Indochina Expedition 2010: Eve of Departure
24 Jan 2010 Leave a Comment
in Traveling Tags: cambodia, Indochina, journey, laos, vietnam
My first semester in China as an English teacher was over. I would leave at dawn for Vietnam on Monday, January 25, 2010. Now it was time to go and see if I had what it takes to travel for real. This would be the first time traveling alone in the developing world without a gun or a posse. I not only didn’t speak the languages, but lacked any mathematical ability whatsoever. I knew that I was poor by American standards, but in Laos, I was a millionaire. Trouble lurked ahead when I would try to calculate the cost of a soda or a room. If I was a dollar off, the entire economy would go of whack and incite the Lord of Misrule to make a cameo appearance. Furthermore, I knew this little nature walk through the jungles of darkness and up the river of doubt would prove to be my greatest challenge up to date.
I had three goals:
1. Find a beach in south Vietnam before Chinese New Year (Tet) makes travel impossible.
2. Spend my first days of the Year of the Tiger in the ruins of Angkor Wat in Cambodia.
3. Make it back to China via her back door in the jungles of southwestern Yunnan province: That is, bus and boat through Cambodia, Thailand, Laos via roads and waterways of the Mekong River Basin.
A Day in the Life of a Fake Teacher in the Real China
24 Jan 2010 Leave a Comment
in Teaching Tags: education, favors, gao kao, journey, private schools
One day I found myself squealing like a pig in front of children. I pushed my nose up, grunted, and oinked. We were playing a simplified version of charades. It was a Sunday afternoon in the bleak of January. And this being China, it was bleaker than bleak. The dean of my university had loaned me out to a private high school as a “favor.”
My latest rendition caught the students’ attention. Girls stopped texting and boys ceased roughhousing long enough to look up and shout “pig!” in unison. I asked the teacher if they’ve played this game before, adding, “They’re very confident.” Either the blood of Shakespeare coursed through my veins or the children were very smart.
I spent the next ten minutes striking curious poses. I shapechanged into a frog, duck, and cow. By some feat of thaumaturgy, I even managed to turn an ordinary seat into a flying bicycle, which I rode around the room. But the archfiend boredom was in the room as well. It stalked the children. One by one they fell prey it. I wondered if I could win their hearts and minds back if I showed them the wonderfullest trick of all – the coffin trick. That is escaping from a coffin after it had been nailed shut.
Understanding Thoreau
01 Oct 2009 Leave a Comment
in Podcasts Tags: adventure, alchemy, close reading, critical thinking, education, journey, liberal arts, Literature, nature, self-reliance, Thoreau
In this literature class I help Chinese university students decipher passages in Thoreau’s essay, “Reading,” pointing out that it may take multiple visits to his works — a journey over a span of years — to gain more understanding. I also answer a student’s question into why Thoreau thought reading the classics, preferably in the original Greek and Roman, was so important.
Back to School: Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, Boom!
12 Sep 2009 2 Comments
in Teaching Tags: cell phones, humor, journey, Literature, Louis Lowry, Obama, poetry, syllabus, Teaching, The Alchemist, The Congo, The Giver, The Hobbit, Thoreau, Tolkien, Vachal Lindsay, Walt Whitman
They were a tough crowd. I introduced my first two literature classes to my concept of learning as a journey. At first their faces were impenetrable masks. Then I told them, “Even in America we know about Chair Mao’s famous Long March, and the founding of the People’s Republic of China.” Their faces lit up with pride. That’s when I knew my students understood me. “So this is an honor for me to be here on the China’s 60th anniversary, and be your guide on another journey. And it is an honor to be part of your education in the beginning of the Chinese Century. Of course, this journey will not be as hard as the Long March, but it will challenge you nonetheless.”
It was the first day of a two-semester class on American and British literature for junior English majors attending Xiangnan University in the city of Chenzhou in southern Hunan province. In the summer months prior to my arrival, I had known that I would be teaching literature, and that I would have the freedom to create my own curriculum. I was told that there was a text book and that the students were acquainted with some English literature such as Shakespeare, Jane Austen and Earnest Hemingway. Furthermore, I was told that I should feel free to bring my own books from American because the government-issue textbook was, “Maybe not so good.”
