A long week
Next week is the week long celebration equivalent to the Forth of July, so I get the week off. But as is usual in most public university vacations we have make-up days and so this week I'm feeling the burn. It's Saturday morning and I'm about to go and teach for 4 hours. Awesome. So needless to say I haven't accomplished much this week.
I have been getting some positive feedback from the board and from email and so thank you for that. But don't be afraid of negative feedback. If the new design is causing physical pain or epileptic seizure let me know about it so I can at least put up a warning or something. Anyway, just wanted to let you all know that I'm still around and that I'm constantly haunted by the fact that the site has problems and unfinished content. I also want to thank my Mom and Dad for sending me a DS lite, I absolutely love it! But I must say it hasn't done a lot for my productivity.
_Nathan
Temporary setbacks
Ok, we're back on. I was hoping this would all go much less painfully. I should have done more testing. Anyway, welcome to the new Whereisnathan.com!
It' seems that we (I guess I mean 'me') have outgrown Blogger. I have always liked Blogger and thought it was a good simple service, but there are a few problems now: 1)China hates Google, Google owns Blogger, and 2)Blogger doesn't have quite enough liberty for using PHP. I want to thank Blogger for the years of good service, but it's time for me to find something else. So we are now in an interim phase, where I will be switching to (possibly) Wordpress. As a result you will notice there are no more comments, please feel free to continue to use the message board.
Everything else should be self-explanatory. Feel free to look around and expect a few changes in the near future. Thank you for your continued patience.
_Nathan
Guest Speaker
While I'm busy breaking the website, Elizbeth was kind enough to donate this post. Enjoy.
Last week I had my students fill out a survey covering topics they have already learned, topics they want to learn and their goals for themselves. Last semester I bumbled through some of the book and some topics of my own choosing and got a few of complaints, usually, "We already learned this!" as if they knew everything there was to know about it. The complaining irked me, so I decided that this time I would turn it around on them and make them choose the topics. This kind of move in unprecedented in the traditional Chinese classroom. I think this school is a little more open-minded, but usually the teacher will lecture and the students sleep/stare into space/secretly text message their friends. Since their other classes are so boring, foreign teachers often hear things like, "We want to play games!" or "Can we watch a film?" one, because we are generally more informal teachers and two, because we are suckers.
The seventh question on the survey was "When you have completed this class, what would you like to be able to do? Be realistic." I added that last part because I didn't want them to fantasize that their English would be perfect or fluent, even though some of them still wrote this. Carol wrote, "I hope I can speak to everyone in fluent English." Carol is obviously an optimist, and refuses to conform to my harsh, realistic world. Not everyone felt this way though, because Pure (yes, that's her name) wrote, "To know about the foreign counties and can make at least a little progress in English." Others were very specific in their goals: Sky said, "I'd like to watch some English plays, for example: Friends." while Erica went the musical route with "I want to talk freely with foreigners and can sing My Heart Will Go On." It sounds like she is informing me of her ability to sing the worst song in the history of mankind, but I'm pretty sure she expects me to help her master the brilliant lyrics, "Near, far, wherever you are." They loved that song in '03 and they still love it. At least Americans have the sense to admit their mistake and move on. For a couple of students, the meaning of the question alluded them completely thanks to that tricky word "class," even though I explained the question beforehand. Angus informed me, "When I have completed this class, we have a new weekend then. I'd like to go to library to read some books and surf on the Internet, and then go to play basketball." while Sunny simply said, "I'd like to go shopping with my friend." Me too, Sunny, me too.
Number eight on the survey was "Here you may write any other suggestions, advice or comments:" Amid all of the helpful advice to frequently include "small games" and films, I received some real gems of wisdom. Margaret offered that, "The form above are colorful enough, the eccential problem is that not everyone would like to be engaged into some activities. That means we are lack of practice, so create a reasonable active environment please." I feel like only Margaret gets it. Unless the activity is Text Messaging Your Friend, not everyone will like to be engaged into it; that is the eccential problem. Happy offered these nuggets: "Could we have a rest during class? If we needn't be forced to answer the question that we don't wanted to, that'll be better." Sure, just bring your little bamboo mat and feel free to take a snooze whilst I entertain your classmates with "small games." Tracy exposed her neurosis with, "When we are answering questions, I hope the teacher don't give markes, that will make us feel tense. You can give the markes after class." Lisa suggested that, "The class should be active and attack us." I got a lot of "the class should be active/vivid/interesting." March said, "I hope we communicate often, by e-mails or some other ways. We can make friends. Tell us something interesting you experience in China. We may help you." I may help you with your verb choice, March. Eleven (not the only one with this name) informed me, "You'd better tell us what is going to be discussed, so that we can prepare it before the class." They use "you'd better" all the time, thinking it is a suggestive phrase rather than a commanding one. And finally, Kinnel wrote, "Talk with us more and be close to us. After class, we can be together just like friends. Don't be talking or giving speech all the class yourself." I cannot read that last sentence with out adding, "girl!" to the end of it.
