The Assembly Line

Thursday, August 4, 2011 (9:10pm CST)

Let me tell you, us crazies must be all sorts of passionate about education in order to survive Summer Institute! The past two weeks have been filled with observing, reviewing, debriefing, workshops, reflections, and meetings, meetings, meetings. I am making strategic plans for when I can use the bathroom and eat my meals! Coming home (to my hotel) at the end of the day, I can’t help but be exhausted and yet so grateful for the work that I am doing.

Every morning I wake up at 6:45am to usually find a close friend or family member online who wants to video chat (--yes, this is some quality wake-up footage). I then get myself together and out the door. By 7:45 I have walked the one block it takes me to get to our current headquarters and across the campus to the cafeteria where I eat the vast majority of our meals. This walk has to be strategic and has taken on many different angles by everyone in the organization. The school that we are based at has…. shall we say, very poor sanitation and there is only one way (that I have found) to avoid walking by the bathrooms altogether.

The cafeteria lady greets me with her huge smile and says something to me in Chinese even though she knows that I have no idea what she is saying. The breakfast food is mainly comprised of fried dough-based items, or enormous think boiled balls of dough –filled with either mystery meat, greens, or a sweet black bean paste. All of this is accompanied with hot soymilk or a BYOT (bring your own tea) jugs filled with hot water. Everyone here has their own personal reusable tea filter-thermos – what I consider the Chinese equivalent of the US’s craze with our reusable coffee cups. I am still holding out to try the cafeteria’s rice porridge or noodle soup for breakfast.

After breakfast I walk the 15-minute trek (usually accompanied by fellows) to the school where I observe most of my fellows teach. Fellows are teaching a combination of two 40-minute English or phonics classes. While, of course, there is always room for growth for all of us, I have been incredibly impressed with the rigor, reflection, and innovation with which the fellows have been teaching.

Once I walk back, and arrive at the school in which we are based, I go directly to the cafeteria for lunch. Lunch is assembled around a giant bowl of rice, that is the size of a 4-top dinning room table. Everyone lines up to get their rice and then proceeds to the assembly line of bowls with different accoutrements ranging from corn, pumpkin, and bokchoy to various types of tofu and pork. There are probably about 15 different options to choose from, all fresh out of the kitchen, and most choices are vegetables (easy to stay vegan!).  All of which have to mandatory seasonings: hot peppers, and MSG. Delicious.

Afternoons we carry on in the assembly line for making great teachers. This can vary from spending time meeting with fellows, meeting with staff, holding workshops, or reading and giving feedback to lesson plans. Whatever the agenda may be, it is guaranteed back-to-back-to-back up until 7pm when our whole staff meeting concludes (yes, I did run to the cafeteria for dinner in there).  By this point I am usually able to head back to the hotel when I can read and comment on more lessons and talk to friends and family before I snooze.

I am starting to become more used to squaties, doing my own laundry by hand, not spending more than a dollar when I go out to eat, and the new digestive trends of my body. I have found the go-to Boba tea place which is frequented a least once a day and yes, I was finally able to get money out of the bank. My fellow staff members have been very kind and supportive and are generally looking for me to have a smooth transition into my new Chinese life. They even took the privilege of giving me my Chinese name, which (so I’ve been told) means: peaceful, heart of the flower, and good person － 和蕊佳.  While my Chinese is still in awful condition, I am definitely looking forward to a time when learning Chinese will be an achievable goal.

Right now what is most important is making sure that the students of rural China are put into a position to receive the best education possible, and meanwhile I eat, sleep, and walk a little in my day without getting bitten by too many mosquitoes!