Month 4

My 4 month mark in China brought higher highs and lower lows than my 1st 2 months here. I found myself pleasantly surprised when things felt normal, though by normal I mean not Chinese, perhaps even Western-like. My Chinese is improving, though dreadfully slowly. I ended up being pretty dissatisfied with the class I was taking. It was taught like a typical Chinese class. Rather than being taught how to use the language, I felt like I was just being taught the textbook.
For instance, here's how we'd spend a morning:

8:00 - 8:05 Getting settled, open your textbooks to page blablabla
8:05 - 8:10 Teacher reads the chapter's opening dialogue
8:10 - 8:15 Teacher reads dialogue with the class: She is Person A, Class is Person B
8:15 - 8:20 Teacher reads dialogue with the class: She is Person B, Class is Person A
8:20 - 8:25 Class reads the dialogue silently to themselves, teacher writes dialogue on board.
8:25 - 8:27 Teacher has left certain words out of the dialogue when she wrote it on the board. Class says the dialogue aloud in unison, filling in the words the teacher has omitted.
8:27 -8:35 Class reads the dialogue in pairs
8:35 - 8:50 Teacher tells the class to close their textbooks and recite the dialogue
8:50 - 9:00 Break

It's quite difficult to get up knowing that that's what your morning has in store for you. For me, the dialogue was rarely something I was likely to repeat in every day life. "Hi Mary. Do you like dumplings?" "Yes, I like dumplings very much" "Teacher, do you like dumplings?" "Yes, I like dumplings a lot, too." "We all like dumplings! How many dumplings can you eat?" etc etc. Sure, anything is a step up from my Mandarin skills, but I had hoped that the basic level Chinese would be taught more like Survival Chinese. Instead, the outside world was completely disassociated, and they never put the two together: that we were foreigners in the middle of China with no language experience, and maybe teaching us more necessary things would have been more helpful. I found that I "learned" more when I stayed home from class. I say "learned" because obviously it's more beneficial for me to sit there, listening to everyone speak Chinese for 4 hours than for me to sit at home in my room, rewriting characters. But as far as the class was concerned, the only thing that mattered was that I memorized this dialogue, and that I can do much faster by sitting at home. I like to think that the more advanced levels, once we've built some vocabulary, are more beneficial, but only time will tell (provided I have the patience to continue attending class).

It's definitely difficult to stay motivated. I'm usually a pretty self-motivated person, but here, it's easy to get lost. Noone cares if I teach well or if I don't, noone cares if I learn Chinese or if I don't... woe is me. I know that sounds like a bit of a sob story, which it is, to a degree. I try to look at it as something I'm eager to overcome, not something that's holding me back (although it certainly does that at times). It's just... difficult to feel a sense of accomplishment. Maybe I'm alone on that one, though, because noone else seems to mind. Or maybe I'm different from most people who come here. I don't think I'm a teacher. I'm not bad at it, and I actually think I'm better than a lot of other people are who go abroad to teach, but that's more because I like to do a good job at things, not because I'm a born teacher. I want to do well, but I see teaching as a way to make money, not my life's work.

I see the other foreigners here, and so few are like me. There are more older people than I'd expect, people who have retired from teaching and found this as an exciting thing to do for 6 months or so. There are a lot of Christians and Mormons. Among the young people who are here, most are in their late twenties with a few in their early thirties. So many seem to be lost, wandering aimlessly. Maybe they're here for a year, or maybe longer, we'll see how it goes. But they kind of... ok: you can wander for a purpose, or you can wander because it's easier than making the decision to do something else, and I can see how Jinan could be like Brigadoon. Life is slow and the locals will never get tired of you, and as a native English speaker, you'll never go homeless or hungry. It would be easy to get lost here, doing the same thing day in and day out for years, never actually doing something-- my perception of "something" at least. A lot of people here seem unmotivated, just teaching, drinking, eating, to pass the time. If for no other reason, I want to keep up with my Chinese classes as a way to meet the foreign students here. They have a spark, a reason for being here, a plan for what they want to do when they grow up. I've definitely met some cool people over the past 4 months, and I'm eager to meet more with the new flock of teachers and students in September. It's shitty of me to judge other people, especially hypocritical when they're here doing the same thing I am, and I'm not really judging them, actually, I'm just acknowledging that a lot of them are different than I am. I would love it if they proved me wrong.

(that was so Dear Diary.)