While many people are complaining about having to transition their lives (job, education, shopping, etc.) to doing things online, I am one of the people who was already doing that. My job is completely online. I live in Vietnam, but I do not have a job here.
I work for a Chinese company and I teach children English online. Just like any other job, some days are great and some days are terrible. Last night I had an interesting lesson.
My student was an 8 year old girl who goes by the English name Maggie. She is one of my more difficult students. She often walks away from the computer in the middle of the lesson which leaves me to sit and look at an empty room until her parents peek in the door and place her back in front of the camera. When she can be bothered enough to acknowledge my presence, she likes to ignore the lesson and just show me all of her toys. However, every now and then, she is somewhat attentive. Last night was one of those times. Almost.
The lesson was about the various ways people work with animals. It discusses sheep herding, police dogs, rescue animals, and service animals.
Since my primary purpose is actually to teach English, I always encourage a lot of extra dialogue. I want my students to practice conversing in this new language. Instruction is great, but practice is necessary to get good at anything. So, to start off, I asked Maggie to look at the picture and tell me where they are.
As usual with Maggie, I got silence. So I used the trick that works with most children. I suggested a wrong answer.
"Are they at the library?"
She shook her head.
"Well, where are they?"
Once again, I got a blank stare. Now, this girl can speak English. It is quite limited, but she understands me and could answer if she chose to. So, I cranked up my classroom personality to "clown" which is just one setting lower than "dancing monkey" and tried harder to get her to engage.
"Would you like to go there? You could throw snowballs at your sister."
Maggie leaned toward the computer and activated her pen. She often draws or writes answers instead of talking to me. She is so much fun. 😒
"Maggie, where are they?"
Hell? Thank you, Maggie.
While that was not the correct answer, it was engagement and I wanted to reward that. Hopefully, we could build from here. I decided to run with it.
"They are in hell? I guess they could be in hell. I know that I hate cold weather and snow."
She furrowed her brow and shook her head. She drew under her previously written word.
AH! Not hell, but HILL.
I thought she was making a joke about how it would be terrible to have to be there, but she was just answering my question. In English, we would probably say mountain. But her English is not that good. She took the Mandarin word (山 - Shān) which can mean mountain or steep hill and simply misspelled it. She wasn't trying to make a joke.
That explained why she never smiled the entire time. Well, that and the fact that she really doesn't like me.
But to show me that she did know what she was talking about, she labelled the rest of the picture also.
I turned to the next page, but she never did smile.
In my last post, about losing my motorcycle keys, I mentioned that we had intended to go to Đà Nẵng to sort out some banking issues. And I hope you are ready for a thrill ride because this post is about that trip to the bank.
Exciting…I know.
The reason for this trip was because the banking system I use is not really a bank. It is a third-party liaison designed for English-speaking foreigners to be able to easily take care of their finances. It is called TIMO (short for TIme and MOney) and it is amazing. It makes my banking so easy.
However, last month they informed all of their clients that they were cutting ties with the bank they partner with and were moving to a new bank. This meant that all of their services would stop working on a certain day. We would need to download their new app TIMO+ and pop into one of their "hangouts" to get everything switched to the new account with their new bank partner.
They call them hangouts because it sounds better than calling them offices, I guess. But they are very adamant that it is not a bank. They handle no money. They only initiate and process paperwork. And they are not bad places to hang out. They serve free drinks (including beer) while you are there.
The week before, I had popped in for my appointment to switch everything over and was informed that it wasn't really necessary unless I wanted to. I still had an account at the original bank. I just wouldn't have the third-party between us anymore.
Now, as much as I would have liked to keep the convenience of having an English-speaking go-between, I did have some concerns about switching to a new bank. I can't go into all the specifics here, but it had to do with me getting a new passport since opening the account, getting a work permit and residency card, and how Vietnamese taxes work. Going to a new bank would have made things very complicated and possibly have messed a few things up for us long-term, so I opted to stay with the bank I was already in.
Choosing to stay with the bank meant that I had to now go to that bank (for the first time), get a new banking app tied directly to them, get a new ATM card and let them know my intentions to stay. However, without the foreigner liaison service to help me, I was totally on my own and my Vietnamese is far from functional.
I have no idea what is happening.
I had gone in right after my meeting with TIMO, but their computers were down so no one could help me. Then, Typhoon Noul came through. Almost two weeks passed before I got back to the bank.
When I got there, a lovely young woman was coerced by the other tellers motioned for me to sit at her desk. She spoke ZERO English…but she recognized the word TIMO. I assume many foreigners have stepped in who were with TIMO and wanted to stay. She pulled up her computer and said "passport."
This is were everything got screwed up.
