A couple days ago I went down to the ATM machine but I forgot my pin. The machine wouldn't give me my card back. I wonder if it's a security "feature" or if something was wrong with the machine. I ran back upstairs grabbed my pin and came back so it was no big deal.
The next day I went to Walmart and didn't realize I forgot my money until I got there. I was starving too, so I was planning on eating at one of the restaurants nearby. I'm just glad I brought enough bus fare because it would have been a long walk back home. I wasted an hour and a half of my valuable time.
This is actually a good sign because, if I'm comfortable enough to be forgetful, then I'm probably adjusting to life here.
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Saturday, May 24, 2008
The semester is almost over!
I can't wait! Just a few more weeks and the summer break begins! I haven't been posting pictures for a couple of reasons. First, I don't always feel comfortable taking pictures around here. Second, I've been busy studying Chinese. Over the summer break, I plan on posting pictures instead of text.
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Job comparisons
My job in Korea:
Location: Suwon. It's about an hour from downtown Seoul by subway and half-hour by bus. Not much to do in Suwon. But there were a few nice places to take a walk.
Expat community: The expat community was small, but at least once a week you would see a foreign face on the streets. It was however, full of very strange characters.
The stares: A few here and there, not too bad.
Days per week: 6 M-Sa
Classes per day: 5
Teaching hours per week: 30
Work hours: 2:30-9:30 with a 1 hour lunch
Class length: 45 minutes
Student ages: 8 to 16
Class size: 10 to 25 students
Vacation: 10 days plus national holidays.
Health insurance: None
Pay: Not bad.
Food: Cheap and outstanding.
Housing: One room, with a kitchen and bathroom. Small, but livable, very clean and modern.
Internet: Unbelievably fast.
Weather: Not bad, except for winter.
Korean co-workers: So-so. Most were very friendly and helpful, a few were almost bursting with dislike for the foreign teachers.
Foreign co-workers: Nice on the outside, but not people I wanted to spend time with.
Students: They were forced to learn English by their parents so it wasn't very fun to teach them. Only a few were truly interested.
My job in China
Location: Zhangzhou, Fujian Province. It's about an hour away from Xiamen on the coast. Not a single thing to do here. This is a very small Chinese city that is in the process of developing. The old city is currently being torn to pieces and high rises are being put in its place. There is no place to take a nice walk and it's a high stress place to live.
Expat community: There is no expat community. I know of 7 other foreigners who live here. None of us ever get together and do anything. I've only met 4 of them.
The stares: Everywhere I go I'm the center of attention. On good days it's great, on bad days it sucks.
Days per week: 4
Classes per day: 4
Teaching hours per week: 16
Work hours: Varies, either 8 to 11:30 or 3 to 6:25
Class length: 45 minutes
Student ages: Young adults
Class size: 50 to 60 students
Vacation: 10 WEEKS, plus national holidays
Health insurance: Expat health insurance
Pay: Below poverty level by western standards, way higher than local wages.
Food: Cheap and so-so.
Housing: Rough around the edges. Big apartments though.
Internet: Unbelievably slow, with most ports blocked.
Weather: Not bad, except for summer.
Chinese co-workers: Outstanding.
Foreign co-worker: Normal, but hasn't adjusted AT ALL to life here after one and a half years. Very negative about his entire experience and life in general.
Students: Failed so miserably on their national college entrance exam that our program is their only hope. Half are completely uninterested, the other half at least make an effort to tie their own shoe laces.
The winner is:
Location: Suwon
Expat community: Tie
The stares: Suwon
Days per week: Zhangzhou
Classes per day: Zhangzhou
Teaching hours per week: Zhangzhou
Work hours: Zhangzhou
Class length: Tie
Student ages: Zhangzhou
Class size: Suwon
Vacation: HAHAHAHA, not even close. Zhangzhou.
Health insurance: Zhangzhou
Pay: HEHEHE, not even close. Suwon.
Food: Suwon
Housing: Tie
Internet: Suwon
Weather: Zhangzhou
Korea/Chinese co-workers: Zhangzhou
Foreign co-worker: Tie
Students: Tie
Korea job: 6
China job: 9
I will say this about Korea. It's much easier to adjust to life there. At the end of my year in Korea, I was calling it home. It FELT like home. I wonder if I will ever feel the same way about Zhangzhou? Learning Chinese is certainly helping me adjust, so maybe I will.
