The 1 Minute Job Offer...
I went to one of the local universities yesterday to say goodbye to Marie who's heading back to France after a week of travel with her parents. I met her between classes while she was dishing out slices of a huge cake she had bought for her students. While eating a piece, the head of the French department came over to say hi and introduce herself. We spoke for less than a minute when she offered me a job teaching French at the university to fill Marie's position (she will finish her contract this week). She asked where I was working now and when I mentioned that I had a contract here until the end of June she said not to worry.
It's a tempting offer. No real curfew, three classes of 20 to 25 students who really want to learn the language (instead of 16 classes of 65 to 75!), bathrooms that don't smell, accommodation close to the city centre, fewer hassles, no 6:20AM wake-up bell or late night boys-screaming-like girls upstairs, etc. The only cons are that the pay is slightly less (not a big deal), have to administer a final exam, and I wouldn't have a toaster.
What's interesting is that this is the second time the university has offered me a position teaching French there this year.

Crazy Week...
This past week has been pretty intense, in many more ways than one. On Monday, after my 6 classes, I went out with a few friends for a big foreigners dinner and met a few new foreigners and touched bases with some I haven't seen in a while.
There was a lot of excitement on Wednesday when a police officer came to our school for a 'passport check'. It was interesting because he never looked at our passports, but instead asked us questions about our safety. Questions like "What do your parents do for work?" and "Do you have friends in Beijing?". Our interview was relatively tranquil, compared to other interviews where "foreign land people" were asked about their religious beliefs and the war in Iraq. The interview seems to have lead to a lowering in our curfew from 10:30 to 10:00PM.
There was a big disagreement near the end of the week which hasn't been resolved yet so I won't comment further.
Friday evening I went to visit some new friends and feast on an excellent home-made Mexican meal. There were enchiladas, horchata, pina colada, fresh salsa, and home made tortillas, all of which was incredible. The evening was a lot of fun, and we ended up staying way past our curfew so we spent the night at our friend's place.
Saturday was my birthday day, and I woke up on a few cushions on a Chinese floor. After I got my room cleaned up I had a bag of lamian for lunch outside in a park. In the evening I met up with a group of friends for Korean food (I'm tired of Chinese food, so Korean is always a nice change) at a little place behind the university and close to my dorm. After dinner we headed back to my place for some cake (thanks to Shakira), snacks, and gin and tonic (thanks to Kim and Tami). We all had a great time, and even got to play a round of "Pin the Tail on the Donkey Burger!" One of the VPs of the school, whom I had never met before, stopped by with a small bottle of wine and a bunch of bottles of Pepsi for everyone! There were a few funny stories from people as they tried to make their way home, but I'll leave that for another time. Jodee, Stephanie, and I ended staying up until 3:30 playing long games of 'Uno' (we were mean and Stephanie had to pick up 28 cards!).
This morning I went to Military Square Park with a few students to fly kites, a common Spring activity in China. Kim and I weren't too successful, and ended up flying my student's kite into an apartment rooftop where we lost it.

Big Issues...
I'm just going to post a little blurb now, but there are some big problems/issues/intrigue that has arrisen in the past few days. I'll post more after the meeting in a few minutes.

No Power, No Water (Again)...
I woke up to a powerless day, again. The power was out at my school for over 12 hours. At least it was warmish outside today and luckily the water was running except for a few hours in the afternoon.