Remember when I said I had two passports? Well, I handed her the wrong one. I didn't realize what I had done until she had opened it. "Oh, wait! You need this one."
She didn't understand my words, but she did recognize that I had two passports with my picture and name in them. She got on her phone and through a translation app asked me, "Do you have documentation that these are both the same person?"
I knew I was going to be in for a long morning. My passport is my documentation. No one also carries around extra papers explaining that their passport is real. I grabbed both passports and held them up next to my face. These are me. I then pointed out the birth date on each one and the name. They are the same. I then took the new one and pocketed it. Holding the old one, I told her (for the rest of this story, remember that all communication is severely slowed and misunderstood due to having to use our phones to communicate in the different languages), "This is the one you need."
Unfortunately, she asked for my new passport back and kept looking at them side to side. She then called over other tellers to look at them. They discussed this extensively and started making phone calls. After close to an hour of their confusion (which I understand), she told me that this was a highly unusual situation and they needed to speak with their superiors. She asked for my information so she could contact me in a few days.
I had already been there for a LONG time and my patience was starting to wear thin. Although, I knew this was not their fault. I was irritated, but did not want to take it out on her. I informed her that I had had an account at that bank for two years. I understood that they might be confused about things, but I had not had access to my money for almost two weeks. She could contact anyone she likes, but I needed to get my financial situation resolved today. If I could not get money today, I would just close my account.
I really didn't want to do this because then I would have to open an account with my new passport and I wanted to avoid that if possible.
She looked at me defeated, like "What do you want me to do?"
I took a deep breath to make sure I wasn't getting too excited. Once again, this was not her fault. As frustrated as I might be, she was only doing her job. I pointed at the passport number in my old passport and asked her to type in my number. So far, she had not even looked up my account. She did as I asked and found me. I verified that the amount in the account was correct and she saw that it had my name on it. OKAY! We are starting to get somewhere. Now that I had her attention somewhere other than the extra passport, maybe I could accomplish my goal today.
In order to pay our bills, I needed to get the mobile app up and working, but that requires help from the bank. I couldn't do it all remotely. It took almost another hour of us downloading apps, sending emails back and forth, and using Facebook Messenger to share links so I could access what I needed to. I had done all of this at home, but not knowing Vietnamese meant that I had not understood the verification instructions. I was supposed to send a text message with a code to a specific number they had sent me and then take the new code they would send me back and plug it into the website. She helped me through all of it. Then she re-activated the ATM card I was already carrying.
Everything was fixed (after almost two hours) and we headed out the door. I was happy to have the passport issue behind me and prayed it would be forgotten about. I left the bank very happy to have access to our money again.
A few days later, that teller messages me.
Forgive the way it is worded. She ran this through a translator before sending to me. And I knew what she was asking. With all the confusion, they never got my new number. So, I played dumb.
Haven't heard from her since. I hope that's the end of it.
The oldest of these tweets is from 2012, so I think it is clear that I have known this about myself for quite some time.
I am also quite comfortable with it. Like inappropriately comfortable. My sloth knows no bounds.
However, occasionally, I have to get some stuff done. Earlier this week was one of those days.
Living in a foreign land, some things are quite different than back home. One of those things is our banking situation. I have never set foot in or spoken to a single person at our bank. I don't even know where it is. I do all my transactions through a third party designed for foreigners. It is called TIMO. And last month, TIMO and the bank that actually holds our money parted ways.
This means that my TIMO phone app and ATM card no longer work. I have no access to my money. I am going to actually have to go into a bank (30 miles away) and try to get all the new stuff (ATM card and actual bank app) without being able to speak the local language. I was not looking forward to this, but it is one of those things that has to be done. After all, they have all our money and we do not have any way to get it. We kind of need it. I tend to be hungry a lot.
Because we live in the tropics, the sun can be unforgiving. This is something that must be taken into account when you use a motorcycle to travel everywhere. Hours traveling on a motorcycle in the tropical sun has beaten me down on more than one occasion. So, these trips to Đà Nẵng require certain measures. Despite the temperature being close to 100, I wear long pants and often long sleeves.
But the most important measure for me is getting an early start. I try to be on the road by 7:30. That would get us to the bank when it opens and if there are no problems, we would hopefully be back home before 10 a.m. Safe from the treacherous satanball trying to kill us from the sky.
We popped out of bed early. Got our breakfast and showers out of the way and were headed out the door at about 7:15. We were doing great on time! The UV demons would not get us today.
I reached for the key bowl by the door and came up empty.
Although rare, this happens now and then. I popped into the backroom to see if I had tossed them on my desk the night before. I had not. I then checked the pockets of the shorts I had worn the previous night. They weren't there either. At this point, Red started helping me look.