Location: Suwon. It's about an hour from downtown Seoul by subway and half-hour by bus. Not much to do in Suwon. But there were a few nice places to take a walk.
Expat community: The expat community was small, but at least once a week you would see a foreign face on the streets. It was however, full of very strange characters.
The stares: A few here and there, not too bad.
Days per week: 6 M-Sa
Classes per day: 5
Teaching hours per week: 30
Work hours: 2:30-9:30 with a 1 hour lunch
Class length: 45 minutes
Student ages: 8 to 16
Class size: 10 to 25 students
Vacation: 10 days plus national holidays.
Health insurance: None
Pay: Not bad.
Food: Cheap and outstanding.
Housing: One room, with a kitchen and bathroom. Small, but livable, very clean and modern.
Internet: Unbelievably fast.
Weather: Not bad, except for winter.
Korean co-workers: So-so. Most were very friendly and helpful, a few were almost bursting with dislike for the foreign teachers.
Foreign co-workers: Nice on the outside, but not people I wanted to spend time with.
Students: They were forced to learn English by their parents so it wasn't very fun to teach them. Only a few were truly interested.
My job in China
Location: Zhangzhou, Fujian Province. It's about an hour away from Xiamen on the coast. Not a single thing to do here. This is a very small Chinese city that is in the process of developing. The old city is currently being torn to pieces and high rises are being put in its place. There is no place to take a nice walk and it's a high stress place to live.
Expat community: There is no expat community. I know of 7 other foreigners who live here. None of us ever get together and do anything. I've only met 4 of them.
The stares: Everywhere I go I'm the center of attention. On good days it's great, on bad days it sucks.
Days per week: 4
Classes per day: 4
Teaching hours per week: 16
Work hours: Varies, either 8 to 11:30 or 3 to 6:25
Class length: 45 minutes
Student ages: Young adults
Class size: 50 to 60 students
Vacation: 10 WEEKS, plus national holidays
Health insurance: Expat health insurance
Pay: Below poverty level by western standards, way higher than local wages.
Food: Cheap and so-so.
Housing: Rough around the edges. Big apartments though.
Internet: Unbelievably slow, with most ports blocked.
Weather: Not bad, except for summer.
Chinese co-workers: Outstanding.
Foreign co-worker: Normal, but hasn't adjusted AT ALL to life here after one and a half years. Very negative about his entire experience and life in general.
Students: Failed so miserably on their national college entrance exam that our program is their only hope. Half are completely uninterested, the other half at least make an effort to tie their own shoe laces.
The winner is:
Location: Suwon
Expat community: Tie
The stares: Suwon
Days per week: Zhangzhou
Classes per day: Zhangzhou
Teaching hours per week: Zhangzhou
Work hours: Zhangzhou
Class length: Tie
Student ages: Zhangzhou
Class size: Suwon
Vacation: HAHAHAHA, not even close. Zhangzhou.
Health insurance: Zhangzhou
Pay: HEHEHE, not even close. Suwon.
Food: Suwon
Housing: Tie
Internet: Suwon
Weather: Zhangzhou
Korea/Chinese co-workers: Zhangzhou
Foreign co-worker: Tie
Students: Tie
Korea job: 6
China job: 9
I will say this about Korea. It's much easier to adjust to life there. At the end of my year in Korea, I was calling it home. It FELT like home. I wonder if I will ever feel the same way about Zhangzhou? Learning Chinese is certainly helping me adjust, so maybe I will.
Saturday, May 17, 2008
Tutors
I'm up to 3 tutors now. They take turns teaching me for 2 hours Monday through Friday. They are all teaching me the same material and coordinate their lessons so it's pretty nice. Everything I learn I put into Mnemosyne to help me remember. I am learning so much that without it, I would only remember about 10% of what they were teaching me.
The other thing I'm doing is listening to as much talk radio as I can. I can't understand it right now, but my ear is starting to pickup individual words, sounds, and tones.
The other thing I'm doing is listening to as much talk radio as I can. I can't understand it right now, but my ear is starting to pickup individual words, sounds, and tones.
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Earthquake
The thing that bothers me the most about this earthquake is the number of schools that collapsed. I couldn't imagine something like that happening to my students. I hope this will force stricter building code enforcement.
