The Times they are a Changin'

So this week marked the turning point, hopefully a temporary one, but still a turning point. This week was awful. I had my first teaching setback which was combined with more sickness making it far and away the worst week I have had here in China so far. I remain hopeful that things will improve, but for now, I am not as happy as I have been. This week marked my 6th week here, matching the longest I have spent out of the country. I knew that the change in mindset would eventually come, but I was hoping that it would not.

First, the sickness. I hate being sick and this was about the sickest I have been in quite a while. I had a fever, stomach flu and overall aches and pains. It was not fun. I spent more time in bed this week than out of bed and even missed a day of work, something that I did not want to happen, but at the insistence of my co-teacher I was glad that it did. I felt a bit better after sleeping all day, for sure better than if I had taught all of my classes that day. I am still not feeling 100% but it does seem to get better each day. Hopefully this will be the last time I am sick for my stay here, because it sure does not make for much enjoyment when you are struggling to breath.

Adding to the difficulty of sickness in a foreign country was my first setback as a teacher, perhaps and inevitable one, but still frustrating. I gave my 1st test this week, what I felt was a absurdly easy test about India and the Opium Wars. I was shocked to see when grading them that few kids got the correct answers, most failed completely or did not even try to answer the questions. It was heartbreaking grading these quiz's as I thought my students were getting what I was teaching them. These quiz's show that this is not the case and will lead me to change how I teach. I need to slow down, repeat myself more and give more review time. I realize that I need to make these changes, but I fear that this will not do any good, that my students will continue to miss what I am trying to teach them. They continue to be well behaved, but I fear that this quiz is an indicator that they do not really care about school, that they are not putting any time into studying. I suppose I was this same way in Middle School so I can kind of sympathize, especially since I am not teaching in their native language, but it is still a hard pill to swallow.

These two events have combined to change my current mindset from satisfaction and happiness to frustrated homesickness. As I have said, I was expecting this change at some point, and am glad that it took this long to occur, but I hope that it switches fast. It is now the weekend and the break from school combined with the fresh start next week should help me get past this mood.

In more positive news, I have started meeting with a Chinese tutor. The process to learning a language is a slow one, but I now feel like I have the help I need to aid in this process. I meet with her one time per week on Sundays to go over the lessons. The cost of her time is criminally cheap. I am paying 20 Kuai and hour, less than $3 for one on one lessons. I meet at her apartment which is a ways out of the way, but for $3 a lesson it is still worth it. It takes me about 2.5 hours to get to the lessons which illustrates just how far out of the city I am more than anything.

I hope that everything is well back home. I will write more this week, hopefully with more upbeat stories of my life here. I miss you all.