We checked the kitchen table, all the counters, around the motorcycle outside, under the bed, our nightstands, and the coffee table. We even looked in the freezer. Where could they be?
After spending over half an hour tearing the house apart, it occurred to me that I may have locked them in the seat of the motorcycle. It has a small storage compartment that can be opened using the ignition key. If I locked it in there, I wouldn't have the key to open it and check.
So, I did something I did not want to do. I went next door to my landlord's house. He is the sweetest man and takes very good care of us, but he is almost 70 and I do my best not to disturb him unless I really need to. Plus, he does not speak a word of English. We call him Dad.
I showed Dad my problem and hoped he had a way to get into the seat that I might not know about. He tried all the same things that I did. Nothing worked.
Through pantomime and exchanged grunting, he suggested we have the ignition changed out. I didn't see any other choice so I agreed. I pulled up my Google Maps so he could show me where to go, but he insisted on speaking into the translator on my phone. The words I got back from the phone were useless, but he would not show me on the map. I don't believe he understood how it worked.
I was already a little embarrassed for losing my keys, but it only got worse from here.
My well-meaning landlord was going to help me get my motorcycle to the mechanic. He backed my bike into the street and went to get his.
Dad motioned for me to get on his bike and he sat on mine. His intention was to have me push him like in the following video.
But it just didn't work. I couldn't even get him started. I don't know if my angle was wrong, but it wouldn't work. Plus, even if I had gotten him moving, I didn't have any clue where we were going. Negotiating turns would have been very awkward. Besides, we live on very narrow back-alley streets. Not much room to maneuver.
Dad realized this was not going to work, so he hopped off and started pushing my bike. I tried to stop him because there is no reason a 70-year-old man needs to push my bike for me. I can push it myself. I just need to know where to go. He did not listen to me and just kept moving. So, I was riding his bike at 2 MPH behind him while he pushed in 100-degree heat.
When we got to the first corner, he had me get on my bike. Good! Now I won't feel like such a putz. He tried to push my bike with his foot while he was on his own bike. Like in the above video. Once again, it did not work. He had me hop off again and started pushing my bike down the road. I could not get him to stop and let me do it. I eventually went back and got on his bike and slowly followed him while the local Vietnamese people watched us go by and gave me dirty looks. I don't blame them. At this moment, I literally was the fat, lazy American.
About 1,500 feet later, we came to the end of this road and his adult daughter Hanh appeared from the other direction on foot. He told her what we were doing and she nodded. She then took my bike and yelled over her shoulder, "Brett, go home."
Hanh knows a total of maybe 100 English words. I often get basic sentences like this one from her.
Dad tried to get me on his bike with him so we could go back, but I really wanted to go with Hanh. If I knew where she was taking my bike, then this was something I could take care of on my own in the future. I like to be self-sufficient when it is possible. However, I was having great difficulty getting Dad to understand why I wanted to follow. And the last thing I wanted to do is be unintentionally insulting. He was going out of his way to help and I wanted to be appreciative. Plus, as I looked back over my shoulder, Hanh had gotten a passerby to start pushing her on the bike. I guess she was more coordinated than us. She was gone. So, I accepted the ride home and waited.
An hour later, Hanh showed up with my bike and told me how much it cost. I paid her and thanked her profusely. I was so thankful, but totally embarrassed and felt utterly helpless.
After she left, we opened the bike seat only to discover the key was not in the seat. That means it was somewhere in the house and would turn up eventually. The changing of the ignition was not necessary, but there was no way of knowing how long it would be before we came across it. We had done what we had to do.
At this point, it was about noon and it had been a stressful morning. Defeated, I turned to Red and suggested we take off to a nice restaurant and try to put the morning behind us. She wholeheartedly agreed. I grabbed my new key and we got our helmets to head outside.
FOUND IT!!!
The key was in a motorcycle helmet that never got picked up because we realized we had no key to go anywhere. I'm beginning to wonder if embarrassment has an upper limit.
A few days ago, I was practicing my typical morning routine of sitting on the toilet with my phone catching up on the news. In the middle of reading the latest on Black Ariel and the Blue Bell Ice Cream Licker, I got a message from my wife.
I immediately knew who she was talking about. We've been dealing with this guy for the last few days. Right next door to us, a construction crew has been putting up a new building and we share a gate with that property. So, we cross paths with the workers daily. Every now and then, one of them comes to us to use our electricity or inform us of excess noise that day or the shutting off of our water. It is always a difficult conversation since we do not speak the local language and have to do everything through inadequate translation apps.