I hinted that there were problems at my school in an earlier post. I guess I will let the cat out of the bag. According to my students and an administrator, the last president of my school was accepting bribes from a construction company. In turn, they were using sub-standard building material. When the government found out they arrested the president and condemned the building. I wonder how common this is?
On an unrelated note, I am moderating comments so if your comment doesn't appear do not worry. It will appear eventually.
I hinted that there were problems at my school in an earlier post. I guess I will let the cat out of the bag. According to my students and an administrator, the last president of my school was accepting bribes from a construction company. In turn, they were using sub-standard building material. When the government found out they arrested the president and condemned the building. I wonder how common this is?
On an unrelated note, I am moderating comments so if your comment doesn't appear do not worry. It will appear eventually.
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Earthquake
A pretty big earthquake hit China today. I was inside at the time and didn't feel anything down here in Fujian Province.
Saturday, May 10, 2008
Promotional video?
A girl I know asked me to go to her company tomorrow and be in a promotional video, for free...
Um...no?
I've been exploited enough already thank you very much.
Um...no?
I've been exploited enough already thank you very much.
I'm not here to teach.
I came here to teach, but I have lost interest in teaching. It's not very satisfying anymore. My sole purpose for being here is to learn Chinese. Of course I'm not going to tell people that, but it's true. Teaching these students is pointless, and quite frankly boring. They don't want to learn English, just like I don't want to learn Korean. So, why does the school force them to come to class? I have to take attendance every day and the kids get punished if they don't show up, how stupid is that? Just let them learn the hard way what happens when you are uneducated.
Thursday, May 8, 2008
My plan
Ok, so now that I've taken the first step, after a few stumbles, I am now ready to share the first draft of my plan for learning Chinese. Most of these ideas I got the website All Japanese All The Time.
Step 1 attitude, environment, commitment, the goal.
Learning another language is probably the hardest thing an adult can learn. So, if you really want to learn another language and not just complain that you wish you could learn it, then you must be prepared to bust your ass every single day of the week for hours on end.
You must have the motivation to put in the hard work. Without the motivation you will not succeed. Sounds so elementary but it's the key to learning anything. As an ESL teacher in Asia I am intimately familiar with the inability to force someone to learn a language if they don't want to learn it. For some reason parents love to force their kids to learn English, but it NEVER works.
You must be willing to give up your native language. In the next few weeks I am going to wean myself from english movies, english books, english video games, and yes, english music. This is the hardest part for me, having to give up everything English. But, if I am not willing to take this step, I will never reach my goal. Ask yourself this, how bad do you want it? Are you willing to give up everything for it? If not, then don't waste your time.
Obviously I plan on keeping my blog in English and talking to my family in English because those are necessities, without which, I will lose my motivation to study.
My goal is to achieve near native fluency in 2 years.
Step 2 the method and the tools.
Right now I am meeting a tutor twice a week for two hours. That is not enough. I am going to ask my tutor to help me find more tutors so I have a tutor 5 days a week for 2 hours each day. Additionally I plan on studying 3 to 4 hours a day on my own. In the summer time I will have to increase my self study because I will have less tutors.
I am using spaced repetition software to help me learn the 2000 most common Chinese characters. Once I feel I have learned the majority of them, I will work on memorizing 10,000 sentences using the same spaced repetition software. I will try to get the majority of these sentences from Chinese movies, books, magazines, and songs. This way I can learn slang, useful language, and I can pick up more cultural cues. Learning from CDs is worthless.
It will take time, and a lot of work, but I feel it's worth the effort.
Step 1 attitude, environment, commitment, the goal.
Learning another language is probably the hardest thing an adult can learn. So, if you really want to learn another language and not just complain that you wish you could learn it, then you must be prepared to bust your ass every single day of the week for hours on end.
You must have the motivation to put in the hard work. Without the motivation you will not succeed. Sounds so elementary but it's the key to learning anything. As an ESL teacher in Asia I am intimately familiar with the inability to force someone to learn a language if they don't want to learn it. For some reason parents love to force their kids to learn English, but it NEVER works.