March 15th - Happy No Heat Day!
In the North of China there are two 'festivals' that aren't marked on any calendar, but which everyone except new foreigners know about. The first is on November 15th, and is "Heat Day". The second occurred yesterday, March 15th, and is called "No Heat Day". I should clarify for those who haven't lived in China for one of these festivals because there's an imaginary line separating the North and South of China which starts a bit north of Shanghai, continues west between Xi'an and Chengdu (i.e. Xi'an gets heat, Chengdu doesn't), then continues somewhere along the XinJiang/Tibet border (Lhasa gets no heating). This line only applies if you live in cities, because many villages in the North have no central heating, and can only burn coal to warm up. This imaginary line determines who gets central heating in the winter, which is OK if you live in warm Guangzhou or Hong Kong, but can make for cold and damp winters in Shanghai. Not to mention freak snow storms like when I was in Kunming, which is below the heating line.
Anyway, the general rule is that the central heating doesn't go on before November 15th, no matter how cold it gets. We were lucky this year in that the autumn was quite long! Then the heat goes off again on the 15th of March and you hope it doesn't dip below freezing again.
I call the two days festivals because everyone is quite happy when the heat goes on in November, but the mood is quite the opposite near the middle of March, and it makes for some lacklustre conversation amongst the foreigners. "Don't forget the heat goes off next week", "I woke up on the 15th without heat", "we still have heat until the evening of the 15th!", etc.
Being in a foreigner apartment helps a bit because we usually have extra heater/AC units, but they don't always keep the place warm. The other problem comes with laundry. Laundry? you think. Yes, there don't seem to be dryers in China so most clothes are hung to dry. But if it's a few degrees above freezing outside, and the central heating radiators don't work, it can take days for your clothes to dry. In the meantime you need to take you daily shower and the towel is still damp.

Music Furthest from the Sea...
In light of my recent lesson about World Music (I played songs from various continents and got the students to guess where they were from, it was a great success and many students asked me for the MP3's or the names of the artists), I thought I would post a bit about non-Han Chinese music from China.
I came across a free make-it-yourself CD, including songs and cover art, of Uyghur music on Who Let the Camel Loose?. If you're interested in world music then it's got some great music from the far west of China. Feel free to download it (don't worry about copywrite, we're in China) off the website.

Stuff...
I realise it's been quite a while since I've actually written a personal post. It gets easy just to post funny music videos, random conversations, and a few photos here and there.
I've only got four months of teaching left before I do some travelling, then head home in the middle of the summer and start law school in September. It's made me start to wonder what I've done here, what I've accomplished, and why I should even bother staying around another four months.
My work also feels quite useless. Really, how much English can you teach a group of 60 to 70 students in 40 minutes a week? If you do the math, that's about 30 seconds of speaking time each student. I've tried the partner and group thing, but the students just talk to each other in Chinese. For one of my Senior 2 classes, which is equivalent to Grade 11, the English teacher told me that some of the students only know 20 English words and that I should just play them movies. If they only know 20 English words by Senior 2, and they don't want to learn English, then why is the school wasting my time with their class? It seems to me, and a few other teachers in the city, that the only reason there are foreigners here is for the 'prestige' of the school, so that they can tell the parents there's a foreign monkey, oops, I mean teacher.
That's not to say I'm all in the dumps. The weather is getting better, despite the yesterday's snow and lack of heat during the day, though I don't know what the sand storms will bring in a few weeks. The proverbial light at the end of the tunnel is getting brighter every day, and the sun stays out longer too which helps.
But it's all made me wonder if I should continue studying Mandarin. In some ways it would be nice to continue because I still find the language fascinating. It's very difficult, and you basically can't speak it fluently if it's not your mother tongue (I've been told even the infamous DaShan has an accent when he speaks). Mandarin may be the most spoken language in the world, but it's basically only spoken in China -of course there's Taiwan, Singapore, and parts of Malaysia, but they're rather insignificant by comparison. Do I want to come back to China to visit? Yes. Do I want to come back to China to work? Probably not. So why learn the language? I'm wondering if I should just start studying Spanish, which will be much easier to learn since I've already got French.
In other news, I've shaved off my beard so now XinJiang people won't ask me if I'm Muslim!

New Arrivals...
Two American girls arrived at my school yesterday afternoon and it's nice to have some other English speakers on campus. They were told by the school that they would have 40 students per class, so they were quite surprised when I told them that there were actually 60 to 70 students! Needless to say the school was lying, again.