However, this particular guy is especially "friendly." He frequently wanders over to make small talk when he sees me outside. This usually involves lots of hand gestures and pointing at the construction site with a big smile. I never know what he is trying to convey, but it seems like it is not pertinent information. Just friendly banter. Until he stepped up his game a few days ago.
He sat on our porch one day, so I grabbed a Pepsi and my phone and went to join him. I like to be friendly most of the time. Through our translation apps, we tried to talk to each other. After a couple of minutes, he asked to borrow my motorcycle. I made an excuse about how we were about to leave so it wouldn't be available. So, he asked to use it at lunch the next day. As I was telling him no, I started closing up the house so Red and I could leave. He then asked me how I secure my doors when I leave.
What kind of creepy question is that?
This made me nervous because he basically lives right next to us until the house is built. They always know when we are coming and going. And now he wants to know how well I lock my doors.
Due to my inability to effectively communicate all we can really do is try to be aware.
Not being able to communicate has been a common theme in my life. When I lived in Puerto Rico twenty years ago, I saw a sign on a counter that said CUIDADO: CALIENTE.
This sign made no sense to me. CITY: HOT
What?
I leaned closer to contemplate the meaning and it occurred to me as soon as my arms contacted the metal counter. Cuidado does not mean 'city.' It means 'CAUTION.'
The Spanish word for 'city' is ciudad. They may look similar, but the meaning is quite different.
As I rubbed the aloe on my forearms, I knew I would never forget those words again.
Living in Beijing, I almost did not get my work permit due to a communication error. I was asked to send off for my official Master's Degree for the paperwork that had to be filed. They told me that it must be sealed when we turn it into authorities. I did as they asked and it arrived two weeks later. I handed the envelope to my boss and she immediately ripped it open. I yelled, "NO! It has to still be sealed when we give it to them." She gave me a confused look as I sat and put my face in my hands. I had dropped a significant amount of money to get this and have it specially shipped. She had just ruined it.
She looked the degree over and asked, "Where is the seal?"
After a frustrating back-and-forth, I learned when they told me it must be sealed, what they meant was it must have the official State of Illinois International Authentication Seal. This seal is what proves to foreign governments that this is an official document.
She thought she had communicated clearly and I thought that I had understood. We were both wrong.
I have hundreds of stories like this, but let's come back to the present.
That 'creepy little dude' is now talking to my wife when I am not present and chooses to comment on her 'grapes.' If you have met my wife then you are probably aware that she is quite gifted in the area under her shirt. And in a culture that is known for not possessing those assets, it is even more apparent. But that does not mean he needs to be commenting on her grapes.
I head downstairs to confront this man and in my head I am running how I should play this. Should I be firm or gentle? Should I confront him in front of the other workers (to help keep him on their side of the wall) or take him to the side in private? I don't want to create too big of an incident. We do have to live among these people and we are the foreigners.
We may be the foreigners here but this cannot be allowed to happen?
I get downstairs to discover that is has escalated to the point that another worker is now involved and talking to my wife in the doorway. I start to step in to put an end to this harassment and I hear her telling the new man (who speaks a little English), he said: "Chau grapes are very big." Everyone (including my wife) laughed.
What is happening?
It turns out the 'creepy little dude' was wanting to plug into our electricity because the work site was having some work done and would be without power for a few hours. He wasn't being inappropriate at all. The Google Translate app just sucks when dealing with Vietnamese.
I even learned the reason he was asking about how I secured my doors a few days earlier was because our water pump was being replaced. When he discovered we were leaving for the evening, he was wondering how they were going to test the pressure once the new one was installed. There was no ill intent. We just don't have the ability to fully communicate. The extra speculation and guesswork about intent was misguided…again.
I have been putting off receiving official language instruction, but I believe it may be time to change my stance.
Red and I have stated many times that we are much happier in Vietnam than we ever were in China. But we have been gone long enough that we often forget how awful some of it was.
This morning, I stumbled upon on old Twitter thread where I live-tweeted the time I thought I was being kidnapped. It all came back to me. One of the most confusing moments I had while living in Beijing.
I'm in a school van in Beijing going to a federal office to finalize my work visa and the van just stopped in the middle of a 3-lane road
The school where I worked had put me in a van to be taken to the Entry-Exit Bureau to get my papers completed. Halfway there, I found myself in the middle of a road rage situation. Remember, I did not speak Chinese and couldn't even communicate with my driver.
A car behind us understandably started blowing his horn for us to move off of this very busy road.
As has been my experience in most of this part of the world, there is not much accommodation made for other drivers. People stop and sometimes even park right in the middle of busy roads. I didn't know why we had stopped but was very concerned that he had not pulled to the shoulder. We were fully blocking a lane of traffic.