You must be willing to give up your native language. In the next few weeks I am going to wean myself from english movies, english books, english video games, and yes, english music. This is the hardest part for me, having to give up everything English. But, if I am not willing to take this step, I will never reach my goal. Ask yourself this, how bad do you want it? Are you willing to give up everything for it? If not, then don't waste your time.
Obviously I plan on keeping my blog in English and talking to my family in English because those are necessities, without which, I will lose my motivation to study.
My goal is to achieve near native fluency in 2 years.
Step 2 the method and the tools.
Right now I am meeting a tutor twice a week for two hours. That is not enough. I am going to ask my tutor to help me find more tutors so I have a tutor 5 days a week for 2 hours each day. Additionally I plan on studying 3 to 4 hours a day on my own. In the summer time I will have to increase my self study because I will have less tutors.
I am using spaced repetition software to help me learn the 2000 most common Chinese characters. Once I feel I have learned the majority of them, I will work on memorizing 10,000 sentences using the same spaced repetition software. I will try to get the majority of these sentences from Chinese movies, books, magazines, and songs. This way I can learn slang, useful language, and I can pick up more cultural cues. Learning from CDs is worthless.
It will take time, and a lot of work, but I feel it's worth the effort.
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
False starts
I've had a few false starts with my Chinese studies. I think the hardest part is finding the most efficient method to learn. I gave the program supermemo a try, but the user interface is unusable. It's just not worth it. Luckily, I have found another program called Mnemosyne. The user interface is actually usable, and it's free. Right now I am working on the 2000 most common Chinese characters. On the other side of the equation I am working with a tutor. We have been focusing on pronunciation and writing. She is a very patient teacher and is thrilled about my enthusiasm and dedication to learning Chinese. My teacher will not be in Zhangzhou during the summer, but she promised she would help me find a tutor for the summer.
I am not interested in learning survival Chinese. I am aiming for near native fluency. This requires a long term commitment but I think in the end, the effort will pay off. I have been scouring the internet on the best methods to learn languages. One of the best websites I found was All Japanese All The Time. The author claims to have attained near native fluency in Japanese in 18 months. While this claim must be taken with a grain of salt, I can't help but hope this is possible. He suggests trying to learn entire sentences instead of single words. If you can memorize and understand 10,000 sentences in the target language, then your brain will be able to make connections it otherwise would not if you just memorized individual words. I think it makes sense. Just because you know 1000 words doesn't mean you can put them together in the correct order. You could study grammar, but then you have to think about the grammar rules while you are trying to put together your sentence. Too see how ineffective this is, go to South Korea.
The author of the website strongly advocates using the spaced repetition system for memorizing. This method is used in the supermemo and Mnemosyne programs. While supermemo is a terrible program and costs money, I still think the idea behind the program is sound.
My current plan is to continue meeting my tutor twice a week. Once I have learned 1,000 characters I am going to switch to memorizing entire sentences...10,000 of them. Ambitious? You bet your ass.
I am not interested in learning survival Chinese. I am aiming for near native fluency. This requires a long term commitment but I think in the end, the effort will pay off. I have been scouring the internet on the best methods to learn languages. One of the best websites I found was All Japanese All The Time. The author claims to have attained near native fluency in Japanese in 18 months. While this claim must be taken with a grain of salt, I can't help but hope this is possible. He suggests trying to learn entire sentences instead of single words. If you can memorize and understand 10,000 sentences in the target language, then your brain will be able to make connections it otherwise would not if you just memorized individual words. I think it makes sense. Just because you know 1000 words doesn't mean you can put them together in the correct order. You could study grammar, but then you have to think about the grammar rules while you are trying to put together your sentence. Too see how ineffective this is, go to South Korea.
The author of the website strongly advocates using the spaced repetition system for memorizing. This method is used in the supermemo and Mnemosyne programs. While supermemo is a terrible program and costs money, I still think the idea behind the program is sound.
My current plan is to continue meeting my tutor twice a week. Once I have learned 1,000 characters I am going to switch to memorizing entire sentences...10,000 of them. Ambitious? You bet your ass.
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
My health
My health has been great lately. I haven't been sick the entire time I've been here. I'm quite surprised at this considering I was sick every single month in Korea. A few weeks after I'd get over a cold, another one would hit. It probably has to do with the age groups I'm teaching. Primary and middle school students are little disease spreaders, while young adults are usually more healthy.
Saturday, May 3, 2008
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