You're on Vacation, Right Now...
I've been trying to find out when I'm on Spring Festival vacation for over a month now. Nobody knew, ask somebody else. I went again to the Vice Principal today, to get a date nailed down so that I can start making plans and buying tickets.
She makes a phone call and says "The students will be reviewing this week and next, before their exams. So you don't have to teach them anymore. You're on vacation as of now. Where do you think you'll go?"
Yup, I'm on vacation as of 15 minutes ago. Now I'm trying to get things organised so I can leave ASAP before minds get changed. I'm heading to the warm south (at least it'll be warmer than here).

No Electricity, No Heat, No Hot Water...
I woke up shaking because I was so cold at 5AM yesterday under my three blankets. I went to turn the light on only to find out that there was no electricity. Wonderful. Of course it would have to start snowing to top things off. I mean, why have no electricity, no heat, and no hot water if you can't have a few flakes of snow to enjoy them in.
On the plus side, I didn't have to worry about the food in my fridge rotting!

School of Centenary Prestige...
Today was the 100 year anniversary celebration at my middle school. Yup, my school was founded in 1906 during the Qing Dynasty as a women's middle school. Sometime during the Cultural Revolution it became a mixed school, and in 1996 it became a foreign language school.
The whole school has been fixed up, repainted, and cleaned, which included sending hoards of students behind the dorms to pick up the garbage they throw out their windows into the bushes below! Now I don't have to look at yogurt bags and dirty underwear in the morning (at least for another week).
The ceremony itself was fairly short, only 2 hours with speeches by dignitaries and alumni, a song by the teachers, and a poem recital. They also published a short, glossy book for the anniversary with the photos they took of me a few weeks back in it.
The students had the rest of today and Friday to go home, so there's hardly anyone left here. Because they get a day off school, the Senior 3 students (last year at highschool) must make up missed classes on Saturday and Sunday, while the rest of the students only have to make up classes on Sunday. Which means... I have to teach classes this Sunday.

The Token Foreigner...
My school is turning 100 this month so they're putting on a big celebration in a few weeks time. They've also decided to put together a glossy brochure to promote the school. Seeing as it's a foreign language school, they need pictures of the foreign teachers at work. So this morning a group of students and I held hands and walked across the field while the photographer took photos. We then had another photo shoot, where I was pretending to teach a small group of students something outside (if you look closely, I was teaching them from their chemistry texts). We'll see how the photos turns out. In the example photos the photographer had from another school, I saw two other foreign teachers that I met earlier this year. I wonder if they ever saw the photos?

Yi, Er, San, Si...
Every day at my school the students have group exercises in the morning. They all line up and do a set routine to some military type music, which is actually quite catchy. The photo only shows about 1/3 of the students at the front of the school. The yard in the back of the school is full of students as well. Just imagine 5000 students, some with more and some with less enthusiasm, doing exercises all at the same time. It's quite impressive.

Bank Account II...
I'm now the proud owner of a second Bank of China bank account. Let me explain.
Before leaving for Xi'an I wanted to get a bank card, which is much more convenient for getting cash when the bank is closed (i.e. during a holiday or in the evening). When I originally opened an account, they didn't have any cards in the bank (meiyou!), so I was told to go back again. I decided to hit up a larger branch today figuring they would have cards in stock.
I guess I went into the wrong part of the bank, but the lady understood what I wanted and told me to go through a door into another part of the bank. I evidently didn't have the correct type of account to have a bank card, so they gave me some papers to fill out. I have a "Savings Account", but I need a "Passbook of Savings Accounts" to be able to have a bank card. So I opened a second account, paid another 15Yuan, and transferred money back and forth until I got a Great Wall Card, for use in China only.
They were quite efficient, the lady behind the counter even serving four people at the same time! Yes, there were four of us squished up against the glass, pushing paper back and forth to the lady, and entering our PIN codes multiple times.