The driver of my van jumped out and started screaming at the driver of the car behind us.
I was debating whether I would be safer staying in the vehicle or getting out and standing on the shoulder. However, the lack of ability to communicate often made me give people the benefit of the doubt and just go along with whatever was happening.
I don't speak Chinese, so I have no idea what is going on, but now the driver is trying to get me out of the van to join them on the road.
I probably should have been texting my wife in case she never saw me again or texting my school to ask questions, but all I could think about was "This has the potential to become disastrous. I better keep tweeting so there is a record of the events."
Alright. We're getting off the main road. The rest of today ought to be interesting
Probably something could be learned here. But it's been over two years since this event and I haven't been kidnapped a second time. So, I think I'm good.
For those of you who may not know, I live in Vietnam. Before coming to Vietnam, I spent two years in Beijing, China. I have lived in these countries because of my job. I teach English to non-English-speaking people. I actually have a Master's Degree in TESOL.
Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages
I have done a lot with this degree, but it didn't start out that way.
Working on the degree, I obviously had a lot of classes to take and papers to write. However, the most challenging part was getting my practicum hours accomplished. I had to complete 120 hours of instruction myself before getting the actual degree.
Unfortunately, I lived in a small town that didn't have many opportunities for me to be able to teach English. I checked around everywhere and could not find anything. The closest I came was the local high school. They had a 16-year-old boy who had recently moved there from India. He spoke a regional Indian dialect and had no knowledge of English at all. I went to the school and offered my services to teach the boy English since no one there was qualified in this type of education. They thanked me profusely and said they had been worried about what they were going to do with the boy. However, the background checks and legal hoops required to allow me to go through the school were quite extensive and the school really drug its feet on getting things done on their end.
I eventually moved to Indianapolis to have more opportunities. I even found an apartment in the middle of their unofficial Mexican district. This part of the city had so many Spanish-speaking immigrants that many of the street signs were in Spanish rather than English. I figured this would be the perfect place to find what I needed.
The day after I unpacked I walked into a community center to see if they knew any place where a person could go to learn English. A woman there told me "I think the church up the road used to do something like that." So I headed up there to check it out.
I pulled into the parking lot at John Wesley Free Methodist Church and stepped inside. I met the Associate Pastor and explained to him what I was looking for. He broke into a huge smile and invited me to sit down so he could explain their English Outreach program.
They taught English once a week right there in the church. Every Wednesday night and the next session of classes would be starting in only two weeks. He was thrilled to see me because they were still a few teachers short. He gave me the books they would be teaching out of and asked me to come back the next week to help with the registration of students.
I was thrilled to have found a place to meet my hours so soon, but I knew it would not be enough. Teaching a two-hour class once a week would not add up very quickly. I contacted my academic advisor to let her know that I had finally found a place to teach but would need to find another also. She told me that preparation time counted as well as teaching. Awesome. That would add a bit more time, but I would still need more.
After two weeks of teaching, I realized there was a major problem with the church's entire English-teaching system. The church had six different classes being offered at three different English proficiency levels. There were one or two teachers in each class, but every teacher was just a well-meaning volunteer who had no actual idea of how to teach language acquisition. Plus, the book that was provided was basically just a nice picture dictionary. It was not a textbook and offered no guidance for a classroom setting.
This meant that there was no lesson structure provided. Each teacher just did the best they could from the book. For myself, I was writing up complete lesson plans for each week. Soon it was discovered that all of the teachers could use a lesson plan. Over the course of the next month, this program was basically turned over to me and I redesigned the entire thing. I put together lesson plans, worksheets, computer files, and instructional materials for each of the age groups and proficiency levels while also convincing the church to change to a different book for the classroom. I also taught a few classes to the teachers of the classes to help them know better how to teach this subject. It was amazing.
What had started as a search for a place to teach evolved into an opportunity to use much more of my education. I was doing program management, curriculum development, language assessments, and teacher training. It was a lot of work, but all this extra work meant that I met the hours needed for my degree very quickly. Plus, it gave me a lot of hands-on experience in a volunteer setting before actually entering into the professional workforce.
ESL is an intimidating field and I was quite nervous about how my career was going to work out. I am so thankful for having landed at John Wesley. They did not pay me for my services. This was a volunteer ministry, but they did thank me publicly several times. They wrote me glowing recommendation letters. They gave me some fantastic experience. And most importantly, they provided me with a safe environment where I could develop my confidence and learn that I really could do this.
So much of the awesome life I live today is due to the opportunity that church gave to me and being willing to take a chance on the stranger who just wandered through their doors one afternoon.
