Chinese language

I'm only up to 120 characters so far. I've been slacking big time. I'm going to have to cut it down to 5 characters per day for now because these bad boys just don't stick in my head the way I want them too. But, 5 characters per day is about 1800 in one year so that's not too bad.

Today, it's off to Xiamen for some shopping and site seeing. The vacation has begun, all two months of it.

Beijing?

I've been reading a bunch of articles lately that talk about how tourism is down in Beijing. Being so close to the Olympics tourism should be much higher. It got me thinking...personally I am afraid to go to Beijing during the Olympics. I have a friend there now who invited me to go and visit her but I just gave her the "maybe" answer. I've been reading all kinds of articles about police sweeps in bars and apartment complexes where foreigners live looking for visa violations, it scares me, and I'm completely legal with all the proper paperwork. Now, imagine someone who has never been to Asia before reading these same articles, do you think they want to go to Beijing?

Not leaving...

Got an email the other day. It's my decision if I want to go to Nanjing or not. I decided to stay here. In the long run Nanjing would be better, but when I think of leaving things become much more complicated.

Nanjing?

I might be moving to Nanjing in September. Ironically, that's where I requested to be placed initially. I got a call today and was asked what I thought about moving there. At first I said no, but after thinking I changed my mind. Nanjing is a much bigger city, the school is better, and Zhangzhou isn't so great. So, we'll see what happens.

Characters

I've been doing well with my daily repetitions on the Chinese characters I already know. However, I've been quite lazy with adding new material. I'm embarrassed to admit that so far I only know 110 characters. I've had enough time, but not the motivation to cram more info into my brain. I should be doing about 10 characters a day, but I've been doing about 10 a week. If I actually do 10 a day in 2 months I'll know an additional 600 characters for a total of 710. Well short of the 4000 I need to learn. At 10 characters a day it'll take me about 14 months to learn 4000. I have a feeling I won't reach near native fluency in 2 years.

It takes me quite a while to learn 10 characters. Basically, I learn the pronunciation and the stroke order for each character. Then I write the characters down 10 or so times each until I get the hang of it. I put the characters into Mnemosyne and go do something else. A couple hours later I go back to Mnemosyne to see how well I remember what I learned. On the question side I put the definition of the character. Once I see the definition I write out the character and pronounce the word out loud. If I get it correct I mark it as a two and Mnemosyne reschedules it for repetition. If I don't get it correct I mark it as a one or zero and redo it until I get it correct. This process takes quite a while. I've found that if I just try to memorize what the character looks like without learning to write it, it doesn't stick in my memory very well.

I could go the lazy route and just learn speaking and not reading and writing, but whats the fun in that?

Class is canceled, but don't tell the teacher...

I went to class this morning and I go to pickup the key to the room. They couldn't find the key so they gave me another one but that classroom was already spoken for so I had to go back and grab another. I finally got an empty room with about 5 minutes until class began, and I still don't see any of my students waiting for me outside the old classroom as they usually do. Fine I think, they are tired today they will filter in late. The bell rang and still no students. I called one of them up and she told me the class was canceled today. So my question is, why do all the students know class is canceled but I don't? Waste my time much?

The ATM and the bus ride

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Earthquake

A pretty big earthquake hit China today. I was inside at the time and didn't feel anything down here in Fujian Province.

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.

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.

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.