Stranger No More

Honored guests, fellow teachers, returning alumni and current students.

As for me, I am truly honored and thrilled to be a part of this school and this community. Thank you, Santai Middle School.

That is what I was going to say. I was asked to speak and then there wasn’t time. The ceremony was pretty amazing with many guests and even a full sized hot air balloon. The school has been cleaned up and decorated beautifully.

The evening festivities featured a talent show by the students and teachers alike. Many of the students had been practicing for weeks and they were not about to let something like a freezing rain keep them from showing their talents. Good times.

Yeah. I’m lazy.

I’ll own it.

Things have been good.
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I was recently invited to be a judge at the First Santai English Teacher’s English Speaking Contest. Yeah, it doesn’t really roll off the tongue, eh? In fact, despite this being the First, I was a judge at a very similar if somewhat smaller contest last spring. Previously the field of eight contestants wrapped up around noon but the recent contest fielded thirty-two entrants from around the county and looked to be an all day affair.

A week or so prior I was a judge at an internal school contest where four teachers vied for two positions. A bit uncomfortable, I wish I could have passed on that one since even though I was just one judge I can’t help but feel a bit awkward when discussing it later with those that were passed over. Instead I tried to focus on helping those that were selected to represent our school. The first part of the contest would be a prepared speech so that was the easiest thing to help them with. Since the time leading up to the contest was going to be busy for all of us I decided a good way to help him would be to read the speech they had prepared and record it as an mp3, (m-p-san they insist on calling it. Despite it being to English letters and a number they not only don’t think to pronounce it as m-p-3 but they think it quite funny when I do.), so they could listen and speak along at their leisure. It turned out that the prepared speech portion was just a small part but also integral in advancing to the next stage as the field was pared down to twelve. I was pretty proud that both of my teachers advanced.

Just as China has an incredible disparity between the richest rich and the poorest poor so to did this contest have an epic disparity between the best speakers and the, um, others.
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As I resolve to catch you up on my activities of the last month let me start by saying what a pleasure it has been to meet and travel with French people.

While traveling in Yunnan I met and took in the sites of Lijiang with Jean-Jacques. A spry fifty-something year old, he has been to over 100 countries and was as fascinating as he was kind.

More recently, while on holiday in Tibet, I met Dom and Karin when we were seated next to each other on the flight from Chengdu. From Normandy, France they live in and enjoy St. Barth in the Caribbean. Over the ten days we hung out and traveled around Tibet we quickly became friends. Easy-going but resolute with a strong passion for travel they are a delightful couple near my age and are planning to start a family soon. I wish them luck as they’ll be great parents.

When you travel, or in my case move, abroad you meet many different people from a variety of places. As with all human experiences personalities and compatabilities vary. It isn’t often that you consistently hit it off with all of the citizens of a nation but I’d just like to take a moment to acknowledge the French travelers I have recently encountered as great people.

Vive La France!

The first week of July I agreed to help Teresa with a couple of recruiting trips in order to try to get more students for summer school. The first weekend trip took us to the edge of Yunnan province to a small town whose name I don’t recall now. While this only gave me a glimpse of Yunnan, I will say it was an amazingly beautiful area and it left me longing to see more. We extended the two day trip to take a train out into the deep country for another day of recruiting. For me this involved just smiling and looking non-Chinese, both areas I excel in. The small appearing community we landed in was crammed into a steep valley with towering peaks. It was a very vertical town that took no more space than Santai but contains nearly four times the population at about 400K.

I awoke a bit before the group, (along with Teresa and I had come her assistant and two male friends), and went for a walk before rejoining them at the hotel. It was a great walk that let me check out only two streets and a bridge due to the layout and the time constraint. Like so many places in China I was met with friendly smiles, invites to converse and the sniping ‘hello’s’ as I walked by. The Hello Sniping is an interesting phenomenon in China that involves both adults and students that are too shy to get caught in a conversation but still want to show off their English skills to their friends by hollering ‘hello’ as you have already passed them. If you turn towards them at all they will usually giggle and shrink away although sometimes they will relish the opportunity to engage in a conversation. No matter how long you are in China it is not uncommon when you meet someone for them to say, ‘Welcome to China! Happy every day!’.
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