This month, I am participating in the A to Z Challenge. Each day this month, people around the world are writing blog posts and working their way through the alphabet. Each person decides their own personal theme. I am writing about people who have affected my life.
I spent almost two years in Beijing working in a public school teaching English to third, fourth, and fifth graders. I have lots of stories from this experience, but my biggest challenge was trying to promote creative thinking.
I'm not going to get into a lot of detail here, but the Chinese educational philosophy is radically different than American philosophy. One of the areas this is most apparent is in creativity. Chinese schools typically teach their students to learn facts, memorize, and then state them. They will spend hours hammering words over and over again.
Many times upon entering class some excited student would want to perform for me a monologue he had delivered at some competition over the weekend. He would then launch into a speech or recite a poem in perfectly executed English. Afterward, I would ask him about the content of the words he just said and he typically had no opinion and didn't even know what he had said. He had memorized a bunch of sounds and regurgitated them for the judges.
I had no intention of producing English-sounding robots. I wanted to help my students effectively communicate in English.
The problem with communication in this type of environment is that it requires independent thought. This was a foreign concept to the students and it took months to break them free. In the beginning, if I asked the class a question, no one would answer unless there was already a pre-programmed response.
If I showed a picture of a boy walking a dog and asked them what they saw, a few might volunteer that they saw a dog or a boy. The more adventurous ones might even point out that it was a sunny day. However, if I asked where the boy and dog were going, silence fell over the room. I would try to elaborate. Tell me a story. A boy and his dog are out for a walk. Are they going to the park? Are they going to the beach? Is that actually his dog or is it someone else's? I would get nothing because there was not a 'correct' answer that had already been taught to them. They honestly had no idea what was expected of them.
To answer those questions would require some imagination. It would require using the words they already had in their heads and creating a unique sentence formulated on their own. That was not the way they had been taught to learn. They had only been taught to read the script and keep saying it until you pronounced it correctly.
I soon changed my strategy by presenting them with the words I wanted them to use. I used words they already knew but asked them to produce a few sentences using the words I provided.
I had this screen up in the classroom and asked for sentences. It was brutal. No one seemed to understand what I wanted. The few who timidly agreed to give it a shot would say things like, "I have many homework." or "My teacher is tall." or "We had cheese for dinner."
OK. We are getting closer. Can anyone use more than just one word? I have six words here? I called on one of my more outgoing students and prayed he might push this a little further. He stood and stared at the board for a long time. After what seemed like an eternity, he whispered: "I have mathhomework."
This may be a very simple sentence, but I had been at this for weeks. I exploded with excitement. I jumped and cheered so loud, I scared a couple of students in the front row. I ran over, picked the kid up and introduced him to the class as a genius. HE USED TWO OF THE WORDS IN ONE SENTENCE!
I put him down, told him how great he did and I saw the light bulb go off. He looked at me at said "Teacher, can I do THREE?"
Yes! Give it a try.
"I want to play, but I have mathhomework."
This time the class joined me in cheering for him. They understood what had just happened and a couple of hands shot up. "TEACHER TEACHER! I can do four."
Let me hear it.
"My Mathteacher told me not to sleep. Do homework."
YES! You got it! Good job!
More and more hands flew up as kids decided they wanted to give it a shot. "I can do ALL words" was yelled from the back. I quieted the class and he marched to the front to stare at the screen. He didn't have his story yet, but he had decided he could do it.
He thought for a bit and started slowly. "My mathteacher gave me homework so I could not play. After dinner, I went to sleep."
HE USED EVERY WORD!!! YAY!!!
I put him on my shoulders and we ran around to high five everyone in class. After the celebration, I flipped to a new slide with six new words and the students actually fought over who would get to make a new sentence first. It became their new favorite game to see who could come up with the silliest story. We were soon even able to switch back to the default pictures. Look at the picture and tell me a story. And once these kids creative sides were released, they went nuts with it. We were soon able to recycle the word slides and start making new sentences.
A month later I had turned my classes into improv groups. I would bring kids up and give them scenarios on slips of paper they had to improvise. They did a mock radio show, gave out awards for silly talents in class, pretended to work in restaurants and convenience stores, and made up silly songs. The purpose was not to be funny (although that happened a lot). It was to create their own independent thoughts rather than just read a script out of a book. Although, the class auditors (officials who observed my classes) never understood what I was doing.
This is where we got to eventually, but first, it was months of just staring at students who were waiting for me to tell them what to say. I was so happy to get past that stage.
The words in blue print were the ten words created by a random word generator. I had to incorporate them all into this post. Just a little challenge I added for myself.
This morning, I reached in my bag of collected fortune cookie fortunes to see what the day had in store for me and I got this.
