raw all the while. The kids were running and screaming, undeterred by Sam's presence. I watched him out of the corner of my eye as he wrote what had to be the worst teacher evaluation in history on his clipboard. After his time was complete, he gave me a sympathetic chuckle and left the room. I knew the damage was done, and spent the last few minutes of class trying to keep the kids in some semblance of order, while also restraining myself from smacking their ridiculous little faces. When class was over, I opened the door and released my little hellions out into the world. I collapsed, feeling pretty ashamed. I knew it was the lowest point of my teaching so far. Fortunately, my week was over. I shrugged off my teacher's apron and took a minute to collect myself. Fortunately, when I was presented with my pitiful evaluation, Sam understood. He told me he knew I wasn't at my best, and that he would re-evaluate on Monday when all my foodstuffs were in line. I decided I needed a trip into town, where I bought a 6 Yuan McDouble and a few 5 Yuan DVDs and tried to end the day on a high note. Thankfully, most of my days aren't as pitted with setbacks and stumbling blocks- very few of my days are "Thursdays." People always get really corny when they teach- "the kids teach me," they say. And while I did learn a pretty catchy new nursery rhyme from one of the kids, I know that I never go in to class expecting to learn anything. I'm here to teach, I go to college to learn. Plus, I'm the one who knows all the Engrish already. I already know how to share, how to make Jell-o, how to play Red Rover. But as I crawl into my wooden bed each night, bathed in the subtle orange glow of my $4 heater, I realize I learned something every day too. The well-behaved children don't ever teach me anything; they just make my teaching experience worthwhile. It's Tina who teaches me patience, Roofio who teaches me that sometimes kids just act out because they aren't being challenged enough. And every day I can't help but reflect on those little inadvertent lessons. And while I'm pretty sure that teaching isn't in the career cards for me, these children are preparing me to be a better husband and father someday. These kids help me have fun and help me to see the good in everyone, even when it's really, really hard. They might have a whole other language to learn, and it just so happens to be the hardest one on Earth, but I'm the one who needs to grow.
---------------------------------

On a completely unrelated note, people have been asking me for pictures. Here I am, obliging.