The differences between college in the Western world and college here are astonishing. Can you magine asking your college professor, "Can we play games?" It is unthinkable, even if they do see our classes as entertainment. They are still 22 years old. I should not have to physically push the boys and girls together to talk during dialogues; I should not have to constantly ask them to be quiet; And I certainly should not be asked for a "rest" during class. If anyone needs a rest, its me.
Elizabeth
Delightful. Things could get ugly this weekend. But by Monday or Tuesday the dust should be settled and there shouldn't be any more major glitches in functionality. The feeds are going to be untouched, so when it doubt use them.
_Nathan
A time is coming, and has now come...
Ok, I've got a lot of the updates finished and the rest I will attempt to finish this weekend. But before everything changes I thought I'd let people know about a few things. The main thing is that this blog is changing addresses slightly. So if you have ...com/blog/blog.html as the link for this site in the next week you need to change it to www.whereisnathan.com. I don't know why I didn't do this years ago. I've been trying to figure out something to do with the "main" page for ages, but I've had enough and I'm just losing it entirely. Also I will finally finish the Message board by adding a link back to ... well, anything else. There will be some other doodads and thinga'magigers that will also be added but you can find those as time goes on. The "friends" page never really developed so my "friends" will be thrown in with the rest of the things I want to link to. But for consideration's sake, I don't want to leave anybody out so if you would like me to link your blog, LJ, or Xanga go ahead and send me an email.
I will apologize once again for putting off chapter 3, but I made no promises so hold your horses my class load doubled this week.
In the meantime you can read about this guy. Thanks Jason. That's right, he lives in the same city as me. It seems I'm not the only bored one here.
_Nathan
Who is Mark Roswell?
Chris, you are totally right that I have no excuse to not have chapter 3 finished. But let me make a peace offering by giving you a subject that is totally easy to flame.Mark Roswell, known in China as "Da Shan" is a phenomenon. He's the only foreigner, perhaps in the the history of the human race, to seemingly perfect the Chinese language. His standard Chinese is better than most native Chinese speakers and he is by miles and miles the most famous foreigner in China. And yet, the rest of the world just have no idea.
This means a few things; (1) he is everywhere and (2) he seems like a huge jerk. I think I made it about 2 months before I was bombarded with Da Shan commercials, life size cutouts, and by students and random people on the street asking me "Do you know Da Shan?" Having been out of the country for a year and a half, upon my return Da Shan fever seems to have grown stronger or perhaps they just like his better in the east. But any trip to any super market or bookstore is now coupled with seeing a giant Da Shan display where they are selling his magic English learning machine (which appears to be a gloried electronic dictionary with mp3 capability). And even riding the bus (the ones with TVs) I often have to endure hearing Da Shan (in Chinese) give it 2 thumbs up, it's not like he's selling it or anything.
I, of course, do not know Mark Roswell and so to make judgments on his character would seem impractical and possibly immoral. But if I were forced to make a judgment I would say this guy is a total jerk. Da Shan rose to fame in the late 80's doing the Chinese equivalent of stand-up comedy (which is unbelievable on it's own), so in the last 20 years he has to have noticed that everybody is having a much harder time with Chinese than he had. In recent years perhaps he did notice and decided he would try to help by starting up some language learning TV shows on CCTV 9. I had a chance to catch a few of these shows while I was on the Road this summer and could not stop laughing. I do not know who this show if for? It's certainly not for the beginning Chinese learner as I couldn't understand half of what they were saying and yet the name of the show was "Travelling in Chinese." So is it for visitor's travelling in China? Because they aren't going to understand any of it either. I suppose it's aimed at graduate linguistic students who get to travel for a few weeks in between semesters.
The content isn't the annoying part of "Travelling in Chinese." The beef that most local Lao Wai have with Da Shan is that he sits on his high imperial throne of excellent Pǔ Tōng Hùa with this smirk that communicates nothing but total arrogance and sips delicately from his far too fancy tea cup and hands what he knows are impossible instructions for speaking the hardest language of the human race. Mark Ros may be a nice guy in real life, but when you are watching 大山 on TV you are first filled with unbridled jealousy immediately followed by immense discouragement at knowing you can never achieve his level. Seconds later you realize that he is laughing at you. That smirk on his face is actually aimed at every foreigner in China who has ever attempted to learn any amount of Chinese, it is the smirking challenge of the ultimate champion challenging the legions of would-be usurpers to his sovereignty, and you are left with no other emotional route except unmitigated hostility.
So there you have it. For all of you outside of Big Red, now you know who Mark Roswell is. Chris this is your cue to unless your full furry against the oppressor.
_Nathan