You'll make foreign money in the year of Goat.
Now, a fortune telling you that you are going to make some money is always a good fortune. Who couldn't use a little more money?
However, my first thought about this took me right to my time spent teaching English in Beijing. Consistently, regardless of age, every student would get this question wrong.
What is this animal?
Every student I ever had would answer "sheep". ALWAYS. From grade one all the way through high school. They would tell me that was a sheep.
I would correct them and show a picture of a sheep.
THIS completely different animal is a sheep.
The students never questioned me. They had the foresight to understand that the native English speaker in front of them is probably correct. However, the new knowledge rarely stuck with them. Inevitably, at some point, this would come around again and they would label a goat as a sheep.
Once, I heard a Chinese English teacher call a goat a sheep and I realized that the kids weren't mixing the animals up, this was what they had been taught. However, it was a pretty consistent mistake since I had encountered this phenomenon in several schools and even different cities. Why was this happening?
I eventually cracked it. The confusion can be tracked down to the way the Chinese language functions. Many of their words are two other words pushed together. In this instance:
See, the Chinese don't really have an original word for goat. They have the word (羊) Yáng for sheep. But for a goat, they take the already existing (羊) Yáng and add (山)Shān to the front. 山羊.
山 means mountain.
So, their language provides a word for sheep, but then the word for "goat" is literally "mountain sheep." This doesn't even account for all the little goats that are running around farms and have no association with mountains. I understand the confusion.
Due to all this confusion within the Chinese language, I turned to Google to investigate my fortune to ensure we were even talking about the correct animal.
It appears to me that even within Chinese culture, they don't know what animal we are talking about.
I also discovered that the Year of the Goat…Sheep…uh, Ram…whatever isn't coming around again until 2027. Eight years from now! What am I supposed to do until then?
I went back to look at the fortune.
Wait a minute!
Due to my international lifestyle, I already make foreign money. I spent the last two years in China and am now in Vietnam. My money comes from a few different countries. Given my current circumstances, the best the fortune is offering me is letting me know that I will still be employed in eight years.
Although, these fortunes were all collected by me when I still lived in the States. I just still have them. Had I read it at the time, it would have been letting me know that my income would not be US-based a decade down the road. This may be the first fortune cookie I've ever gotten that actually came true.
Several years ago, I took a trip to New York City with my daughter to see the Tim Burton exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art. We came into town a few days early to take in the sites. We arrived at Times Square about midnight on a Thursday. The place was packed.
In addition to all the amazing billboards, I was fascinated by the number of languages I could hear spoken around us. Standing in one spot I heard German, Russian, Czech, French, Thai, and something that I believe was Klingon, but I couldn't be sure.
I love language. (I am not scared of it as the title suggests, but you come up with a topic starting with 'X'.) I loved learning Spanish and trying to communicate when I lived in San Juan. I currently live in Beijing and am surrounded by Mandarin speakers all day every day. My wife and I have taken lessons to better our communications here, but she is much further advanced than I am. I get excited talking to people from other countries, getting to know them and hearing their stories.
The college I went to had a foreign students night once a year. They encouraged all students from other countries to cook something from their homeland and bring it to a big fellowship dinner. I had some neighbors from Thailand and Burma who decided to collaborate and make a dish both families enjoyed. I was helping them with this meal and found myself left out of their conversation as they all spoke their common language of Lisu. I had no idea what they were saying and did my best not to mess up the food. They spent so much time laughing at me, I am sure I did it wrong.
Since getting my Master's degree in TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages), I have the opportunity to be surrounded by other languages at all times. It can be overwhelming occasionally, but I love it.
If you know me personally, then you know that I like to be the funny guy. I love making people laugh. But it's more than that. I need it. I'm almost like an addict. If I haven't gotten a good laugh out of someone in a while, I tend to get a little stupid in public going for the cheap chuckles. This was not something I took into consideration when I moved to China.
The people here do not find me funny.
If you follow me on Facebook or Twitter, you are well aware that just about everything I post is jokes. I make fun of everything and try to see the humor in any situation and figure out how to laugh at it. I am especially skilled at sarcasm. Unfortunately, sarcasm almost never translates well into Chinese. It is just not part of their culture.
My first week in China was mostly filled with meetings and training on the expectations of my job as an English teacher to small children. After a particularly lengthy speech from my trainer, I raised my hand and asked: "How many children are we allowed to choke each week?"
She looked confused, so I mimicked choking the person next to me to help her understand. She whispered something to her boss who shook her head and whispered something back. She then lowered her voice and looked me dead in the eye. "We don't do that here."
In the States, I'm used to laughter around me almost all the time, but here I almost never get it.
