ANOTHER WEEK IN PARADISE

MONDAY OCTOBER 22
Students and Developing Nations are today’s topics

Gave a test this morning. Five students showed up with out pens, nine were late. Three of the late ones were also ones without pens. One fell asleep during the test. This in a class of 68. In the afternoon, three of the late students were late again, sat in the back, had no book, no pen nor paper. They started talking. Three times I told them to be quiet, and finally went back and assigned them seats far apart. While walking to the front, one of them moved back to sit next to another one. I will let you know when he is allowed back in my class.

Developing Nations ... I have seen a few things that make me wonder which of us is developing ... EVERY sidewalk here in Jimei has a build in strip for visually impaired. It is about 18 inches wide, and yellow. It has small parallel slats running the length of each tile, and at the corners, there is a bubble pattern. There are inter-city buses with three rows of bunk beds for sleeping instead of seats, for overnight trips. Bus service is amazing, with buses every few minutes. There is no sign of crime anywhere. Everyone seems happy, no yelling at people anywhere.

We spend loads of money for entertainment, they have as much fun with simple pleasures. We need to be amazed to be interested, and next time must be bigger and better. They find pleasure in a walk through a forest, or playing in the sand on a beach. Things that I did when I was young, but have forgotten about. Where we are ruled by the almighty Canadian dollar, family and friends are their values. People do things together, and find warmth in closeness, while we want more space, bigger yards and faster cars. There is no drinking age here, yet I see no drunks. There is a lot to be said about 6000 years of tradition and culture.

MONDAY OCTOBER 29
WOW, a week with no entries ... It has been a busy week. Students wrote their first big test, and I spent time grading them. The grades were low, as is expected, but some were really low. The lowest was 12 % BELOW the guess only rate. That is hard to do. The BELL curve became a BELL CLIFF.

Friday night was a WOX Movie Night. WOX is What’s On Xiamen, an ex-pat group I joined. I was the provider with “Rocky Horror Picture Show”

Saturday morning, another trip. Three students, Jennifer (J), Rone (pronounced Lonee) and Ann took me to YuanBoYuan, a giant park near the school. It is not finished yet, but it is like a GIANT Ontario Place, with many (100) little theme gardens and sitting areas. Very beautiful. I again had a number of people come up to me and ask to get their picture taken with me. I took 360 pictures. The collection is growing.

We stayed until 6 pm, after which I treated us for dinner. Two Quarts of beer, and eight dishes finally filled us. Cost for dinner for four? One hundred and fourty ¥ or about 20 Canadian dollars.

Today (Monday) I went shopping for a tailor made suit. There is a very good tailor near here. He has some of his work on display. Beautiful wedding dresses and other clothes. I picked out the material for two suits, one double breasted dark blue with a pin stripe, and one single breasted gray, and a pair of blue pants to match both jackets. The girls haggled over price and got it down to 1000 ¥ or less than 140 Canadian.

Then we went to the girl’s dorm. Six of them share one room. When you enter, there is a small bathroom on the left, and shower stall on the right. Down the left side are two sets of bunk beds, with a four door cupboards (stacked 2x2) separating them. Down the right side were six small connected work booths, each with a chair, a couple of shelves, a power outlet and an internet connection. Above them were two more beds. They had a balcony. And on the balcony was a sink with built-in wash board for doing clothes. Clean clothes hung everywhere on the balcony.

I then followed them and sat in on a lecture. ETHICS class. All in Chinese. Didn’t understand a word, but learned a lot. Teaching is teaching. I watched the teacher’s body language, and teaching style, and the student’s behaviour. There were almost half of an eighty student class absent. The class started with everyone standing and bowing. I will try that tomorrow.