At Home

I’ve reached that point in the teaching weeks when I look around the classroom and think, “Are these people Chinese? They don’t look any ‘different’ to me than I look to myself.” It’s only when I look at a picture that I realize that – wow, I am not Chinese.

The same goes for the routine. Get up, shower, get ready for breakfast, wash out a few pieces of clothing in the sink, go down to the breakfast room, return to the 7th floor, pack up the bags, head to classes. From 8:30 to 3:30 we’re in session, and often when we finish we stay talking with learners. There is sometimes a little break in the afternoon, but more likely team members are buzzing in and out of the common room (our suite) with things that need to be printed, questions on tomorrow’s lessons, questions on what to do in cultural situations, ideas, plans, schemes for more fun in sessions. The evenings are full of lesson prep, impromptu gatherings, appointments, and finally, sleep on beds as hard as the desks in our classrooms. Isn’t this what life is always like?

Yesterday in the afternoon plenary session we enacted a wedding, complete with bride and groom in tux and “wedding dress.” (No matter that the wedding dress was just a white top and full skirt, and the veil created from a mosquito net and the frame of a straw hat – it LOOKED good!) The team rallied to create bridesmaid’s outfits, bouquets, a basket of petals for the flower girl, rings made of pipe cleaners, a photographer, and more. The learners experienced a western style traditional wedding. And every learner in the auditorium had their cell phone out taking pictures. At the end we all trooped outside with the “bridal party” and took group photos. They then returned to class and finished up lessons on enduring love, love languages, and wedding planning vs. marriage planning.

Today is Christmas-in-July. Santa visited the opening plenary session, helped by all his elves (read team in Santa hats). We interviewed him and found that there are two sides to Christmas – traditions and history. Today’s lessons sort that out to give them a broader understanding of what’s real and what’s just for fun.

Tomorrow – trust, forgiveness, life learning, and more. This is the last week and the values are deep in the curriculum. We’re still in the same building, one last week, and the worries of the first week are behind us.

Yesterday I asked our top administrator how much “guanxi” he had to spend to keep us there. Guanxi is a hard word to explain in English. It’s an “I’ll scratch your back if you will scratch mine” cultural back and forth. He looked at me a little like a deer in the headlights and then murmured, “Oh no, it was nothing. It’s the end result that matters.” I will never know how we stayed in this building because he will not tell me. I am sorry for what it may have cost him in bargaining chips among his colleagues, but I wasn’t responsible for the problem or the solution. In one way he’s correct. It’s the end result that matters and that end is the learning that’s happening in every classroom.

Meanwhile, we keep living -- eating meals with learners and administrators who are now friends, walking the streets, picking up a bottle of milk at the grocery, washing our clothes out by hand, and – well, we’re at home. It’s hard to realize that in a week we’ll all be back to our “normal” lives.

It will be just as much of a shock to go that direction as it was to come here.