The Chinese do have senses of humor and love a good joke, but their jokes are very different from ours. Most of their humor seems to be based on puns. They love words that sound similar to other words. And since Chinese has a limited number of sound combinations, there are many many many words that are very similar if not exactly identical. And since my Chinese isn't strong enough to make the jokes they like, I generally just get a lot of awkward looks.
So, I put my jokes on social media. Now, China does not have Facebook or Twitter. They have other apps. The one I use is called WeChat. I thought having the written words in front of them would help, but it did not. Here are some screenshots.
I'm going to hire her to be my dietician.
I have tried many times to explain to my students what happened here. The semantics of language sometimes cause confusion. They understand that but fail to see why it's funny.
At least she has my best interests at heart.
Yeah, Peggy. We all do.
Violetta will not be fooled.
I
have a Ukranian friend who takes my jokes and sends them to his Chinese
friends and then sends me screenshots of their responses.
Her sense of justice has been triggered.
Yeah, Peggy, that's kind of the point.
Well, pretty much everything, but that's not the point.
Are you sure? Maybe you need to meet more people.
As you may have already guessed, Irving is not much fun at parties.
Violetta's a little girl, so laughing at her makes me feel bad.
Well, technically no…that's where the joke part comes in.
Last week, I returned from an English competition I participated in last year. It was four days of sitting under studio lights and listening to children showcase a talent they had prepared.
Some of the performances were great. Others were like listening to Gilbert Gottfried and Fran Drescher having sex with each other.
Despite the long days, I love working on this show. It's an opportunity to do something different and meet a bunch of new people. I make a lot of new Chinese friends and also meet many foreigners who are there doing the same thing. However, this year had one major difference from last year.
Last year, I had only been in China for a couple of months and was still in the "Crap! What have we gotten ourselves into?" mode. Now, I've been here for almost a year and a half and China doesn't seem scary anymore.
I was especially reminded of this when I got home and was reflecting on the week I just had. Each group of judges had two "native" English speakers along with several Chinese judges of differing talents. The other English speaker I was paired with was a Brazilian guy who had only arrived in China the month before and has not had a good experience so far. In fact, the company that brought him here really screwed him over, but he has gotten away from them.
While he enjoys working with children, he is acutely aware of everything around him that "just isn't right." He had a host of complaints over the course of the weekend.
He was disgusted that some children had memorized answers instead of interacting with the judges.
He hated that the breakfast they gave us was not what 'normal people' would eat.
He told us stories of the management style he had to suffer with at his new job.
The apartment he lived in was sub-standard.
He didn't agree with the educational system he was working in
He was having trouble making Chinese friends.
The language barrier was ridiculous.
After one of his stories about something he was not happy with, he walked away and another guy in the room (in China for 6 years) said: "He's a whiny little bitch."
While I couldn't disagree with the sentiment, I tried to remind the people in the room that this man had just arrived in the country and is still in freak out mode. Everyone nodded. Those first few months are difficult. It's like being on another planet.
Since I was paired with this guy, we spent a lot of time together and I did my best to help him understand some things, tell him where to buy certain items that he couldn't find and how to do some necessary tasks that seemed insurmountable. One conversation stood out in particular. It happened over breakfast.
James: Don't these people realize that breakfast is supposed to be a different meal? Why are they serving the same stuff we ate at lunch and dinner?
Me: This isn't the same.
James: Well, maybe not. But why don't they at least serve breakfast food?
Me: This is breakfast food. It's Chinese breakfast food. You do understand that we are in China, right?
James: Why can't they serve the food that normal people eat?
Me: Stop and think about this. There are over seven and a half billion people on this planet and almost one and a half billion live in this country. China, the country you are in now, makes up close to 20% of the entire world. Statistically, whatever they eat here is closer to 'normal' than whatever either of us eats in our own countries. This is normal. Everything that happens here is more 'normal' than what happens anywhere else.
He understood my point and let it rest for a moment, but as I scooped up a spoonful of my congee, it struck me. "Did I just say that? Where did that come from?"
As much as I was annoyed at how little this guy was willing to open his mind and try to bend to his surroundings, it occurred to me that this was me a year ago.
I wasn't happy about anything. I didn't know how to pay my bills. Grocery shopping was a disaster. We didn't know how to cook. There were strange smells in our apartment. We came dangerously close to getting hopelessly lost every time we went outside. I couldn't talk to anyone. Even the few people who try to help don't realize how clueless I was. It was horrible.
BUT...
What a difference a year makes. There is still so so so much about China that I don't understand, but the fear and anxiety is gone. I got this. I'm ready to tackle another country now.
