The only exciting thing happening here last week was school. Five days of routine, one day of washing and shopping, and one day of rest for the Sabbath. Sometimes that is nice because I can sit back and relax a little.
I started to work on finals for my classes. I can do whatever I want in my Oral English classes so I have decided to test them on three things—pronunciation by reading a passage, class attendance by having them write about some of the activities we did, and fluency and grammar by giving a 30-second speech about themselves. I am trying to get around those students who only show up on the day of the final and think they can pass the class. I don’t understand that.
My final for Expository Writing was much more difficult to write. First, I have to write two tests which are similar in content. Second, I have to write a test that covers all the things we have been doing this semester--grammar, figurative language, writing analysis, and response to writing. I spent much of my free time this week making up questions and finding passages to use that are short enough for them read in the two-hour time frame but have an interesting message. Last of all, I have to make an answer key for each test and write a rationale. The School of Translation Studies has tough standards. I hope I pass the test for making the test.
I am using two excerpts from a chapter in Walden Pond by Thoreau for the response section. I had heard of his experience living in the woods before but never read any of his writings until I came to China. I think he is amazing! Then I found two humorous, entertaining essays byRobert Benchley for the analysis. He writes such interesting essays about random things like whether or not insects can think and mysterious stories behind boring business letters.
It has taken half a semester to get to know my students but they are really starting to open up to me. This week my writing students from Class #1 were asking me what I was going to do at the end of the semester. I told them I was going home just like they were. Then they asked me if I was coming back. When I told them no, they were very sad and told me that they loved me. I told them I loved them too. This is amazing because the Chinese, as a rule, are not very vocal about their feelings for others. These young people are probably more open than their parents and grandparents because they have had the opportunity of going to a university and getting to know more people, especially foreigners. I will miss them very much. Not only are they fun to teach, but also I have come to know their hearts as they write in their journals and essays.
Speaking of journals, this week a student wrote a sad entry in her journal about the passing of her father two months ago. She asked me if I believed if people have a soul and where I thought he was now. I ended up writing an entire page in response. I knew that I couldn’t say anything about religion, so I talked about my experience when I lost my father and how heart breaking it was for me. Then I wrote something like this: “After a few months went by, I came to know that all is well with my father.” I also said I hoped that someday she would be able to feel that kind of peace. It is difficult to talk about death without bringing in the promises of salvation through Jesus Christ. I hope that she can feel the promise of hope through my clumsy words.
They have some unique customs about burying the dead here. This week was the three-year anniversary of the 8.0-magnitude earthquake that struck in Sichuan province and killed 87,000 people. The newspaper article I read talked about The Cave of the 10,000 Dead, a half-hectare hillside that was transformed into a mass grave for about 6,000 bodies to prevent post-disaster epidemics. Since many of the dead were children from primary schools, the mourners are parents and grandparents. So many people come to weep and wail (literally) and burn paper money for their loved ones. The sad part is that they do not know where their family members are buried—too many corpses and too little time to lay them to rest in the traditional way so they were not identified. How hard would that be? Now I understand why so many of my students brought up their memories of the Sichuan earthquake when they heard about the one in Japan. The remembrances are still open wounds for many.
On Thursday I had a couple of young women stay after class to talk. They had seen a DVD in another class that mentioned racial discrimination in the Bible. First, they asked me if I believed in God. I said, “Yes!” but they seem to already know the answer. Next, they asked me if I knew of any stories in the Bible about racial discrimination. I started by telling them that I am not allowed to talk about religion to them but I would tell them what I could. They understood that mandate from the government. When I asked them what their teacher said about the discrimination, they said that she didn’t know but there was someone named Ham. I told them about Noah who had three sons, one of which was named Ham. He had married a woman named Egyptus who was black that that is where the people of Egypt came from. I also talked about Cain and how he killed his brother Abel and was cursed with a black skin. That was the best I could do. It is so frustrating to have people ask honest questions and not be able to answer them fully. However, I must be obedient to the government of the land in which I currently reside.
I am not sure how they know I believe in God, but I hope that I am being a good example and that my actions show that I am trying to live what I believe.
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