I'm Legal...
It's official -I received my "Residence Permit for Foreigner in the People's Republic of China" from the PSB (Public Security Bureau) today! It took less then three weeks to get all the paperwork, medical tests, and translations finished. And to top it off, I got payed yesterday. A big wad of red 100Yuan bills in a white paper envelope. Needless to say I got one of the teachers to help me open a bank account so I don't have to hide the money under my bed.
That's much faster than the 3-4 months it took in France to get paid and receive my carte de sejour.

First Classes...
I had my first class on Monday afternoon, when I got back from the medical exam in Shijiazhuang. I was a bit surprised to have 62 eager faces staring at me -I had been expecting 30-35. Aside from that the class was OK, although I need to explain the activities in smaller steps.
Yesterday I had two classes, one with 65 and the other with 66 students. They went much better, and I think the students learned more as well. I did an exercise where I put my name on the board, then draw a star around it. In each of the 5 points I put something about myself -Canada, chocolate, French, green, sister- and I get the students to ask me questions about these things i.e. "What country do you come from?" I then get the students to do the same with themselves, and put a list of favourites on the board they can talk about. Next they are paired up, and they must present their neighbour to me (I met 'X-Men' in my class today). It's a good way to get to know their level of English, about them, and for them to know a bit about me. For the last 5 minutes of class, I let them ask me any question they want.

Observing...
This being my first full week here, I've been observing the various classes that I'll be teaching, before I start my own classes next week. The lady who made my schedule for this week, didn't tell any of the teachers ahead of time that I'll be going to their classes, so some of the teachers were understandably shocked when I was waiting outside their class. One poor lady was quite frightened that I would be listening to her class.

The obvious thing that I've noticed is how well behaved the students are, and how much the students study. Each of the classes is 40 minutes long, with the first one starting at 7:30. They have 5 classes before lunch, a 2-hour lunch break, then another 4 classes. After dinner, they start back at 6:30 with another 2 classes, followed by 80 minutes of time to do homework before they go back to their dorms at 10:00. Apparently there are schools where the students study even more.
The English classes vary in size, from 35-50, but the average class for other subjects is 50 pupils. The classes involve a fair amount of repetition, reading and repeating words, although I'm impressed with the amount of English that some of the teachers use in their classes.
Being that I'm at a foreign language highschool, the students take English classes everyday. That being said, there's a great disparity between the students even in the same grade. Some can't form basic questions, others can have good conversations and express themselves well. In some ways that makes sense, since there are over 5000 pupils in this one school alone. Most of the students know how to say "Bonjour" or "Salut", which surprises me. Apparently after English, which is required study for all students in China, French and Japanese are the most popular 3rd languages.
*The picture is of one wing of the school, between Sunday evening study sessions.

NPSW...
This week is National Public Service Week across Canada. It's a week to recognise all of the hard-working and talented public servants, such as myself, from coast to coast to coast. They've got a few events planned (bingo, potluck lunch, pancake breakfast, etc.), and I was able to catch the tail-end of the potluck lunch and cake. We (my co-workers and I at SCCY) also did a Canadian crossword puzzle, and ours was the first one to be entered in the draw for an exciting prize of some-sort.

Are you... French?
At work today a guy came into our office, wanting to know if we had any jobs tutoring French, and we ended up chatting in French (me being the bilingual agent, lol). What I thought was funny is that despite being raised in Paris, he asked me if I was French, or possibly Québécois. I guess I should put more stock in my level of spoken French, but still.
In unrelated news, here's an interesting article about a Canadian-ownded french fries plant in England that had to be evacuated last week when its batch of potatoes from the Continent contained what was thought to be a grendade from the First World War! It's amazing that stuff is still in the fields, over 90 years later, but I saw some of it for myself when I was in northern France.

Conundrum...
Not that this is the first one I've been in, but it's the most recent. I had forgotten about a job I had applied for, and it turns out now that they might be interested in hiring me for the fall (they emailed to ask that I reconsider my choice delining an interview, etc.). I hadn't planned on hearing from them, so I've sent out CVs in another country for a totally unrelated job. Neither are of course certain, both have their advantages and disadvantages, and neither come out a clear winner.